Peggy Noonan, the doyenne of conservative American columnists, once published a ‘story of Ronald Reagan’ that bore the title ‘When Character Was King’. It has sometimes been objected that Noonan prizes grace and civility in public life to the exclusion of much else, including plenty that is vital. There is some truth in this assertion and it would be a mistake, doubtless, to look upon past American presidencies as times of Socratic wisdom and splendour. The republic has always been an argument, and often an ugly one at that.
And yet, nevertheless, Noonan’s perennial concerns, unfashionable as they may be, have a certain urgency in the present moment. Politics at the highest level is certainly a question of policy and, indeed, policy outcomes. Fine intentions and still finer words deliver little on their own. But it is not just about policy; sometimes it is necessary to ignore the noise and concentrate on the signal. Sometimes an election, comes down to a simple, unignorable, single issue: who is the better man?
If character is to be king, in 2020, this makes this the easiest presidential election in living memory. 2016 was pretty straightforward but 2020 is even simpler. Joe Biden is the only serviceable choice. He could be – though he is not, it seems worth pointing out – everything Donald Trump says he is and he will still be the only conscionable choice. And Biden could be everything his critics on the American left say he is – though, again, it seems worth pointing out that he is not all of that – and he would still be the only ethical choice for president this November.
This is not a mushy, plague on all houses, pick the lesser of two evils, argument. It is a choice between decency and indecency; between a manifestly disgraceful incumbent and a standard, by the numbers, thoroughly orthodox Democratic challenger. The United States of America can cope with Joseph Biden; it is not at all clear it is equipped to deal with another four years of Donald Trump.
That makes this election quite unlike any other I have witnessed since I first started following such things more than 30 years ago. It is, I think, the most important election in that time and the dullest. For there is no great clash of purpose here, save to the extent a Biden presidency would pull American politics back to something approaching sanity whereas Trump’s re-election would double down on chaos and graft.
President Biden will not solve the deep-rooted political, social, economic and moral quandaries that make governing the United States both thankless and all but impossible. He will not build a shining city on the hill. But nor will he sack that city – or, if you prefer, traduce its memory. The republic will endure if Biden is elected. He will prove a disappointment, not least to left-wing radicals who do more to help Trump than Trump is capable of doing himself. That is a further and obvious point in Biden’s favour. None of this malarkey, please.
Biden may be unremarkable but at this moment in time the United States could profit from an unremarkable president. Bog-standard is enough. Policy matters, for sure, but politics is also an aesthetic business and Trump is, in that respect, an obscenity.
So, this is not a typical election. Unlike, say, 1992 or 1996 or even, in many respects, most elections since then, it really matters who prevails. And yet it is unlike all those previous elections, for it is not a choice between a mainstream Republican and a mainstream Democrat and thereby a coin-toss in which either outcome is broadly supportable. You might have preferred the coin to have fallen the other way; you may still recognise that president Dole or president Kerry or president Romney is the kind of unhappiness that may be lived with.
But, uniquely in my memory of these matters, this is not an election in which you may, as an outsider, make a tally of each of the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses, their good points and their bad. Nor can you assess their vision, their worldview, or their ability to make good their promises. For one of the candidates in this election is so wholly outwith the mainstream traditions of American politics that such calculations swiftly seem absurd. You are not comparing like with like. There is no assessment to be made, no allotting of points, no moment at which having pondered the candidates’ respective merits you conclude that ‘on balance’ you prefer one or the other.
For this really, unusually, is an election in which there is precious little, perhaps no, room for equivocation. Last night’s so-called debate between Trump and Biden confirmed this all over again. This is not a carnival of democracy of the usual kind. There is no entertainment here, no sense of history in the making, and thus, unusually, no real drama. It is instead an elemental election in which a Biden victory will be greeted with relief more than joy. In the circumstances, that is enough, more than enough.
So this is not a moment for tribalism. It still seems shocking that so many people think it can be. Not Being Trump is all the advertisement Biden needs and if you object that Hillary Clinton showed the inadequacy of that strategy four years ago, I remind you that Not Being Hillary was one reason Trump prevailed in 2016. Clinton, doubtless, would have been a busier president than Biden promises to be but Biden is unencumbered by some of Clinton’s weaknesses (not all of which were fair or earned but the perception of which was unavoidably significant). And besides, we have the example of four years of president Trump to consider and that should be enough too.
A dull election, then, albeit one animated by a creeping sense of dread. ‘Vote Biden: He’ll Do’ may not be a slogan for the ages but, by God, it’s both true and sufficient. Character? Yes, this must be an election about character to the exclusion, frankly, of all else. There is no need to make any of this more complicated than it need be, or indeed is.
Listen to the Americano podcast: US editor Freddy Gray is joined by Kate Andrews to discuss the fallout from the debate.
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