Yeah, Uncle Joe was in rare form at his Independence Hall spectacular, complete with “dramatic” lighting and U. S. Marines in full dress uniform. I mean, who was the advertising wizard who came up with that one?
But, seriously, folks, it’s a seriously dismal idea to use U. S. military as the backdrop for any presidential speech, particularly any one as blatantly political as this one. Of course, “finesse” is not Uncle Joe’s middle name, but this exercise in presidential theater went over the line in several ways, most seriously in abuse of the military for political purposes and most gauchely1 with an absurdly over the top backdrop that could not help but overwhelm whatever it was the president had to say.
As for what the president did have to say, well, it was a seriously mixed bag, in large part because the Democratic Party is a seriously mixed bag. Any musical composition that seeks to achieve a perfect harmony with voices as discordant and self-indulgent as Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar is bound to come a cropper on more than one occasion, and in that respect Uncle Joe did himself proud, speaking loudly in favor of majority rule and lauding “rights” like abortion and gay marriage, which, while I approve of both whole-heartedly, were handed down to us by 7-2 and 5-4 Supreme Court majorities respectively, rather than the will of the people.
The president did make some good points at the expense of the Republicans, pointing out justly that the “best”—which is a bit of a misnomer, because, quite frankly, there is no “best” in the Republican Party—are ruled by the worst, who are, quite frankly, enemies of democracy, explicitly seeking the power at the state level to overturn election results whenever they go the “wrong” way, on the absurd grounds that it’s somehow impossible for them to lose absent large-scale fraud, even though even minimal fraud has never been demonstrated.
So, yes, Uncle Joe’s primetime special was painfully flawed. But even the most “thoughtful” critiques, supplied by such thoughtful types as the NYT’s Ross Douthat and Reason’s Jake Sullum, are little more than exercises in whataboutisme. Whatever you want to say about Uncle Joe’s blundering prose, or the Democrats’ own obsession with “misinformation”, not to mention their certifiable lack of enthusiasm for free speech, the events of January 6, whose shameful and unprecedented ugliness no Republican in a leadership position has had the nerve to confront, will stand as an eternal disgrace to Donald Trump and the party he has commandeered to his vulgar and unrestrained appetite—an eternal disgrace, indeed, to America itself.
It is still rarely appreciated how close Donald Trump came to achieving his “minimal” goal on January 6—preventing the certification of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. It was Mike Pence who saved us—not merely by refusing Trump’s urging to use his supposed power as Vice President to reject Biden’s victory, but by his refusal, once the riot started, to obey the Secret Service’s demands that he get in a limo to escape the mob’s wrath. January 6 was not a “temper tantrum”, a “Keystone Kops” endeavor. Members of the Secret Service guarding Pence telephoned their families to say they might not survive the day’s violence. But Pence refused to flee, knowing that if he did so the count of the votes from the Electoral College would be delayed for at least a day and probably more. Who knows what could have emerged during the interim? To its shame, the leadership of the Republican Party in Congress has fought tooth and nail to discredit and sabotage any meaningful investigation into the events of January 6. At the state level, as the president said, Republican leadership in states like Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania are struggling to ensure complete, unreviewable, partisan control of the election process by the governor and legislature, free to determine winners and losers at their absolute discretion. Yes, the president deserves substantial criticism for his partisan blundering. But the Republicans deserve infinitely more.
1. Word can swallow “gauchely”. I’m a little surprised.
