Pray for the republic

Rarely have the American people found themselves in this situation: most people would prefer that neither leading presidential candidate would win election in November. Right now “None of the Above” is ahead.

It appears nothing can change that. We look to be on an inevitable glide path to a showdown between a couple of men who spark little enthusiasm, except among true believers.

And neither man is likely to change voters’ opinions in the next eight-plus months.

For Biden, it’s his age, and how that plays into public opinion. When you’re 50 years old and you make a memory mistake, or misspeak during an interview, the flub is written off as just a flub. But when you’re 81 and you flub, and you’re saddled with a reputation for failing capacity, whether accurate or not, the public immediately assumes the flub is age-related.

There’s a growing suspicion that President Biden avoids press conferences because he isn’t as sharp as he once was, and is more and more likely to misstep in the give-and-take of a question-and-answer format. His lifelong speech difficulty, related to his childhood stutter, doubtless contributes to that situation. Consequently the American public grows more distant from him, and the cycle perpetuates the current impression of him.

The President’s tone of voice resembles that of other elderly people. And he walks stiffly and with small steps, reinforcing the sense that he’s physically diminished.

America’s impressive economic growth of the past couple years hasn’t caused Americans to alter their opinion of Biden very much. The macro statistics aren’t where people live. They exist in the micro world, where although the inflation rate has dropped sharply in the past year, prices on things like groceries and gasoline are still noticeably higher than they were a few years ago. That’s what’s on people’s minds, not the shrinking unemployment rate nor the growth in the gross national product.

Despite the fact that wage growth is now outstripping price increases, people still feel under economic pressure. Credit card debt has grown significantly in the past year, and people get those credit card statements every month.

Another example: Iowa is among the nation’s leaders in its percentage of families in which all adults are employed outside the home. That means someone has to provide child care for the kids, and child care costs have risen beyond the ability of many families to pay.

Fewer and fewer young families now live close to grandparents who can care for the youngsters. It’s easy to blame the government—and by extension, the President—for a family economic squeeze. The healthy national economy doesn’t cut much ice when a family is struggling with its personal economy.

Trump’s reputation, like Biden’s, is pretty much baked in among Americans, and like

Biden, Trump can’t do much about it. But in his case it’s of his own making, in a personality he’s nurtured for most of his 77 years. By now it’s so internalized that he simply can’t change it.

Except for MAGA Trumpers, public opinion polls demonstrate that most Americans find the former President to be vindictive, cruel, and self-absorbed. In his public speeches he pounds away that what’s good for him is what’s good for the American people.

He simply can’t accept that in 2020 most Americans opted for Biden rather than for him, and he slurs thousands of Americans who made the election system work that year by accusing them of rigging the voting. He vows retribution, if he’s elected in November, on those who oppose or are disloyal to him: that appears to be the unforgivable sin.

He stands indicted, by grand juries, of dozens of offenses in four different court systems and recently lost a massive slander suit, all of which he dismisses as a “witch hunt.”

He’s intent on delaying final decisions in all the cases until after the election, which he hopes to win and thereby enable himself to dismiss the charges.

He makes no secret of his admiration for autocratic foreign leaders, and gives every indication that he hopes to lead America in the same way. Just last week he said that if a NATO country is behind on its financial support of that alliance and is attacked by Russia: “No, I  would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”  

He publicly sympathizes with Russian President Putin and appears ready to abandon U.S. military support for Ukraine. He pressured congressional Republicans successfully to deep-six the recent compromise bipartisan bill on immigration, Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and humanitarian assistance because he didn’t want to give Biden a win.

And Trump is not immune from making verbal gaffes. The other day he confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, and several times has confused Biden with former President Obama.

President Biden will disagree with Democrats on specific issues, but he accepts those disagreements as part of the political process. Not so former President Trump, who publicly berates any Republican who opposes his opinions and works to drive them from the party. The

Republican Party used to pride itself on its reputation as a “big tent.” Those days are now long gone.

Through the many decades that I’ve lived through American politics, I can’t remember an election in which so many voters have suffered the malaise that today afflicts the choice they have to make this November. Nor, as a student of history, am I aware of a similar situation in the American past.

Things could change, of course. A massive incident of some type, whether foreign or domestic, could tip the scales one way or the other, and with two candidates of an advanced age, a grave health concern or worse could do the same. Discussion of a third party candidate is growing, but it’s almost impossible under current election laws for such a candidate to gain access to the ballot in enough states to actually win the presidency.

So right now the glide path appears inevitable. As a good friend and political observer advised me not long ago, “Pray for the Republic.”