Steve McGookinIt’s a cliché to say that a week is a long time in politics, but this past week has felt like a month.
In the country that has become the epicenter of a global pandemic while watching its economy apparently spiral relentlessly towards recession, the worst national civil unrest in a generation has again exposed its ugly wound of long-unresolved, systemic racism.
On a weekend that marked the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre, where white supremacists attacked a black community in Oklahoma, the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer who was subsequently charged with his murder sparked protest, looting and violence, spreading to more than 70 cities across the country and the nation’s front pages (and in some remarkable front page photographs in this thread).
Today’s New York Times headline says a surging anger is “convulsing” the US and even from 3,000 miles away, that is how the weekend felt – how it still feels – that the country is in the grip of a dangerous unpredictability amid a vacuum where leadership should be.
In a political world where image is supposedly everything, by any rational measure this was not a good weekend for the president. The seemingly ludicrous question, though, is will it matter?
The optics of him retreating to an underground bunker and turning out the White House lights as fires burned nearby were never going to look good – and looked even worse in contrast to images of his opponent this November, Joe Biden, meeting with protesters to do what Joe Biden probably does best: being the nation’s consoler-in-chief – a natural role given the tragedies in his own life.
Earlier, Biden – still repairing the damage from a recent interview with an African-American radio host – talked about the “original sin that still stains our country today” and said:
“Weeks like this, we see it plainly that we’re a country with an open wound. None of us can turn away, none of us can be silent. None of us can any longer hear the words, ‘I can’t breathe’ and do nothing.”
On Sunday, as the scale of the violence and disturbances was becoming clear, he wrote: “We are a nation in pain, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. We are a nation enraged, but we cannot allow our rage to consume us.”
But even Biden’s practiced conciliatory rhetoric will not go far enough for many. Indeed, as Astead Herndon argues in the New York Times, “Black Americans have a message for Democrats: Not Being Trump is Not Enough.” He writes:
“The moment may still test Mr. Biden’s priorities, as a weary black electorate desires far greater change than the promise of a return to normalcy that has fueled his campaign. Energizing those voters, activists and elected leaders say, means addressing their demands for change and the realities of racism. But the former vice president, one of the Senate architects of the modern criminal justice system, cannot confront racism without addressing systemic inequalities, and he cannot address systemic inequalities by simply returning to a pre-Trump America.”
Trump, meanwhile, sees a political opportunity in dividing the two voting groups Biden needs to win in November: African-Americans and moderate whites. The events of this week have probably put paid to Sen Amy Klobuchar’s vice-presidential ambitions and heightened those of Rep Val Demings of Florida.
The current president, of course, has been anything but silent, and not in any kind of constructive way, using his twitter feed to fan the flames as protests grew, invoking segregationist language to tweet first that “when the looting starts the shooting starts” and then, after protesters gathered outside the White House, conjuring up images of them being attacked by dogs.
Not that it should be surprising by now, but the language of reconciliation is clearly beyond him; he knows it and prefers it that way. As Peter Nicholas writes at The Atlantic, Trump is “terrified of protest.”
“Past presidents have sought to play a healing role when the nation is on edge, but Trump’s instinct is to plunge into combustible circumstances in ways that rouse his base. He encourages protests that align with his interests.”
Something else entirely unsurprising is that the president always needs an easily-identifiable enemy. Peter Baker writes in the New York Times that “With a nation ravaged by disease, hammered by economic collapse, divided over lockdowns and even face masks and now convulsed once again by race, President Trump’s first instinct has been to look for someone to fight.”
The apparent targeting of media covering the disturbances fit easily into his longstanding “enemy of the people” narrative, but it was Attorney-General William Barr’s swift denunciation of “left extremists” and Trump’s specific focus on the anti-fascist grouping Antifa which allowed his supporters to rally behind an easy label for blame. It will probably also allow the president to claim in campaign ads that he somehow put down an organized uprising.
In reality, such condemnation came alongside counter-claims of the involvement of white infiltrators, ensuring that while the detail of exactly what happened this weekend will remain – often deliberately – unclear, there have been more than enough examples of reprehensible behavior across the board.
Arguably, scenes of domestic unrest are thought to traditionally help the GOP at elections, but it’s possible this week’s events might work against Trump with women and independent voters. For Trump to now run as a law and order candidate, when the “American carnage” that he promised to end in his inaugural address has become all too real, might seem a leap, but his campaign has certainly got enough footage this weekend to emulate Richard Nixon’s famous political ad from the 1968 campaign:
Even if he doesn’t dial down his inflammatory twitter rhetoric – and really, what are the chances of that? – Trump has not yet taken the opportunity to speak directly to the American people, leading veteran newsman Dan Rather to tweet: “I can imagine no other president in my lifetime failing to address the nation in a prime time speech during a crisis such as this. On the other hand, I cannot imagine another president whose words would be less welcome by so many of his fellow citizens.”
With the help of a Republican party that in its current form is inextricably bound to him, Trump has exponentially exacerbated the partisanship and division among the American people, calculating it might be his best strategy for re-election. Empathy may prove to be Trump’s biggest deficit against Biden, but – astonishing though it might seem to say given what we’re going through – whether it will be decisive come November remains to be seen. If the economy is showing signs of life come October, the election will likely be closer than it should.
Jennifer Rubin writes in the Washington Post about the contrast between the two candidates, and what she calls the “big lie Republicans tell themselves.”
“Being a decent human being does not mean one will be a good president. Decent people may be inept, prone to poor judgment or harbor wrongheaded ideas — although their motives may be pure. What we have established, however, is that it is impossible for a narcissist entirely lacking empathy, hostile to experts and to facts, and who is both racist and misogynistic to govern well, or even adequately. You cannot be an even middling president if you believe you are both infallible and the country’s greatest victim.”
As America’s cities surveyed the damage after their worst riots in years, Donald Trump attended the SpaceX launch in Florida.
It was hard to see the president at the Kennedy Space Center, with the surreal visual of the sound system playing “Macho Man” – a reference perhaps to the Tom Nichols column last week debunking Trump’s notion of his own manliness – and not be overwhelmed by the contrast between him and Ronald Reagan, whose genuinely sincere, empathetic address, written by Peggy Noonan, at the memorial service for the Challenger astronauts helped heal the nation at a time of collective mourning and the first realization for many that the American exceptionalism Reagan had preached was far from infallible.
Or George W Bush, standing on the rubble of the World Trade Center after 9/11, improvising inspiration that helped the nation turn shock and sadness into resolve.
Or Barack Obama, at the Emanuel AME church in Charleston SC after the awful mass shooting five years ago this month.
All, in their different ways, above everything else, Presidential.
It is, frankly, hard to imagine anything the current incumbent of the White House might be able to say at this moment – or indeed for the remainder of his time on earth – as having anything in common with those words, apart from that they would be, approximately, words.
Empathy or weakness?
When it was originally conceived, before George Floyd’s death and everything it unleashed, this column was going to be about the symbolism of empathy and what that means for the election campaign during this current pandemic. Just last week, Biden’s address on the grim milestone of 100,000 Covid-19 deaths was impressive and resonant. Unfortunately for him it was quickly pushed to the background by events. Like so much in our modern politics the story expanded and escalated in such a short time that we should really be used to by now; but always at the rotten core seems to be this White House.
With every day that passes, Americans are asking themselves What kind of country do we want? But the questions that have to go along with that are “how do we get it and who do we trust to guide that aspiration?” Trump is gambling that his selfishness – what he sees as strength – is exactly the trait required for rebuilding the nation’s economy.
America’s poor and disenfranchised are being hit hard on all fronts right now, in some instances literally. Consolation or sympathy from this White House is probably the last thing they would expect. But even if Trump were to show empathy or concern at this point, it would likely ring hollow.
After years of mistrust, many people were understandably skeptical when he revealed he was taking Hydroxychloroquine (remember that, just a couple of weeks ago?) so much so that his press secretary had to say publicly: “if it were any other President of the United States the media would take him at his word.”
As Christian Schneider wrote at The Bulwark, That is exactly the point.
In any case, for many of Trump’s supporters, empathy has become a sign of weakness, like wearing a mask in public. About 42 per cent of the country approves of the job the president is doing – roughly the same as in mid-December, before the pandemic really bit and the country was in the grip of economic collapse. So it’s hard to imagine what he could do or say at this point that might significantly chip away at that base.
Biden said on Sunday, “the words of a president matter, whether the president is good or bad.”
Like so many things about this presidency, though, that may not be as true as it used to be.
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For more articles trying to make sense of US politics, see also:
Biden’s Choice – May 10
Tipping Point for the Bully Pulpit? – Apr 28
L’Etat, C’est Moi – Apr 16
In Pivotal Week, Virus Leaves Politics in Disarray – Apr 10
Faith and Moral Bankruptcy – Mar 26
In Shadow of Virus, Biden puts Distance Between Himself and Sanders – Mar 18
Last Man Standing – Mar 10
South Carolina – Comeback Kid Set for Super Tuesday Showdown – Mar 2
