A Presidential Election with No Vision
For a rudderless ship of state
Tough times in America. The ship of state is rudderless, and its wannabe captains for the next four years, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, are leaders without vision. “O Captain! My Captain!” That ringing cry of Walt Whitman at the death of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 celebrated the legacy of a great leader who navigated the U.S. ship of state during its most desperate years. No one will mistake Biden or Trump as a great leader. And America sure could use one.
Lost in all the post-debate analysis is the candidates’ total lack of vision. Trump considers America to be a “rat’s nest,” a “third-world country,” but he has no vision to restore it other than to say he wants to make it “great” again. Biden refuses to see any decline; he continues to insist America is the envy of the world, and boasts of the immense might of the U.S. military, the finest fighting force in all human history.
It’s depressing, what these men really stand for. Trump is about vengeance. He seems most motivated by spite. Biden’s intent is less easy to articulate since Biden himself has trouble articulating it. But I think he sees himself as a sort of caretaker of democracy against the threat posed by Trump’s excesses. If Trump is about vengeance, Biden seems to be about preservation, but again he has trouble articulating what this means. Biden is wont to say, “This is America! There is nothing we can’t do.” What, exactly, we should be doing he simply can’t articulate in an inspiring way.
Leaders do matter. Presidents, even as figureheads, are out there to be seen by all. Together, Trump and Biden pose as being tough, resolute, and in control, yet both men are hollow shells. Put differently, Trump is the empty barrel that makes the most noise. Biden is the enervated man who shouts and points in an attempt to show he’s still got it.
Yet, sadly, perhaps it’s too late for any captain, even the most skilled and determined, to save the U.S. ship of state. The pirates have grabbed the wheel, the gold is all being off-loaded, and the passengers and crew are huddled in the dark, fighting among themselves even as the ship takes on water, listing badly to starboard.
Under such conditions, does anyone believe that Trump or Biden is the captain we need to fend off the pirates, right the ship, and unite us while leading us safely back to port?
In answer to your last question, no one who is paying attention to the current condition of the United States and her people believes that either Trump or Biden is going to right the ship, as it were. The rest of the Americans vote and seem to be surprised that nothing changes. I'm afraid American collapse is inevitable. No nation can suffer this amount of endemic grift at all levels of power and not collapse. The only things that were propping up the United States Government were its willingness to subvert governments all over the globe, invade nations it couldn't be bothered to subvert, and having the world's reserve currency. Now that other nations are prepared for Washington's shenanigans (see, recently: Bolivia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and the Sahel), the US military's "wonderful toys" having been exposed as less effective than Russia's in Ukraine, the Saudis settling accounts in local currencies, and China leading the world in saying no to buying US debt, should indicate the general nature of what's going to happen in the next decade or so.
To your question, the ultimate DNC apologist, Heather Cox Richardson has the answer. As of this morning her post-debate post had 69,000 likes; 8,100 comments; 49,000 shares.
"Immediately after the debate, there were calls for Biden to drop out of the race, but aside from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president. That, he did, thoroughly. Biden began with a weak start but hit his stride as the evening wore on. Indeed, he covered his bases too thoroughly, listing the many accomplishments of his administration in such a hurry that he was sometimes hard to understand ... as Monique Pressley put it, 'The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully.'"
I don't know who Monique is, but she is clearly living in the same alternate universe as Ms. HCR.
Another apologist thing going around is, "Give me the man who stumbles with his words as he tells you the honest truth over the man who can effortlessly tell you elegant lies with a silk tongue."
Now I'm at a loss as to who the hell is who in this. Oh, I know who I'm supposed to assume who is who, but alas I know Biden and his team are constant liers. And Trump has a big, boastful mouth but is far from elegant in silk-tongued lies. We have two versions of vapid, blithering idiots.