Presidential election years have always been a time of a months-long media circus featuring all manner of campaign soundbytes of pandering, insults and over-the-top hyperbolic rhetoric in candidate ads, stump speeches, caucuses and conventions. Despite its pitfalls and occasional shortcomings, the thing that has kept America electing its leaders via democratic process from its beginning is an electoral system where everything works and nothing in terms of outcome is certain. Since the end of the late war between the states in 1865, a duopoly of political parties has existed. An occasional sideshow of third party candidates aside, it has been the Republican or the Democrat that has received the deciding electoral vote count for the office of President of the United States. As archaic as the Electoral College may be, it is a permanent fixture which produces our executive leadership. It also represents a system that shows no signs of changing, at least for the foreseeable future. The reliable cycle of the Presidential election year media spectacle has been something uniquely American and, for better or worse, can be very unpredictable in terms of what the voting public can expect. Like it or not, America would not be what it is without Presidential electoral politics. What may happen down ballot on Election Day pales in comparison. At the end of the day, the character of our nation is defined by who is elected to the nation’s highest office.
The media grist mill and pundit class live for Presidential politics. Much to the disappointment of many of the talking heads not to mention many aware citizens who follow politics, we find ourselves in a rare instance where both the challenger and the incumbent have each garnered enough primary votes to become their respective parties’ presumptive nominee months before Convention. Even more disappointing is the prospect of a repeat of the 2020 campaign minus the chaos, confusion and quarantine. As has been pointed out multiple times previously on this blog, governing is about producing quality results. Regardless how fast and furious it may be spun, the results borne by the policies of the current administration stand tall, stark and overall successful in comparison to those of the previous one. Is everything in March 2024 perfect? Perhaps not, but the definition of “perfect” is relative to each individual. However, when anyone poses the question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago” the categorical reply is “YES!” Four years ago we were using refrigerator trailers for makeshift morgues, we had a virtually shut down supply chain and nobody except essential personnel left their house for work. For all those praising the U.S. economy from 2017 through 2019, it seems all those pushing a return to those years wish to omit 2020. Sorry, but results do matter and blame for failing epically to adequately implement a government response to safeguard the public from a highly contagious lethal pathogen gets laid squarely at the feet of the person in charge. Please understand that claiming benefit for any and all good comes with accepting accountability for any and all the bad come with the territory of the job. No amount of deflection, denial, revisionism or gaslighting will change the public record of executive performance.
When The appeal of a narcissist was first posted in August 2015, little was known about the person who became the 45th President of the United States outside his reality TV show, his book The Art of the Deal, his multiple marriages and playboy lifestyle and his history of multiple business failures and bankruptcies. His saving grace was, at that time, the fact he had no political record on which to run. He and his media minions successfully sold to enough voters the idea that it takes a businessman of his pedigree and seasoning to address the tough issues and daunting challenges facing our nation. After what can only be described as a brutal campaign, he managed to claim a close electoral college victory by winning the popular vote in three states (WI, MI and OH) by a sum total of just over 80,000 votes. All that was a different story in 2020 when, after two impeachments, 200+ days on the golf course and over 600,000 Americans had died from Covid-19 that enough voters to matter opted for a move back to a calmer and less chaotic state of normalcy in executive leadership. Suffice to say he now has a political record to defend, and, by all reasonable accounts, it is not a good one. What is any outside observer to think of any politician who incites a violent insurrection on the day the Congress convenes to count the electoral votes for the winner and he wasn’t it? Mark my words, we have not heard the last of the fallout from that one.
For so many of the elections in my lifetime, perception too often superseded reality in the marketing of Presidential candidates. This usually led to a binary choice on the ballot. Campaign hacks with well-honed electioneering skills could take an obscure action or comment and make it the focus as a shining example of a candidate’s character. From the Willie Horton ad targeting the judgement of Michael Dukakis in 1988 to a very out-of-context comment of “I was for it before I was against it” questioning the resolve of John Kerry in 2004 to Hillary Clinton’s use of a potentially criminal unsecured email server in 2016, it doesn’t take much for uninformed citizens who have been conditioned to “vote against” to decide which block to check in the voting booth. In hindsight, electing the winners of those aforementioned elections would not have been so bad had their leadership not left the nation in such an awful place socially, morally and above all economically.
There is a lot of positive reality in 2024 that is difficult for anyone to spin as an inherent negative despite ramped-up efforts to do so. For example, unemployment is at a 54-year low, US oil production is at an all-time high, stocks are at record levels with no sign of peaking anytime soon and violent crime is down nationwide regardless of anyone’s perception! When a candidate speaks of “American carnage and rampant crime in the streets” we have to wonder to which universe is he referring. When a candidate and his party work together to shoot down the best border security bill in decades just to have a campaign issue with which to abuse their opposition, something is very wrong with their strategy. It doesn’t take a great deal of creative imagination to plainly see that putting a candidate’s or party’s political needs before the security needs of the nation is, in most instances, a plan to lose and lose big. It also reveals a level of desperation that an opposing candidate or party cannot afford for President Joe Biden’s America to be what President Reagan described as that “Shining City on the Hill.”
In 2024, the ballot options for POTUS are shaping up to have every bit the stark contrast as it had four years ago. One dynamic apart from all the items already mentioned is the fact that the challenger is entering the race facing several felony charges in multiple jurisdictions. While true none of the legal issues which beset the former President have swayed his supporters in significant numbers, that could change markedly if he is convicted on any of the charges on which he is going to be tried. Given the former President’s successful delay tactics, it is a very legitimate concern that he could conceivably be reelected. Lending heavily to that concern is the potential for yet another departure from reason by a majority of voters. The late campaign push by the GOP in 2016 combined with just enough neglect to matter by the Democratic campaign led to an Election Night disaster. Knowing where we’ve been and how far we have come as a nation since January 20th, 2021, the usual election year hyperbole of “this is the most important election in history” now confronts us with yet a more sobering specter of a now felonious talk show host seeking to satiate his own ego while occupying the highest seat of government. Going forward to November, the comfort of the immortal words penned by none other than Mick Jagger and Keith Richards should accompany all Democratic campaign ads until Election Day: “You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you just might find you get what you need!”
Thanks for reading.
As always, your comments are spot on! Thanks for a good read.