This debate and its aftermath have clarified some things in my mind, so I thought I would write them down. I understand that most or all of my opinions may be wrong, since this topic is outside my area of expertise, and I hope that someone can explain it much better than I can. However, as an American, I thought I would share my thoughts with others.
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[1.] It seems to me that the current situation highlights a major problem for the Democratic Party: Many Democrats should have noticed Biden’s cognitive decline, they should have realized that it was a danger to the country and a danger to their own electoral prospects.
They had ample opportunity to pressure the president to step down gracefully before an alternative emerged that could exploit Trump’s major political weaknesses. To the extent that they worried that Harris was the obvious alternative and that she would be the candidate to lose, it didn’t take a great political chess player to predict that this might be an issue in 2020. And while it’s obviously hard to get a president to step down — indeed, it’s hard to get most people to acknowledge their own cognitive decline — the job of a well-functioning political party is to make such a task achievable.
[2.] The current situation highlights a major problem for the Republican Party. Even if you support Trump and agree with his policies, please answer honestly: Would you have wanted someone like him as your candidate 20 years ago? Whether you think he’s the lesser evil or not, do you believe he could stay calm in a foreign policy crisis? Do you think he’s an inspirational leader? Do you think he’d be a worthy successor to a president you admire (Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, Coolidge, or whoever)?
Even if you think his actions on January 6, 2021 were not as bad as they are being portrayed, do you think it actually speaks to his character or credibility? Would you believe what he said?
Even if Trump just wants to stop the Democrats, how successful has he been in that regard? During his time as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, Trump experienced three losses (2018, 2020, 2022) after one victory (2016). Many Americans, including not only the far-left but also many floating voters (and even some Republicans), view Trump very negatively. This is never a good quality for a political candidate.
Let’s say the Democrats convince Biden to step down, convince Harris to step down, and the Democratic convention elects a Democratic governor or senator from a purple state. How confident are you that Trump would win? Surely there are other Republican candidates who could have taken better advantage of Biden’s historically disastrous debate performance?
[3.] Now, let’s turn to the media, whose job it is to inform the public about what’s really going on in government, and certainly should be when it comes to the cognitive abilities of the president.
Would the media have done a good job of telling the public this honestly? Would they have covered the issue well when it was still relevant to the Democratic primaries (or at least accurately predicted it, if you think Biden’s performance has deteriorated exponentially in recent months)?
The media (not just the few that covered the issue intensively, but the media as a whole) either found out about Biden’s decline the night of the debate when we all did, or they knew all along. If they found out on the night, what does that say about them? If they knew all along, what does that say? Is either answer any good?
[4.] Finally, consider our criminal justice system: Trump has been convicted of a felony. He has been charged with other felonies.
But as a result, his polling position has remained virtually unchanged. You could probably blame that on his more radical supporters, but Trump still has significant support from independents. Even in polls that conclude he lost support among independents, the loss is relatively small, suggesting that many independents don’t believe the conviction was the result of a “fair and impartial process.” (For example, according to Politico, ” [independents said] They said the ruling [in the New York criminal case] Forty-six percent said it was the result of a fair and impartial process, 27 percent said it wasn’t, and 24 percent said they didn’t know.
Again, if you had asked me 20 years ago, “If a presidential candidate was convicted of a felony while campaigning and then put on trial for another felony, what would the outcome be?” I probably would have answered, “tragic.” Either people had lost a great deal of trust in the justice system in general, or they had concluded that in situations like this, the criminal justice system was being used as a political weapon rather than a true tool to protect people from criminals. Neither answer is good.
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So what’s the problem? One answer is bad people. But bad people have always existed.
Our constitutional systems, not just our written Constitution but the structures we’ve built up over the centuries, are designed to deal with bad actors. Ambition counters ambition. Broad-based national institutions check the excesses of narrow factions. Candidates’ personal egos are checked by these institutions — even if those institutions are themselves made up of flawed, egocentric individuals.
One way to think about this is to imagine this happening in a foreign country. Imagine that, unexpectedly, we as Americans began to pay attention to an election campaign in another country in which an 81-year-old incumbent president, whose cognitive abilities were clearly beginning to decline, was facing off against a 78-year-old candidate who had been convicted of crimes, was on trial for others, and was behaving in a very unpresidential way, at least in the wake of his loss in the last election. Would we consider that foreign country to have a healthy political system?
We don’t know what caused these problems. Is it partly the move to primaries (were our previous smoke-filled-room voting system better?) partly the ideological homogeneity of much of the media? partly the growth of social media? Or something else? Even if we could diagnose the problems, is there a realistic path to a solution?
I think there’s more going on here than just two extremely weak candidates in particular, and to move forward we have to find solutions that go beyond these candidates and this election cycle.
