Oh, I Get Letters

     Yesterday's blog post about self-made cipher, Vice-Presidential candidate (and nearly-invisible U. S. Senator) J. D. Vance and his running mate and opponents got some comments.

     For instance: "good to know about you. goodbye."

     I have not made my opinion of Mr. Trump, and of Trumpism in general, a secret: I'd rather have almost anyone else as President.  As someone whose politics lean fiscally conservative and socially liberal, I accept that I'm usually only going to get one or the other -- but he managed to deliver the precise opposite, adding enormously to the deficit while turning the clock back on civil rights.  I never thought he was especially competent, but I thought the elders of his party would step up and keep him coloring inside the lines.  Instead, they knuckled under.  He still looked merely bad, a sore winner when he won and and an ever sorer loser when he didn't.  Then came January 6, 2021, and after that, I didn't think he should ever be President again.  His party disagreed, and here we are, with the Presidential election neck and neck.

     That's a fact: Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are in a dead heat.  Here's another fact: most people have made up their mind who they're going to vote for.  This late in the race, the candidates are courting a corporal's guard of undecided voters in a handful of states -- and they're trying to motivate voters who support them to get out and vote.  On November 6, we're all still going to be here together: Harris voters, Trump voters, Stein voters, Kennedy voters* and the great big block of non-voters.†  Maybe things will get spicy, but if 2022's any guide, probably not.

     I have spent my adult voting career trying to figure out which candidate had the skills to do the job, which of them had absolutely unacceptable policies or irredeemable personal flaws, if I could safely make a protest vote (sorry, kids, but in most races, that's all an LP vote does) and so on.  My vote is not a pledge of total agreement or undying devotion; I'm just trying to hire someone to mow the lawn and supervise the military who won't skimp on the work or steal the good silver.  And that's the thing you should know about me.
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     On Mr. Trump: Aside from alcoholism, he has all the traits of every bad boss I have ever had.  I disliked him before he ran for President, I disliked much more him when his comments about grabbing women by their private parts came out, I disliked him while he was President, and I came to loathe him on January 6.  Some time that day between his weasel-worded encouragement of violence and letting Vice-President Pence swing in the breeze -- very nearly literally -- I grasped the recklessness of his disregard for the norms of decent behavior and of political campaigns.  (I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Pence but he's honest and rule-abiding, as politicians go, and he was unstintingly loyal to the then-President within legal limits.  Stirring up a mob and shrugging when they threatened the VP was staggeringly amoral.)
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     Another commenter wrote, "I disagree with you on the ability of the Democratic canidate [sic]" and that's a real puzzler, since I did not address the ability of Governor Walz or Vice-President Harris.  In terms of government experience, both of them have more than Senator Vance (a bit under two years, vs. a little under 17 for Walz) or former President Trump (four years, against over 20 years for Ms. Harris): they've done the job longer.

     Senator Vance's book shows him to be a man without a strong identity, engaged in a search for a person to become.  A temporarily faithful son to his mother's succession of boyfriends and husbands, U. S. Marine, diligent student, devoted grandson, political centrist, venture capitalist, atheist, writer, pundit, conservative Catholic, hard-Right Republican.  He writes well and he's an intelligent man, but there's no telling who he may decide to be tomorrow.  He's a palimpsest, restlessly written, rewritten, erased and written over.  Inexperience aside, I do not think this is a personality who should be one heartbeat away from the Presidency.  His performance in interviews has shown a mealy-mouthed arrogance I find appalling.

     Mr. Walz and Ms. Harris are far steadier.  For me, the decision is matter of "compared to what," and when the GOP runs an incompetent and declining Presidential candidate with a prospective VP who I think is a toady only too happy to reflect even the worst qualities of the top of the ticket, the list of people I'd rather see in the job is very long, and given that the Democratic candidates are experienced, willing to compromise and actually on the ballot, they're at the top of it.

     Your mileage may vary.  I've been wrong before -- at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, I predicted "we'd all pull together" and get the thing under control quickly.  I was wrong.  We made a mess of it.  People I had thought of as friends were insulting and inconsiderate to others, often to people who had no choice, berating store cashiers over their employer's mask requirements and so on.  But I'm not wrong about Mr. Trump's and Mr. Vance's manifest unfitness to serve as President and Vice-President.  They may win the election, but they'll still be the wrong people for the job.
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* He didn't manage to scamper off the ballot in every state.  If the official Indiana ballot guide is accurate, he's still on ours.
 
† "Oh, whatever" remains the largest single voting bloc in U. S. elections.  We had record turnout in 2020 -- which still meant a third of the eligible votes sat it out.  Typically, less than half of the people who could vote bother to make the effort.