It appears very likely that the 2016 presidential election will come down to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It is sobering to think that with 320 million people in the United States that this is the best we can do. The Democratic Party is providing a candidate who is the most mendacious politician on the national scene in my memory, and the Republican Party is offering up an autocrat with the sophistication of a 16-year-old.
What’s a citizen to do?
I’ve talked to many people, both Democrats and Republicans, who have wondered aloud what living in Canada might be like. I agree with the idea that if you chose to become an expatriate it would be best in an English-speaking country. I might prefer New Zealand or Australia. It is warmer there and they are further away. I was recently in London, and that’s a great city, and Ireland might be a lot of fun but the weather is worse than ours in New England.
But this is a serious matter for those of us who aren’t going anywhere. We are talking about the presidency of our nation, and these are unsettled times with important issues that are far from being resolved. We are $19 trillion in debt, we have an economy that is stagnant and does not appear to offer much promise for advancement to most Americans and we have questions of race, poverty and illegal immigration that stubbornly persist. Islamic terrorism has not gone away, Putin is aggressive on his borders and China is seeking regional hegemony.
Most troubling of all is that we seem to be a nation that has lost its sense of purpose. It is harder to see the glue that should be holding this society together. Our politics are more polarized and fractious than any period in my lifetime. In this setting, either a President Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton would be toxic.
Without once again going through the remarkable list of charges against Hillary Clinton, let it suffice to say that having someone with her degree of cynicism near the presidency is unacceptable. It seems like her candidacy is about her personal desire for power and for her to secure her place in the history books as the first woman president.
I find it astonishing that the Democratic Party would nominate such a candidate, and I’m sure that this exact question would be more dominant in the media if the candidacy of Donald Trump weren’t so bizarre.
The mirror image of this is the near certainty that the Republican Party will be nominating Donald Trump. His campaign has been premised on personal insults, directly offending large groups of the American population and a near absence of definitive policy considerations. This cult-of- personality campaign feeds on the discontent and anger of the voting populace and smells of authoritarianism, but otherwise offers no clear positive vision of a direction for the United States.
There are few choices for voters in the election for president in 2016. It is simply too late for there to be a third-party candidate to offer Democrats, Republicans and independents the opportunity to exercise a “none of the above” option.
If there is to be a Trump versus Clinton presidential election, there would be a choice to stay home and not vote. This has the upside for that voter of avoiding the guilt of voting for whichever one of these two candidates gains the White House and who then does horrid things to the presidency, and to have the right to put a bumper sticker on his or her car that says “don’t blame me.”
The downside of not voting in a Trump versus Clinton election is, of course, that the voter does not at least try and exercise judgment in choosing the lesser of two evils. The only remaining option is to go to the voting booth, hold your nose and vote for one of these flawed candidates. How a citizen is to reasonably make this choice is beyond me. The idea of having another Clinton pervasive in our daily lives, this one more overt in the disregard of normal rules and far less charming than the first, is hard to stomach. On the other hand, it is equally hard to imagine what craziness letting Donald Trump loose in the White House might produce.
There may be slivers of hope. Perhaps Hillary Clinton will get indicted before the convention and the Democratic Party find someone to nominate who may be acceptable to a broad constituency, though I cannot imagine who that would be. Maybe Donald Trump doesn’t get his majority and the Republican convention is deadlocked, ultimately choosing a John Kasich or Paul Ryan.
Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, and his children appear intelligent, reasonable and they are quite articulate. They seem to love this guy. People who know him socially attest to him being charming and intelligent. Is it possible that the persona we are seeing nightly on the news is an act designed to win the nomination?
I know I’m likely fooling myself, but I’d like to hope that this is at least possible. However, if candidate Trump is now playing a role, he has badly overplayed the part.
Jay Fleitman, M.D., lives in Northampton. His column appears the first Tuesday of the month. He can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.