America 2020: An Election and A Country Still At Sea
As the votes are counted, we may remember Election Day 2020 more for what did not happen as much as what did happen. When considering history, Sam Clemens of Missouri suggested as much. Addressing the New England Society, Mark Twain considered why we should recall the landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620:
“What was there remarkable about it, I would like to know? What can you be thinking of? Why, the Pilgrims had been at sea for three or four months. It was in the middle of winter: it was as cold as death off Cape Code there. Why shouldn’t they come ashore? If they hadn’t landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact. It would be a case of monumental leatherheadedness, which the world would not willingly let die.”
The eventual election of Joe Biden, while critical, would be inconspicuous in many ways. It is the reelection of Donald Trump, or the failure to rebuke his politics, which would be extraordinary. In the annals of America’s story, the triumph of Trumpism would be, to steal a phrase, a case of monumental leatherheadedness.
Since at least 2015, and for those of us of a certain age, since the 1980s, America has had ample opportunity to measure this man whose narcissism, nativism, nepotism, rapacity, cruelty, shamelessness, and false bravado seem to have no end. Certainly, the rounded walls of the Oval Office have offered no boundaries to his personal faults, to the detriment of our country. The pandemic has only exacerbated the reach of his rot.
Why hasn’t America come ashore?
Many words may describe his politics, but at its core Trumpism is simply greed — an aggressive selfishness that erodes norms, institutions, laws, customs, and people. Yet, greed has its lures.
Ultimately, our constitutional system is framed to contain the clutching whims of any one man. Deep state by design. But like any house, without constant care and attention, the kind maintenance of each generation, the foundations give way to ruin. A divided house, of course, cannot stand.
We should not overstate the stakes, but not undersell the consequences: the world will not willingly let this die. If Trump is reelected, our friends would correctly castigate us while our enemies would smugly smile knowing that history has continued a dark course in their favor.
Consider Lincoln’s words on slavery, and its expansion under the approval of the America of 1854:
“I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world — enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites — causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty — criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right of action but self-interest.”
This abiding selfishness, this belligerent greed of Trumpism, is rather human, even unimaginative. That Trump is president only confirms our mortal frailty and the rule of despots from time immemorial. But we Americans have always aspired to be — and represented to the world — something more: a city upon a hill, a beacon of liberty, a refuge for humanity.
Adrift, will we come home?
Ultimately, no vote can launder the character of a president. Thomas Jefferson’s principle in the Declaration of Independence still stands: “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” As the President’s incitements against our democracy, last night to the present, remind us, the chasm separating fitness and victory are wide, even when the votes are close.
How we respond during this moment of uncertainty will be telling. While we have not always listened to our better angels, we have also refused to bow at the altar of a false priest. To borrow from Lincoln once again, we are engaged in a great test to determine whether this democratic nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
What will come this hour?
