Here’s the plain truth in the aftermath of Thursday’s primetime presidential debate.
American democracy, the great two-party system that has served us so well for generations, in peace and in war, that is (or was), the envy of democracies around the world, is severely broken.
We watched it shatter, live and in color as they used to say, on that stage in Atlanta. We watched it implode.
The Democrat and Republican parties have handed us a choice of two men, vying for the most important job in the world, who are frightening, each in his own way.
One party says we should put our trust in a man who is patently, painfully and unmistakably incapable of carrying out the duties of the presidency. His physical feebleness is starkly apparent. The words leaving his mouth, that is too often agape in a death-like display of senility, are largely incoherent. His mental decline, long covered-up by his supporters, has been unabashedly unmasked.
The other party says we should put our trust in a man who is unarguably and utterly incapable of not lying. A man who continues to mock, shock and hock us to death with his prejudices, grievances, and grudges. A malicious, immoral man whose disrespect for the foundations on which this country was built, boils deep within his DNA.
Neither man offers a vision for the future of America, a vision we desperately need. Neither man makes you believe we are a great nation with an immensely important role to play in the world, and with a deep understanding of how to play it. Neither man instills the confidence that he will be able execute that job faithfully and fully. And neither man demonstrates the ability to steer our country that is adrift, to safety, success and respect.
The Republican Party has offered us up another round of Trump instead of Nikki Haley. The Mitt Romney Republicans, the Ronald Regan Republicans, the Wall Street Journal Republicans, have been either been drowned out by the MAGA-ites, or have joined the always-Trumpers in a vain effort to try to save their political skins.
The Democrat Party shamefully thought it could hoodwink the American people into believing Joe Biden still had the mental wherewithal to be president. It tried to sell us the big lie that Biden still had the juice for the job. We were told he was a sharp as a tack, in command of the issues, at the top of his game.
Thursday evening thoroughly exposed that blatant dishonesty. What a tremendous disservice they have done to the nation.
As New York Congressman Ritchie Torres correctly said on X after the Atlanta fiasco, The greatest loser of tonight’s debate is the country.
Amen. Sadly.
We deserve two political parties that can disagree on policy but can agree that America and the world need a strong, honest leader at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. A leader who will be respected, if not feared by our enemies, and admired and relied upon by our friends. A leader who believes in change but not in chaos. A leader who surrounds himself with the best and the brightest, not with sycophants and second-raters.
I don’t believe the two existing parties can do any of that, any more. They are both lost in their own radicalism. One, producing a candidate with no morality, the other, producing a candidate with fast approaching mortality.
The history of third parties in America is not a history of success. There was Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party and George Wallace’s American Independent Party. John Anderson ran and lost as an independent in 1980 and Ross Perot did the same in 1992. Ralph Nader’s Green Party run for president in 2000, swung enough votes in Florida to get George W. Bush elected.
Before his untimely death, Joe Lieberman tried to conjure up a no-name party, rooted in centrism and common sense. It will take more than a couple of people to get that type of party up and running. It will take a wholesale defection from fed-up Democrats and Republicans for it to have a chance and it sure won’t happen before this coming November.
Here’s the most important and most worrisome takeaway from that sorry spectacle.
America is still the one and only country that can safeguard freedom around the world, that can stare down China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. The President of the United States is still the one and only indispensable head of state.
But on Thursday evening, our allies saw what we saw. So did our adversaries. They know the world’s only superpower will be led either by a doddering old pol or by another old man who is totally detached from the truth.
Look what our two national political parties have wrought. They’ve completely failed us, serving their own, craven self-interests. They’ve compromised their ethics, they’ve made excuses for bad behavior, they’ve covered-up and they’ve lied.
They’ve handed us Biden and Trump. We deserve better. We must find another way to make American politics great again.
So, I will make this prediction. If Joe Biden isn’t replaced with a credible, capable and centrist nominee, and that leads to a Donald Trump re-election, the American political party landscape four years from now will look very different.
That’s assuming we can survive for that long.