Tag Archives: 2016 election

Day 23: ‘The Best People’

16 Oct 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Winding up (western aerial), © 2016 Susan Barsy

Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has often promised that, if elected, he will recruit the very ‘best people’ to improve the federal government. To those who favor a smaller, smarter federal government, it’s an appealing idea.  It also appeals because our need for ‘the best people’ to run the republic is old and enduring.  Representative government is only as good as the people in it: if people of low character become prevalent, the quality of representation suffers and the power delegated to officials ends up being misused.

Yet Trump is in a poor position, politically and morally, to bring the best people to government.  Politically, he has set himself up as an antagonist of the establishment.  For more than a year, he has railed against the political class, not limiting his attacks to issues of policy, but assailing the character and achievements of many people who have painstakingly built up a reputation for public service. Remarkably, Trump has not confined his attacks to members of the opposite party.  He has also insulted many within the GOP, his own adopted party, which could normally be expected to supply talent for a Republican administration.  Serving in a Trump administration would be politically risky.  Many leading Republicans, in and out of government, have openly repudiated him, leaving one to imagine a Cabinet populated by hangers-on like Chris Christie, Trump’s own children, or his loyal lieutenant Kellyanne Conway.

It’s difficult to recruit ‘the best people’ without belonging to the best class oneself.  Here Trump’s cratering social reputation will be felt.  Last week, the media’s focus shifted from the implications of Trump’s political positions to his personal conduct and mores.  Allegations of his sexual misconduct are multiplying, sparked by a leaked tape in which Trump boasted of his indecent behavior toward women in lewd and contemptuous terms.  Whatever claim Trump had to personal decency has been destroyed.  Respectable people are censuring him loudly.

The issue of social integrity is distinct from the issue of Trump’s politics.  Who would care to sit next to him at a dinner party?  Who would feel honored to shake his hand?  Until lately a popular celebrity, Trump’s own words have supplied grounds for branding him a pariah.  Were he to win in November, he would make a poor figurehead for a country whose creed is the equal enjoyment of inalienable rights.

To summarize: Trump arouses political and moral aversion in people who might otherwise be his supporters and colleagues.  The aversion is not just to Trump’s views but to his very personality.  Yes, Trump’s tactics and policies arouse aversion, but so do Ted Cruz’s.  Cruz, though, combines political iconoclasm with some personal probity.  In this, he resembles the antebellum radical John Calhoun, whose ultra pro-slavery views combined with a cold rectitude and formality that impressed even his political enemies.  How different is Donald J. Trump, whose claims to social respectability are evaporating.

Were voters to catapult Trump to the top of the government, it’s difficult to imagine his improving on the caliber of the talent it attracts.  How many able, forward-looking people of good character would decide that serving Trump is something worth doing?  Shunned by the ‘best people,’ President Trump could find it tough to deliver on the promise of better government.

Image: Aerial of a winding mountain road,
© 2016 Susan Barsy

Day 31: Republican Party Chaos

8 Oct 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

A serious fissure (Hawaii), © 2016 Susan Barsy
Today the signs of institutional chaos within the Republican Party are growing.  The fragmentation of the party is more open and unscripted.  The party is being called on to dump its nominee, which would be unprecedented.  It appears more certain that Trump will lose the election.  Afterward, the GOP itself is more likely to break apart than to survive.

The immediate precipitant is an ‘October surprise’: nasty footage capturing Trump boasting of his crude sexual behavior back in 2005.  The tape is causing a flap, outraging a whole new constituency of people who were not openly speaking out against Trump before.  Many GOP candidates and voters are suddenly loudly denouncing Trump, demanding that he quit the race or be forced out by the RNC.

Moreover, I agree with this darkly compelling article by Rick Wilson that the troubles of Republicans in Congress are just beginning.  The constituency that catapulted Trump to the nomination and continues to back him in the general campaign is fundamentally anti-establishment and will not mesh with either the Party’s conservative or moderate wing.  The support flowing into the GOP presidential race is thus a force antithetical to the success and cohesion of the GOP in Congress.

Leading Republicans, whether moderates like the Bushes or conservatives like Ben Sasse, know they cannot cooperate with Trump without his damaging them.  Were Trump to be elected, the ideological divisions among Republicans in Washington would be unlike anything modern Americans have ever seen.  (The closest parallel might be the ‘accidental presidency’ of Tyler back in the 1840s, or the dark-horse ascendancy of his successor James Polk.)

Given that figures like Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, and Ted Cruz have been badly damaged by attempting to work with their party’s ostensible standard-bearer, other GOP leaders are bound to begin strategizing about how to keep their distance and distinguish their branch of Republicanism from Trump’s.  I would not be surprised to see the party break into three.

Image: A serious fissure (Hawaii),
© 2016 Susan Barsy

Day 32: The Tribune’s Endorsement

7 Oct 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

Looking down toward Tribune Tower, © 2016 Susan Barsy
Late last week, the Chicago Tribune endorsed Gary Johnson for president, an action that, while indicative of the uneasy response the leading candidates trigger, also shows a remarkable failure of nerve.

In 2016, a measure of bravery is involved in committing to either of the two top presidential candidates, especially given the invective that they have inspired.  The vituperative nature of the campaign has left mud clinging to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  The shame heaped on Trump, in particular, has had a tendency to slide off and besmirch his followers, whom Clinton contemptuously dismissed as ‘a basket of deplorables.’

One wonders whether this, the risk of guilt by association, will deter voters from voting, or whether it is inhibiting likely voters from honestly declaring their intentions to friends, or to the strangers who call on the telephone, conducting voter surveys.

How many people are ‘shy’ Trump or Clinton supporters, but will not risk saying so out of a dread of conflict or embarrassment?  Will there be many people who lie about their vote, or who will absolve themselves of future responsibility by casting no ballot on Election Day?

How childish it would be to shirk one’s duty.  But then look at the action of the Chicago Tribune‘s editorial board.  If its members intend to follow their own recommendation and vote for Gary Johnson, I will be astonished.  If they are not personally going to vote for Gary Johnson, their recommendation was an act of prevarication.  They deliberately threw away any chance of influencing the outcome of the campaign.

When a group of highly educated, rational, and conscientious journalists cannot bring themselves to declare for one or the other of the candidates who is certain to win the election, it’s likely that something similar is happening in the more obscure corners of our nation, too.

It is very difficult to resolve to vote for a deeply flawed nominee.  It leaves a bad taste, to give power to someone you do not trust, you do not agree with, or you do not admire.   To vote this year is to take a risk.  How many Trump voters will lie about it?  How many ambivalent souls will stay at home?

Image: The Tribune Tower on a good day
© 2016 Susan Barsy

 

Day 35: Political Intelligence

4 Oct 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , 4 Comments

After the rain, before the fall, © 2016 Susan Barsy

Five weeks to go before Election Day.  The dearth of certainty about voter sentiment is excruciating.  I check for new polling information on the presidential race several times a day, knowing it’s pointless yet hungering for some bit of  ‘intelligence’ with conclusive authority.

This, in the face of a media blitz whose narrative is Clinton’s brightening prospects in the wake of her first presidential debate ‘win.’  (If only the election were more like a World Series.)  Judging from the New York Times and some other northern urban news outlets, Trump’s negatives are destroying him and his campaign is in a near-fatal decline.  Editorial boards and leading figures from the President on down are insisting to the electorate that ‘nobody’ wants Trump.  His election would spell disaster: a message that will heighten the nation’s problems should the unthinkable come to pass.

Day 39: The Campaign Will End

30 Sep 2016 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , 2 Comments

Great Lake Campaign, © 2016 Susan Barsy
On Wednesday I came out to Michigan, and this afternoon I went to the dunes.  I’m happy to report that, while visiting the lakeshore, I was oblivious of politics.  The beach was notably empty of anything newsworthy.  I was beyond the reach of the candidates and their endless campaign.  The water of Lake Michigan thudded and surged against the sand, seeped in instantly, and roiled itself all over again, rather like a lung or a heart, the vital system of our country, deeper than the body politic.

For many months, the campaign has engaged and fascinated me; yes, sometimes I felt anxiety, but only this week did I begin to see the end of it, the certainty of a result, and with that vision came disillusionment.  Yes, in a little more than four weeks, the election will end, and even if it is so close the victor has to be decided by some unusual process, either Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump will become the next American president.  And there was something so disappointing about this to me that for a moment I lost all interest, and wished desperately to be somewhere else, somewhere untouched by the colossal sprawl of American politics.