American democracy is perfectible.
But it’s got a long way to go, as seen in the presidential re-election showdown that looks to be shaping up between Joe Biden, 80, and Donald Trump, 76.
For the present discussion, this is not a left-versus-right thing. It’s not a case of Canada looking down its northern nose at the U.S. either.
It’s a simple matter of a representative democracy in which the two frontrunners for the nation’s most powerful and important post — president — no longer bear much resemblance to those they seek to represent.
Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election bid, announced Tuesday, is no great surprise. He’s been hinting at it for weeks. The real surprise would have been if he had declined and opted instead to join the club of voluntary one-term presidents, the first since Lyndon Johnson.
The three-minute video announcement hits all the notes that Biden has been striking in the three years since he’s been elected. He’s for voting rights, abortion rights, gay rights, job creation and economic recovery. He’s against Trump and the sort of right-wing extremist sentiment Trump embodies.
“The question we’re facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do, too,” Biden says in the video. “This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for re-election.”
He calls this the battle for the soul of America. It’s a noble idea, that there is good and evil, and that the country has a soul worth battling for.
But it’s a phrase Biden has been using for at least six years now. He seems to bring it out each time the country goes to the polls.
The longer Biden clings to this Marvel Comics-conception of politics, the more he risks appearing like an elderly statesman clinging to a notion of how things used to be.
A recent poll conducted for NBC News found that 70 per cent of respondents, and 51 per cent who identified as Democratic voters, believed Biden should not run again. Most cited his age as the major factor in reaching that decision.
One thing working in Biden’s favour, at least according to Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe Live,” is that the president appears “normal” up against the alternative.
“There’s not the fascism, there’s not the radicalism, there’s not the violent overthrow of governments attempted. Here’s a guy that does his job, works with the Republicans, gets things done,” he said. “That’s something that may not show up in polls a year later, but that’s something that probably will put the Democrats back in the White House for another four years.”
That’s not a great endorsement, but it may be good enough as a political strategy for 2024.
It’s no easy thing to shift any country’s politics into a new era. Less so in America, where the populace seems to cling to binary positions for or against abortion, for or against guns, for or against immigration.
Biden claims a host of accomplishments, including investments in infrastructure, creating jobs and lowering the unemployment rate, fighting to maintain abortion rights in the face of the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade, and spearheading the defence of Ukraine after the Russian invasion of 2022.
But after more than five years waging a fight for America’s soul — three of them from the White House — Biden might face fair criticism for having waged a battle that seems to be locked in a stubborn stalemate.
The 2024 presidential vote is still a year and a half off, but the fact that Biden’s primary challenger looks to be Trump and his Make America Great Again movement is yet another indication of America’s problematic politics.
Trump is an alleged liar, and alleged rapist, an alleged insurrectionist and an alleged risk to national security. He’s a billionaire trying to both stoke and embodying the grievances of the ordinary American.
“You could take the five worst presidents in American history, and put them together, and them would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our nation in just a few short years. Not even close,” Trump said in a statement on Biden’s re-election bid.
“There has never been a greater contrast between two successive administrations in all of American history. Ours being greatness, and theirs being failure.”
And though he spouts the contrary into every microphone shoved into his face, his four years in the Oval Office, which will forever be scarred by the riotous storming of the U.S. Capitol Building in the hopes of overturning the 2020 presidential election results, left America hopelessly divided.
Two elderly men are now heading into an election fight to occupy the White House.
They are a good 40 years older than the average American. A good 25 years older than the average American chief executive officer. A good 10 to 20 years older than the average member of the House of Representatives or U.S. Senator.
Experience is important. It can’t easily be discounted. But Americans have to make a choice.
They can’t have a re-elected president who, like Biden, has personal recollections of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination — he was a young lawyer, just five years away from election to the U.S. Senate — and also expect him to have the vitality that he is afforded in the quick-cut video announcing his re-election bid.
They also can’t pick a bombastic tycoon who has a long history of questionable professional and private conduct and expect him to be the guarantor of greatness.
But until some better options with fresh ideas and new ways of tackling old problems come along, that’s what the United States is stuck with.
Two men chanting the same old slogans and expecting different results, as if neither knew that they were acting out the definition of insanity.
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