The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
At the beginning of summer in 2023, it appears as though two of three men will be the nominees for president of the two major American political parties. The three men are, in alphabetical order, Joe Biden, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump. The shame is that two of the three shall almost certainly get the nominations. The tragedy is that any of the three, if elected in November of 2024, would be incapable of being the president the United States desperately needs.
From the end of World War I onward, and especially since the end of World War II, the USA has been the lead positive actor in what the world has become up to the current time. The Soviet Union was considered one of the two superpowers during the Cold War, but it was only militarily a superpower. Most of its other influence on other nations was negative during its seven decades of existence.
In some respects, China under Xi Jinping is becoming a superpower equal to the USA. Its foreign aid of various sorts to states in Asia and Africa is exemplary, even if it makes Americans very nervous. It has helped several underdeveloped states to improve the lives of many millions of people. Economically China is seeking to become the equal to surpass the USA economically, although that is unlikely to happen soon. According to The Economist, the leading news journal in the world on economic issues and other general news matters, recently postulated that China may never improve its economy sufficiently to be become the equal of the USA as a new superpower. This writer certainly is no economist, but their observations are convincing to an admittedly rank amateur.
Whatever may evolve in the Sino-American rivalry, Messrs. Biden, DeSantis, and Trump are likely to be impediments rather than providential enablers of a safer, more prosperous world. Let us consider each of them in turn, although no longer in alphabetical order.
DONALD TRUMP was president from 2016 to 2020. To the millions of Americans who were fanatically devoted to him, many of them claim his presidency was the greatest one in the history of our republic. Thinking that suggests they are not well informed about our history. To Trump enthusiasts, his presidency virtually flew by. To nearly everyone else it was a seemingly endless disaster, a ceaseless collection of goofs, gaffes, and gargantuan political miscues. (My purpose in this essay is not to try to corroborate anything that is said, but simply to say these things in language anyone can understand, even if they may disagree strongly with what is said.)
President Trump did make some useful and even wise political decisions, however. He was highly skeptical of continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was instrumental in ending the mistaken conflict in Iraq, but he did not finish our mistaken failure in Afghanistan. He treated Congress as though they were an amalgamation of inexpert dunderheads, which as a whole they appeared to be, but individually there were many scores of very able politicians who were unable to get anything accomplished because there may have been too many dunderheads holding down congressional seats in a too-evenly divided Congress. Trump also pushed through a major tax bill through a compliant Republican Congress.
The idea of tax reform was good, but nearly everything in the huge overhaul favored the wrong interests and types of people, and it injured millions of Americans whose lives might have benefitted greatly had the new tax structure not benefitted those who should have received far fewer rather than more tax breaks.
In foreign policy Donald Trump’s presidency was perhaps the most destructive in our nation’s history. Trump chummed up to foreign leaders he should have treated as though they were poison (which they are), and he paid little or no attention to other highly respected leaders he should have done his best to support and encourage. Trump obsequiously tried to become friends with autocratic leaders, and he ignored or dishonored many democratically elected leaders of democracies that have been highly admired by all previous American governments. It will take years to undo the damage inflicted on our relationships with states that heretofore have been among our closest friends.
Before, during, and after Trump’s (we hope) single term in the White House, he undoubtedly engaged in several illegal and immoral activities, although his political base refuse to acknowledge any of these high crimes or misdemeanors. Because of these dubious dealings, he became the only president twice to be charged with impeachment. That is a record that shall probably never again be duplicated by any future American head of state.
RON DeSANTIS is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Yale Law School, which ordinarily would indicate he should be a man of extraordinary wisdom and talent. In his case, sadly that is not so. Instead, he is a zealot for a whole host of wrong-headed cultural causes and zany political ideas. DeSantis was a Member of Congress for six years, and then became the governor of Florida, where he has served for four years. His record in Congress was undistinguished, made worse by his becoming one of the founding members of the Freedom Caucus, an extremely conservative group of Republican representatives in the House. In another age, that would be like becoming a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan.
There is little in his background which explains how Ron DeSantis evolved into a purported adult. Rather than benefitting from the outstanding liberal (not in a political sense) education which Yale offers its students or the reasoned and reasonable study of law which Harvard offers its law students, Mr. DeSantis graduated from his studies as a misogynistic, misinformed misanthropist.
So far as anyone who is objective can truthfully determine, there is nothing DeSantis did in Washington D.C. or has done in Florida which suggests that he is in any sense an exemplar of long-held American values. Instead, as a leader he is a mean-spirited, small-minded, regressive, authoritarian, unpleasant, ill-spoken, disingenuous, unfriendly, personality-less and apparently very bright man who somehow went off the rails shortly after he matriculated from the halls of Ivy League academe.
It was bad enough that he became associated with the Freedom Caucus, one of the most mis-named groups ever to coagulate in Congress. But as governor of Florida, he has engaged in genuinely non-stop egregious anti-democratic governance.
The DeSantis tragicomic Twitter announcement of his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president is illustrative of how obtuse the man can be politically. He should have learned from Donald Trump that Twitter is not the best medium for reaching serious voters, although he did reach a type of eager voters breathlessly awaiting his Big Tweet. But then, when he enlisted Elon Musk in the effort, it made the whole sorry episode look even more amazingly amateurish. Asking Elon Musk to endorse a potential president was like asking Saddam Hussein to endorse Osama Bin Laden for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Just before Ron DeSantis tweeted the Big Tweet, he signed a bill which quickly passed through the Republican-dominated Florida legislature. It renders abortions illegal in Florida for any woman who is more than six weeks pregnant, which is not enough time for most pregnant women even to know they are pregnant. However, Florida is not the only state to have passed such an unjust, ill-conceived, hard-hearted law; more than twenty other red states have enacted the exact same or a very similar misogynistic law. His anti-woke crusade is as ludicrous as it is libelous. Like Donald Trump, he will be in court for many months or years over some of these draconian measures.
His attitude toward LGBTQs might be understandable in 1823 or 1923, but not in 2023. His attitude toward the removal of certain books from school libraries has been debated for centuries, but for any graduate of both Harvard and Yale to espouse such views in the present is either misinformed or cynical, or both. Like the president he happily supported until he decided to run for president himself, Ron DeSantis is playing exclusively to the most uneducated, uninformed sub-base of the Republican base. It is hard to believe Ron DeSantis actually believes any of the politics he is so awkwardly and mawkishly promoting. Only someone willing to prostitute himself to such a mélange of misfits could do what Ron DeSantis (and Donald Trump) are doing.
JOE BIDEN has been an important fixture in American politics for half a century. He has five times more governmental experience than his two political opponents put together. Donald Trump had no political experience prior to becoming president, and Ron DeSantis has been in office for only a decade. Compared to Joe Biden, both are mere novices to politics.
Biden served for six terms, or thirty-six years, in the Senate. He was a major playerthere for most of his years in that body, and he helped formulate some of its most important legislation. Then he served for eight years as vice-president under Barack Obama, and for the past two and a half years he has been our president.
Severe misfortunes have plagued President Biden. His young wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident many years ago. His older son died of cancer a few years ago. His younger son has been fighting allegations of scandal for several years, and the stress of that unresolved conflict has surely taken a toll on him. Through such traumas, however, Joe Biden has become one of the most sympathetic and empathetic presidents we have ever had.
No one has entered to the presidency with a more extensive and qualifying political career than Joe Biden. In addition, no one ever entered the presidency at an older age than Mr. Biden. Should he be re-elected in 2024 and complete another four-year term, no one in future American history is likely ever to be an older president than Joe Biden. He has performed exemplary and remarkable service to our country in his forty-six years in elected federal offices. Anyone who doubts that is undoubtedly blinded by ultra-partisanship.
Nonetheless, Joe Biden is now 80 years old,. He will be 82 if he is re-elected. Of greater consequence, he would be 86 if he survived an entire second term.
Having watched him in countless video clips on television, it is obvious at a glance that he is less stable than previously when he walks and less verbally flawless when he talks. He tries to act younger than he is, but increasingly it is easily seen to be an act. When he is shown with other world leaders in various gatherings, he looks like he could be an older brother to some of his peers, the father to many, and possibly even a grandfather to one or two.
It is possible that Biden could still function acceptably as president at age 86, but it is a huge risk to grant him the electoral victory necessary to attempt it. And it truly is a shame that either Trump or DeSantis will be the Republican presidential candidate and that Biden will almost certainly be the Democratic candidate. Nevertheless, it WILL be a tragedy if either Trump or DeSantis is elected president, but it would be only a POTENTIAL tragedy if Biden is elected again.
Our country cannot remain an acceptably functioning democracy if either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis becomes our next president. We would survive Joe Biden, although it is barely possible he might somewhat pleasantly surprise us. In any case, a chronologically-challenged Biden is infinitely preferable to either a politically-antediluvian DeSantis or Trump.
You may ask how such an undesirable impasse could have befallen the American electorate. The answer to that question can be pinpointed in two words: presidential primaries. For most of our history it was not “the people” who selected the candidates of each of the two major political parties. Instead, it was people who were the leaders of the parties who selected their candidates. Every voter was not given the privilege of voting for who would be voted for. Only the people in smoke-filled rooms had that privilege and opportunity.
That may seem undemocratic, and in many respects it is undemocratic. But allowing party moguls to choose The Party Mogul is far safer and is more likely to turn out well than giving the entire American electorate the opportunity cravenly to coalesce on a candidate from five to twenty potential possibilities whose names appear on presidential primary ballots throughout the country. We do not select The Right Person from a small number of Right People, although we imagine that we do. Instead, we either make a somewhat random selection from a mob, or we have only one name on the primary ballot who can realistically win the nomination for our party, if we believe in parties at all.
What is the problem in all this? In 2016 there were nearly twenty candidates in the primaries for the Republican presidential nomination. In 2020 there were almost a dozen in the Democratic primaries. Presidential primaries were never intended to be so semi-chaotic, but that is what they have become. In 2024 there may again be a dozen or twenty Republican names to choose from, but there will truly be only one viable candidate on the Democratic primary ballots, unless Joe Biden has a major health crisis or has the major health crisis.
Unless something unforeseen and unforeseeable happens, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or Ron DeSantis shall be the next president. Given everything we know now, couldn’t the party members, in smokeless rooms, make better choices? After all, they are the ones who have to work with the presidents, and if they don’t get to choose them, they might become too evenly split in Congress to be able to function effectively, which is what has happened since George W. Bush was elected (in a dreadfully tainted election) in 2000. The Founding Fathers would be both abashed and ashamed of the unintended mess we have made of presidential elections.
June 1, 2023
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.