The following will be appearing as an op/ed — before Election Day -- in newspapers in my very red congressional district (VA-06). In the original version, I had presented a fourth crisis: the crisis of racial injustice. But word length for the newspaper required something be cut, and the racial issue is one that I’ve hit already a few times with some force, so I chose that crisis to constitute the necessary cut. So, here’s the message my Trumpian neighbors will be seeing in their newspaper on a Saturday morning between now and the day we choose our next president.
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Seeing Our Presidential Choice Through the Prism of America’s Crises
Imagine a present-day Rip Van Winkle waking up from a 20-year slumber and discovering that it will soon be time to vote in a presidential election. One can imagine him asking: “What are the main problems that the United States now faces? And how do the two major-party candidates for President compare in how they’d deal with them?”
Looking over the news from recent times, he’ll discover these major crises facing America.
1) His attention would immediately be seized by the crisis of Covid -- a once-in-a-century pandemic. More than 200,000 dead, delivering an economic blow threatening countless businesses and throwing millions out of work.
How do the candidates compare on the pandemic?
The story of the past eight months shows clearly that the incumbent President has continually refused to provide the national leadership the pandemic requires. He has muzzled and undercut the public health scientists, failed to use his authority to do what only a President can do to contain the spread of the virus— with the result that the United States has suffered far greater loss of life than other advanced societies.
Our 21st century Rip Van Winkle would learn that – as a recording shows beyond doubt -- the current President deliberately gave the American false reassurances, sacrificing American lives and the good of the nation, apparently, for his own political purposes.
Our prototypical American just emerging from the past would also that America does have an entirely satisfactory choice in the incumbent’s opponent. Everything the challenger says indicates that he is prepared to respect the science and thereby get the United States onto a path that contains the virus as well as Germany, South Korea, and New Zealand have done—nations whose losses have been far smaller and whose economies are recovering more quickly.
2) Another crisis – which looms hugely over the long term, but is already upon the nation in the form of unprecedented wildfires, intensifying hurricanes, and other extreme weather events – is the crisis of climate disruption.
Once again, the contrast between the two candidates could hardly be more stark.
The current President had promised to “Make America Great Again.” But just as that President made the United States “extraordinary” in his dealing with the pandemic – engendering the embarrassment of Americans being “pitied” by our traditional friends – so also has he made this nation extraordinary in how he’s dealt with the challenge of climate change: with his decision to make the United States the only nation not signatory to the Paris Accord on Climate Change, he made our nation a kind of global pariah, resented and disrespected.
With both crises also, the incumbent President rejected the clear consensus of the scientists, claimed to know more than the experts, and with both, dismissed the important challenge as a “hoax.”
And with both the pandemic and climate crises, the incumbent President has gone far worse than refusing to take the necessary and responsible actions: he has repeatedly used the powers of his office to actively undermine America’s ability to address the challenge successfully:
- spreading falsehoods about the virus and, regarding the dangerous destabilizing of earth’s climate,
- deliberately unraveling previous efforts to meet a challenge that science tells us is the greatest ever faced by humankind.
But once again, fortunately, our Rip Van Winkle would discover that the presidential election is offering a good choice to take a more constructive path. The challenger in that election has taken a responsible position on dealing with the climate crisis—promising to put the United States back in line with what every other advanced society on earth has understood is required of us in order to safeguard the viability of human civilization in the years and generations to come. From pariah to resuming some role of positive global leadership.
3) Our newly-awakened American would find his nation confronting another crisis— on that hardly seemed conceivable when he’d fallen asleep a generation before: that’s the crisis of the American constitutional order.
On this crisis as well, the differences could hardly be more dramatic, and profoundly important.
The incumbent has consistently shown contempt for the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. He’s usurped powers of the legislative branch. He’s brazenly wielded the law as a shield to protect his friends and a sword to smite his rivals. And, most recently, he’s been moving openly to sabotage an election he looks increasingly likely to lose. (Even pointedly refusing to commit to the peaceful transition of power if he loses. Even threateningly telling militant, potentially violent groups that support him to “Stand by.”)
His opponent, by contrast, seems fully committed – like almost all American leaders of the past two-plus centuries – to respecting the rule of law and to be utterly faithful to the oath of office to “protect and defend” the Constitution.
So, assuming our 21st century Rip Van Winkle to be a patriot, who therefore wants to support which ever of our presidential options seems most likely to create a better American future, who do you suppose he’d vote for?