Earlier today, former Vice-President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., was projected to win the state of Pennsylvania, and with that, become the 46th President of the United States. I for one feel greatly relieved. And I'll tell you why.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter, at that time the Democratic presidential nominee, running against incumbent President Gerald Ford, asked Americans a very simple question: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?
This year, Donald Trump, President of the United States since January 2017, did not ask that same question. It would have been a public relations gaffe for his re-election campaign if he had, because today, many Americans are not better off. More than 236,000 Americans have died from a virus that Trump said, back on January 22, was "one person coming in from China." 10 million more Americans are out of work, due mainly to that very same coronavirus, as many businesses that greatly depend on interpersonal activity and/or large gatherings of people have suffered (e.g. bars, restaurants, movie theaters, tourism).
Four years ago, a number of Americans thought that it might be time to give a non-politician a try. One thing Trump said at that time apparently resonated with a lot of them: Echoing a phrase used by politicians on both sides of the proverbial aisle since the 1980s, he likened Washington, D.C. to a swamp infested with alligators, and he would drain the swamp. (Note: Almost 63 million Americans voted for him in 2016, but it's not clear as to how many voted for him based on the party he represented, how many voted for him based on feeling threatened by change, and how many voted for him precisely because he was not a politician.)
By voting for Trump, however, they ignored objective editorials from various newspapers and magazines endorsing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (according to Wikipedia, 500 endorsed her specifically, and another 30 said "anyone but Trump"; links to many, if not all, of these editorials can be found within this article). He was, has been, and is everything you don't want in a President: He is simultaneously a con man, a liar, a bully, a coward, and a manchild.
- Let's start with the con man part. Trump claims to be one of the most successful businessmen ever, yet he has left behind all sorts of short-lived business and bankruptcies. He claims to be an expert on just about everything. I am reminded of Gilderoy Lockhart, the character from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets who frequently bragged about his wizarding prowess, particularly in Defense Against the Dark Arts, yet could not prove any of it because all he ever did was take credit for what other witches and wizards had done. He published a postcard of guidelines for COVID-19 that he claimed were his own. (Incidentally, it has been reported that the Trump Administration owes the United States Postal Service $28 million for those postcards.) Like Lockhart, he wrote a dozen or so books boasting of his expertise, but I wonder how much of that is him claiming credit for what various financial experts, business owners and real estate moguls had done. Like Lockhart, too many people bought into his stories and blindly believe everything he says. Only difference is, once Lockhart realized he was in over his head and could not live up to the reputation he had built, he tried to leave his job in less than one year.
- Liar - Trump has claimed to be worth billions of dollars, but he owes loads of money next year (according to the New York Times). He claimed he could not disclose his taxes because he was being audited; that is not a valid legal reason. For weeks, he constantly downplayed the COVID-19 threat, first by understating its magnitude, then saying it would disappear soon. Then, once he recognized that COVID-19 was a pandemic, he claimed he knew it long before anyone else did. He knew that absentee voting would be primarily Democratic (since they understand science and medicine and thus would be less likely to risk exposing themselves to the coronavirus at the polling places on Election Day), so he unleashed a torrent of baseless claims that absentee voting would be fraudulent. Most recently, he has been spreading falsehoods about the American electoral process in an last-ditch effort to spread doubt about its outcome. It got me thinking of the 2019 HBO documentary Chernobyl, when Valery Legasov says in the final episode, "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid." It got me thinking that the sooner we, as a country, realize our debt to the truth, and begin paying on it, the better. That debt to the truth, however deep it is now, would have become much worse with four more years of Trump boasting about how great and prosperous this country is.
- Bully - Trump's behavior during his first debate against former Vice President Joe Biden (Cleveland, September 29), constantly talking over his opponent and refusing to acknowledge that the time allotted to him was up, is the sort of crap bullies do. Bullies also resort to projection--they do things and then say, no it's the other person who's doing it. He calls the media "fake news" when they have fact-checked him more often than any President in the last four decades. Even Fox News, a network known for leaning heavily in favor of Republican poloticians, has felt his wrath. Another example of projection was when he claimed the Democrats were politicizing the coronavirus--on February 28, he said, "This is their new hoax"--when what they were doing was warning people about it, and he was the one politicizing it.
- Coward - Chronically in denial, Trump blames everyone but himself when things go wrong--China, the media (even Fox News), former aides, former allies, and Democrats (especially the previous President, Barack Obama). To borrow from another Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), people have to choose between what is right and what is easy. Choosing what is right takes courage, and taking responsibility takes courage, no matter how difficult it may be to summon that courage. Instead, he and his yes men constantly choose to deny the truth over accepting it (e.g. not listening to scientists on climate change, not listening to medical experts on COVID-19, not denouncing racism, not rebuking acts of domestic terrorism). When the coronavirus reached this country, he did not take a leadership role, leaving the states' governors to fend for themselves to the point where they had to compete against each other for resources. At his numerous "yes man" rallies, he did nothing to rebuke, renounce or even discourage chants like "Send her back!" (July 22, regarding Rep. Rashida Tlaib of my home state of Michigan) or "Lock her up!" (October 18, regarding Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer). During the September 29 debate, when offered the opportunity to condemn actions by far-right, anti-immigrant white supremacist groups, he said of one such group, the Proud Boys, that they should "stand back and stand by." All of this shows a lack of courage.
- Manchild - Trump shows a lack of professionalism and maturity by resorting to petty insults (e.g. referring to the coronavirus as "the China virus," calling Joe Biden "Sleepy Joe"). You can find some more here. (As an aside, I thought he would have learned from the late George Herbert Walker Bush, who insulted the opposing ticket during his failed re-election campaign in 1992.) On April 23, after attending a U.S. Army biosecurity presentation that showed that the coronavirus could be neutralized on nonporous surfaces by disinfectants or prolonged exposure to sunlight, he gave a press conference in which he rambled on about a bunch of what-ifs--what if this light can be introduced inside the body, what if disinfectants can be injected. It famously drew this look of disbelief from Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator. More to the point, the lack of clear guidance in that speech meant that manufacturers of disinfectants and bleach had to reiterate statements that such chemicals should not be used internally; still, a May survey taken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that Americans had been doing exactly that. Five months later, when he and his wife tested positive for COVID-19 (after failing to adhere to at least two of the COVID-19 guidelines that, back in March, he called his own), he stayed at Walter Reed Hospital for only a couple of days, then went right back to the White House. What kind of person puts himself at risk of giving other people the same virus? Let me give you a hint--when we were children, anytime our parents told us we were sick, a lot of us refused to believe it. Yep, sounds like a manchild to me. And finally, this past Tuesday night, he wanted the ballot-counting stopped while he was ahead in Georgia and Pennsylvania, refusing to acknowledge that due to the larger number of absentee ballots and the largest quantity of votes collected in any U.S. election, more time was needed to make sure that every legitimate vote counted.
And all that is on top of all his other press conference gaffes, the longest government shutdown in American history (which led to the infamous January 2019 fast food buffet, when he fed "hamberders" to the NCAA national football champion Clemson Tigers (having them wait until the shutdown was over would have made much more sense, especially seeing as it ended less than two weeks later), the First Lady wearing that "I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?" jacket (June 2018), and that Goya product endorsement flap (less than four months ago). Oh, and Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education.
Simply put, the non-politician-as-President experiment backfired. Donald Trump was a bad choice--he demonstrated a lot of the very qualities all those editorials warned the country about four years ago. Contrary to one of the duties the President has (uniting his people, especially in times of crisis), he has exploited and aggravated the differences that Americans have had with one another for decades.
Trump was so bad, Scientific American magazine endorsed a candidate for the first time ever by endorsing Biden. A week later, the New England Journal of Medicine, which also had never published an editorial on a presidential election, urged its readers to not re-elect Trump. Trump was so bad, at least three former Republican state governors (Rick Snyder, Michigan 2011-19; Bill Weld, Massachusetts 1991-97; and Tom Ridge, Pennsylvania 1995-2001) publicly announced that they would vote for Biden. Trump was so bad, USA Today, which had never explicitly endorsed a presidential candidate in its 38 years of existence, endorsed Biden.
Thankfully, enough people across this country resolved to move on from this troubling chapter in our history. It's a shame that the Republicans, as a party, didn't.
I understand that one man alone will not change the fortunes of the United States of America. A lot needs to be fixed. We're living in a country that has consumed more than it has produced for the better part of the last five decades, and whose chief legal exports today are sports and entertainment. Seemingly every issue has been politicized and generalized. This country needs better public education so more people learn math, science, and basic life skills, and learn about past mistakes in history (not just the good parts). This country needs to roll its environmental laws back to 2016. Corporations must stop outsourcing American jobs to other countries--not only manufacturing jobs, but customer service and technical support jobs, too (hello, General Motors--you're damn right I'm talking to you). As it is, the materials we collect for recycling every day, should be recycled here instead of being shipped off to the Far East.
On top of that, there will be resistance, both in Congress that is split between the two main parties, and among the rank-and-file. Millions of American adults and their children will need to resolve and overcome any prejudices they may have, instead of blaming everyone from minorities and immigrants to entire other countries. In short, things may get rougher before they get better.
But electing Biden as our new President is a start. I look forward to finding out whom he will nominate for his Cabinet.
Let us hope this country can reunite--if not right away, at least in the long term--and let us do what we can to make it so.
Sincerely,
Mark D. Rabinowitz
November 7, 2020
