A few days ago, I sent the following Letter to the Editor to the Chicago Tribune:
I read in today’s Tribune that Republican leaders are asking party members to avoid engaging in racism and sexism in attacking Vice President Kamala Harris. Good luck. From what I have witnessed of the hard-core MAGA leadership, this is like telling chain smokers to quit cold turkey. A few may succeed out of sheer willpower, but most will fail because the addiction will prove too powerful.
It was not published, but I get it. The Tribune is not a small-town newspaper, and it receives far more letters than it can publish. It’s their right to determine which fraction of the letters they receive make it into the daily newspaper. I am still free to share my comments here.
(July 31 update: The Chicago Tribune surprised me this morning when my letter was published, the first of five on the same theme, all critiquing the GOP’s need to ask its own party members to refrain from racist or sexist remarks. I am pleased at this subsequent development.)
I also get that American politics, or politics in any country, are never free of partisan name-calling, which is often part of trying to define your opponent before they can define you. Politics is not for the faint of heart; if you are not tough enough to defend yourself or to critique your opponent’s performance, you are unlikely to get very far. Communication skills are paramount in the skill sets of successful politicians.
All that said, at some level, public service and a commitment to the greater good are an essential element of a successful democracy. These are not just necessary attributes of leadership, of those who hold or seek public office. They are also necessary attributes of a substantial percentage of the body politic, of the voters, because without some public demand for a commitment to the greater good, politicians who try to take the high road are unlikely to succeed. It is a matter of the expectations the voting public itself sets for high office, what qualities of leadership it chooses to reward, that determine the quality of democratic discourse and decision making.
Are we at a high point or a low point in this regard at this stage of American history?
It seems to me that perception may be in the eye of the beholder, and that the two values are literally at war with each other. Moreover, they are reflected in the very performance of what are now the two presumptive candidacies of our two major parties for president of the United States of America.
The very reason that the Trump campaign seems to have been caught flat-footed by the decision of President Biden to step aside in favor of a new generation of leadership is that Trump himself, constrained in his vision by his own narcissism, cannot and could not envision someone else putting his country and a positive vision of the future ahead of his own quest for power. But that is precisely what Biden did: Perceiving that his own age was limiting his ability to sustain American democracy in the face of a likely drive for dictatorship by former President Donald Trump, he chose to abandon his quest and allow Vice President Kamala Harris to reinvigorate not only the Democratic party but our collective prospects of maintaining a constitutionally based democratic system.
Think I am kidding? Trump has already openly stated his intent to Sean Hannity to be a dictator “on day one,” if elected, as if he would relinquish such power within 24 hours. As if to underscore the latter point, Trump recently told a “Christian” audience that if they elect him in November, they won’t ever have to vote again. Anyone who misses the clear meaning of that statement just isn’t paying attention or doesn’t really care whether they live in a free America.
This is not the usual partisan bickering. This is vicious, dangerous rhetoric that is far outside the range of democratic debate. It is an existential threat to the promise this nation represents.
I want to make some distinctions here.
Photo from Wikipedia
First, while racist rhetoric is hardly new in American politics, and southern politics in years past often reinforced it with violent suppression of minority voting rights, this is 2024, after all, and one might hope that we are becoming more respectful of our differences and our mutual rights. Yet, almost as fast as Kamala Harris was thrust into the limelight as the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination to replace President Biden, right-wing Congressmen and activists began denigrating her as a “DEI hire.” This is essentially double code language serving to denigrate her on the basis of both race and gender. Too cowardly to state outright that they consider Black women unqualified, while a privileged white man who did not even understand the purpose of NATO when he took office was okay, they also ignore the obvious fact that she was elected repeatedly by California voters to the offices of San Francisco County District Attorney, California Attorney General, and U.S. Senator before becoming Vice President on a ticket that defeated Donald Trump in 2020. Getting hired by the voters is not “DEI.” It is winning their confidence, in her case in the largest state in the nation, one with a highly diverse electorate. She won their trust through political savvy and hard work. In contrast, Trump won the presidency, his first-ever elective office, in 2020 by a narrow margin in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by almost three million votes. Four years later, having worn public patience thin, he lost not only the popular vote, this time by seven million votes, but the Electoral College as well.
None of this is to even suggest that Harris’s record in any of those positions should not be subject to analysis and criticism. Any DA or AG has some sort of philosophy concerning law enforcement that voters may critique, and their tenure is subject to review. What is unhelpful, even offensive, however, is the insinuation that someone is unfit or unqualified based on race or gender. Let’s finally consign such canards to the trash bin of history.
Photo from Wikipedia
Second, Trump has already described Harris as “dumb as a rock” because she failed her first attempt, right after law school, to pass the California bar exam in 1989. She succeeded, however, a year later, and it should be noted the pass rate in that period was often less than half. This criticism came from a man whose highest degree is a B.S. in Economics from Wharton, which is okay but does not suggest that he ever attempted to ascend the same academic heights as Harris, who completed a law degree from the University of California in San Francisco. I mention these things as a way of saying, “Consider the source.” But as someone who has read at least one biography of every U.S. president (a project I started in 1997, completed in 2012, but continue today), I can state without reservation that American history is replete with great figures who failed at something, often several things, but always learned from it. Despite his fame from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, for instance, Abraham Lincoln in fact lost that Senate race—only to win the presidency two years later. Lincoln is in fact a historical monument to the value of learning from one’s past mistakes and failures. The uncomfortable truth about Trump, documented by his own niece, psychologist Mary L. Trump, is that he adamantly refuses to accept his own mistakes and failures. That is precisely why, to this day, he claims the 2020 election was stolen and why he instigated an insurrection to overturn the results. He hates former Vice President Mike Pence precisely because, whatever else one might say about him, Pence had the moral and emotional maturity, like all his predecessors in office, to accept the results. If you lose, you lose. It is not a matter of heads I win, tails you lose.
Third, the contrast some have stated between a prosecutor and a felon is not simple name calling. It is drawing attention to facts. Serving as a prosecutor is part of Harris’s professional history, one she pursued successfully enough to win the confidence of California voters to promote her to Attorney General and then Senator. Saying Trump is a felon may at one time have been a bit speculative, but that ended with his guilty verdict on 34 counts in Manhattan in June. That verdict is highly unlikely to be overturned, no matter what some may think, and underscores previous judgments for fraud and sexual assault in New York civil cases costing him roughly a half-billion dollars. His defenders may claim the court system was rigged, but the burden is on them to make that case. Screaming about a supposedly “weaponized” U.S. Department of Justice makes little sense when these judgments occurred in the sovereign state of New York, which under our federal system operates independently from the federal government. Ignoring these facts is an indictment of either the honesty or the civic awareness of those making such claims. It is also an indication of the depth of craven depravity of the Trump cult of personality. Name calling is one thing, but truth is truth. It is the hard truth that seems to stick in Trump’s craw.
With all that in mind, I propose a new acronym for the 2024 campaign: MAMA. As in, Make America Mature Again. This gender-oriented acronym is also a tribute to all those American women who have accomplished great things and risen to great heights in the face of arrogant and shameless condescension from know-it-all men like Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance, who has criticized “childless cat women” and suggested that parents should somehow have greater voting rights. Criticism is legitimate in political campaigns; they are a contest for the confidence of the voters, after all. But let’s at least try to use some intelligence and intellectual and moral honesty in assessing what is said, and in choosing what we say. And that is all I have to say.
MAMA
Make America Mature Again
Shutterstock photo resized for web use
Jim Schwab