Biden for president
Character, in this historically all-important election, is everything.
Character, without question, is the starkest divide between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. For all his faults — and there are a few — the latter possesses a rare ability in these polarized times to see the humanity in those who cross his path, even from the opposing side.
At 77, Biden is a politician who Washington, for all its trying, has been unable to break. Even his political foes preface criticisms with caveats of grace or shrewdly aim their arrows askew — at his gaffe-prone speech, at his younger son, and at his tenuous affiliation with the “radical left,” conveniently forgetting that Biden, a lifelong moderate, already fought the fringe and won.
Biden’s humble roots in Scranton, Penn., the personal hardship he endured after a car crash killed his wife and daughter, the 120-mile commutes back and forth to Washington so he could tuck his sons in bed each night — these are experiences Americans can relate to and they help Biden relate to us.
Still, many who plan to vote for Trump, some with pinched nose, act as though character itself were a luxury — nice if you can get it, but not essential.
We disagree. Character, in this election, is everything.
Character, personified from the get-go by George Washington’s voluntary relinquishment of power after two terms as America’s first president, is the set of virtues upon which all others depend. What is a promise to an ally or a warning to an adversary if it can’t be trusted?
It is America’s character — the Sundaybest version of it in our hearts or the ideal
we’re still striving toward — that swells our chests at a Fourth of July parade, not tweaked trade deals rebranded as new, not games of chicken with China, not even a Supreme Court coup.
Trump’s deficiencies of decency are not a matter of style. These days, they are a matter of life and death.
Lack of character is what got us into this national nightmare that has killed 213,000 Americans, infected more than 7.6 million and put tens of millions out of work. And character is the only thing that will get us out.
The allure of Trump’s message and style back in 2016 was intoxicating for many fed up with Congress’ tit-for-tat dysfunction and decades of unmitigated greed and corporate coddling by both parties at the expense of the American dream.
Swamp made worse
His devil-may-care rhetoric felt refreshingly, if perversely, free in our bubble-wrapped discourse. Rather than look at his business empire as a liability, his voters ignored Trump’s trust-fund privilege, his companies’ six bankruptcies, and saw in his wealth an independence from donor interests that made his vows of draining the D.C. swamp believable.
Instead, Trump surrounded himself with a crooked cast of characters, more than a dozen of whom have ended up criminally charged or imprisoned.
His tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy. His assault on the Affordable Care Act did nothing to thin the ranks of uninsured. While Biden wants to expand access to health coverage with a public option, Trump has yet to keep his promise to protect people with preexisting conditions.
Even some of Trump’s gains were foiled by his own folly, as we saw when manufacturing gains were erased by his trade wars.
As it turned out, Trump was not a salve for our ills. He was a comorbidity. He exacerbated our preexisting divisions.
The one-time birther conspiracist used his powerful platform to demonize immigrants and to embolden, with winks, nods and loose lips, hate groups and other racists.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” said retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis after resigning as Trump’s defense secretary. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
Good and ill of hubris
Trump’s brazenness was a double-edged sword as president. The heedless bluster that stirred the hearts of the disaffected, charmed markets and helped maintain President Barack Obama’s record-long economic expansion that pushed household incomes to record levels and slashed poverty is the same hubris that downplayed a deadly virus until its rampant spread forced a national shutdown, turning a 3.5 percent
unemployment rate into 14.7 percent seemingly overnight amid the sharpest job losses on record. By June, employers had shed an estimated 40 million jobs.
No, Trump didn’t unleash the novel coronavirus. Yes, he limited travel from China but incompletely and ineffectively.
One look at German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s vigilant response that saved lives through science and widespread testing shows where America should have been: leading the world out of a crisis by example as we’ve done for more than a century — until Trump.
Trump failed to contain the threat, in part by fumbling testing strategy, sending mixed messages about treatments and vaccine availability, pressuring states to reopen early and repeatedly downplaying the virus’ seriousness — deadly ineptitude he continues to demonstrate today with callous panache, even after he and his wife became infected, along with dozens of others in an alarming White House outbreak.
The one simple tool that can save lives and restore jobs — the face mask — he refused to promote, mocking its incongruence with his macho masquerade, even belittling Biden for wearing one.
“It is what it is,” Trump said of America’s death toll.
Those words aren’t a quirk of the president’s rhetorical style. They are affirmation of his disregard for human life that is not his own.
Trust broken
In his fight to save face,
Trump has broken things not easily restored, including trust in America’s institutions — from the courts to the post office to the vitally important Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which he has bullied into delaying and altering scientific reports, pressured into playing down the virus’ risk to children and discredited by flatly contradicting his own appointed director, Dr. Robert Redfield.
CDC’s reputation has gone from “gold to tarnished brass,” wrote Dr. William Foege, CDC director under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. The situation, he wrote in a scathing letter to Redfield, “is a slaughter and not just a political dispute.”
Name a line and Trump has crossed it.
He escaped impeachment for his many attempts to shut down an investigation into Russia’s hacking of American elections, only to be impeached later for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress involving his withholding
of aid for Ukraine for his own political gain. He circumvented Congress and the Constitution and diverted billions from the defense budget toward his border wall, even though only 5 new miles have been built. Trump has hesitated to condemn white supremacists, calling them at one point “very fine people.”
And the lies. Uncharted territory, even for Washington: more than 20,000 false claims, sometimes averaging two dozen a day, according to a Washington Post tally.
Some of Trump’s foreign policy gaffes have been merely mortifying. The time he wished communist China, one of the most murderous regimes in human history, happy 70th anniversary. The time he invited the Taliban to Camp David. The times he flirted with leaving NATO. Other moves — siding with Vladimir Putin over our intelligence community, abandoning our loyal allies the Kurds to be slaughtered by Turkey, refusing to even censure Saudi Arabia for murdering Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — have done lasting damage to America’s standing in the world.
Immigration policy
Trump’s immigration policy, marred by the travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, his repudiation of people from “shithole countries,” and his campaign to slash legal immigration by half would be enough to condemn him without his unconscionable separation of thousands of children, including infants, from their parents at the border due to a “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute all undocumented immigrants.
Trump has virtually closed America to refugees, admitting only 11,000 this year — 10 percent of Obama’s 2016 total — at a time when 80 million people are displaced worldwide by oppression and war. Biden pledges to reset the cap to 125,000.
Trump’s rollback of environmental regulations has been disastrous in the fight to reduce fossil fuel emissions that cause global warming. He has also rescinded rules that kept us safe from toxic chemicals and polluted water.
Biden’s goals: rejoining the Paris accord. Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Restoring, and toughening, regulations Trump has thrown by the wayside. Banning drilling on public land, something Trump promotes.
Accomplishments
Biden isn’t without blemish. His past support of a 1994 crime bill disproportionately targeting the Black community, his dismissive treatment of Anita Hill, his occasional tone-deaf statements — they’re all concerning. But Biden, unlike Trump, seems to learn from his mistakes.
Biden’s accomplishments speak for themselves: A U.S. senator by 29. An early voice for campaign finance reform and taking action on climate change. A champion for the assault weapons ban. Author of the Violence Against Women Act. Chairman of Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees.
As vice president, he oversaw the implementation of the landmark Recovery Act and was instrumental in passing Obamacare, which helped 20 million Americans find insurance. He showed courage in pushing Obama to embrace gay marriage and was the lone voice urging caution on expanding our footprint in Afghanistan in 2010.
We’re confident that as president he would put in place qualified, effective people from diverse backgrounds, as evidenced by his VP pick of Sen. Kamala Harris. They will set about repairing four years of Trump’s destruction.
What Biden lacks in youthful vigor he makes up for in experience, compassion and love for this country and its people. All its people.
That is character — not Twitter tirades and stoking racial divides.
That is patriotism — not dismissing the sacrifices of war heroes, dodging the draft by complaining of bone spurs and avoiding taxes by writing off $70,000 in haircuts.
That is strength — not selfaggrandizing speeches that channel autocratic strongmen.
Many brave Americans, including some pushed out of Trump’s administration, have risked careers and reputations to testify to the danger Trump poses to this land that we love. Now it’s our turn.
Vote for Joe Biden for president of the United States to restore our soul, our standing and our good sense.