THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020 SR 3E
VERYBODYtalks about Joe Biden
as the old jalopy in this presiden-
tial race, but on Thursday night in
Nashville, it was Donald Trump
who seemed to be running on fumes.
I don’t mean physically: He had his full
repertoire of facial expressions (cocky,
kooky, menacing, martyred) and the usual
grating bray. I mean metaphorically. I
mean politically.
He’s almost certainly reaching the end
of the road. And the second (and last) on-
stage matchup of him and Biden tidily il-
lustrated why. While he needed to put on a
show different from the farce that he has
performed over this wretched year, he has
nothing new — nothing more — in him.
While he needed to part company with
his foul temper, that’s the only weather
available to him. His calmness during the
first third or so of the debate inevitably
gave way to the usual excitability. He was
back to his characteristic grandiosity, his
customary falsehoods, his mocking, his
taunting.
“We can’t lock ourselves up in a base-
ment like Joe does,” he pouted. “He has
this thing about living in a basement.”
He described Biden’s children as “a vac-
uum cleaner sucking up money” from
sketchy foreign sources. He told Biden,
“Don’t give me the stuff about how you’re
this innocent baby.” Both statements per-
fectly exemplified Trump’s habit of as-
signing his opponents caricatures that ap-
ply more aptly to him.
And the self-pity. Oh, the self-pity.
Trump bellyached about how the Internal
Revenue Service treated him, about how
Robert Mueller treated him, about the
messes supposedly bequeathed to him by
President Barack Obama, about his gen-
eral tragic unappreciated lot in life. Trump
has taught America and Americans that
there’s always someone else to blame.
That lesson hasn’t bettered us a bit.
Enough already. Enough of his terrible
example. Enough of his toxic campaign.
Enough of the ambient ugliness in Amer-
ica. As Election Day draws nearer and
Trump’s opportunity to recast and redeem
himself shrinks, he just offers up more
noise, more nastiness.
And it has cost us, dearly. That was evi-
dent in the coverage of the debate, much of
which remarked on how relatively re-
strained and substantive it was. Relative
to the previous debate, sure, but that was
pure bedlam. Trump still flung fantastical
accusations, still trafficked in extravagant
lies and still interrupted, at least when his
microphone wasn’t muted. That this was
deemed to be in the neighborhood of nor-
mal just proves how thoroughly he has
lowered our expectations and debased the
presidency.
For most of the evening, Biden shook
his head in disbelief, smiled the way you
do at an incorrigible toddler, and counted
down the minutes until it was all over.
He actually looked long and hard at his
watch. In a different debate with a saner
opponent, that gesture might have been
fatal. In this one, it was merely relatable. I,
too, couldn’t wait for the night to end. And
I’m betting that an overwhelming major-
ity of Americans felt the same way.
Trump came into the evening in miser-
able shape, the odds against his re-elec-
tion growing longer with each daily snit.
His economy has tanked, his base has
shrunk, his attempts to vilify Biden have
failed and his downplaying of the corona-
virus has been undercut by his own infec-
tion with it and its rampage through the
White House.
The debate itself presented a tough,
even impossible, task. On the one hand,
Trump had to rattle Biden, because the
way to catch up to a front-runner is to halt
his stride, and Trump was hardly going to
do that with politeness and affirmations.
But he couldn’t repeat his disastrous
turn in their previous encounter, when he
wasn’t so much fierce as feral. To repair
the damage, he had to exhibit at least a
whisper of decorum and the faintest mur-
murings of a heart.
Those goals were in tension, though
several prominent Republicans noted thatTrump had a model for how to behave:
Mike Pence, who was alternately zealous
and Zen in his vice-presidential debate
with Kamala Harris.
But Trump lacks the humility to take
cues from anyone. And nudging the nutty
monarch of Mar-a-Loco to emulate the
Hoosier snoozer is like asking a honey
badger to morph into a three-toed sloth. It
goes against the very nature of the beast.
He pursued an odd strategy, built on
pure delusion and dependent on voters’
complete amnesia.
He painted Biden, not himself, as an eth-
ical abomination whose career in govern-
ment was devoted to personal enrich-
ment. He essentially cast Biden as the in-
cumbent, speaking as if Biden had exited
the vice presidency all of 60 seconds ago,
and clung to the claim that he, the leader
of the world’s richest and most powerful
country for nearly four years now, was the
ultimate outsider.“It’s all talk, no action, with these poli-
ticians,” Trump said at one point.
These politicians? Mr. President,
please allow me to introduce you to the
profession that you now inhabit. You’re
awful at it, and there’s a death toll of more
than 220,000 Americans confirming that.
But it is your occupation, God save the
rest of us.
As for Trump’s delusions, they flared
brightest when he likened himself — for
the umpteenth time — to Abraham Lin-
coln and when he confidently predicted
that Republicans would regain the House
majority. Republicans will be lucky to hold
on to their Senate majority. And all the
rosy soothsaying in the world won’t
change that, any more than Trump’s
promise about the coronavirus (“We’re
rounding the turn, we’re rounding the cor-
ner, it’s going away”) will be magically ful-
filled.
I would love to be able to write that Bi-
den, in contrast, was dazzling, but I live in
a realm more truthful than Trump’s. Biden
is never dazzling. On Thursday night he
was frequently wobbly, failing to nailcomebacks that should have been a cinch,
and spoke more negatively of the oil and
gas industry than he intended to, so that
he was forced to try to clean up his re-
marks after the debate. Trump will proba-
bly spend the coming days telling workers
in that industry that Biden is coming for
their jobs.
But what I’ve come to appreciate about
Biden is that he’s not claiming greatness,
not the way Trump does with just about
every breath. He’s claiming good inten-
tions. If he wins, he may be the rare presi-
dent who’s not convinced that he’s the
smartest person in every room. That
could actually help him get things done.
I nodded along with his final remarks,
when he said, yet again, “What is on the
ballot here is the character of this coun-
try: decency, honor, respect.” He’s right
about that, and he’s the right person be-
cause of that.
“You know who I am, you know who he
is,” Biden said earlier. “Look at us closely.”
I don’t need to turn my eyes toward Trump
anymore. I’ve seen all that I can take, and
I’m long past ready for a different view.FRANK BRUNIWe’ve Heard Quite Enough From Trump
ILLUSTRATION BY THE NEW YORK TIMES; PHOTOGRAPH BY AMR ALFIKY/THE NEW YORK TIMESHe’s nasty. He’s dishonest.
Next, please.
NewYorkTimes
Book Review
Editorsʼ Choice
A prominent conservative scholar traces
thepost–1960sdivisionsbetweenthe
Right and the Left, taking aim at liberals’
victimization of African Americans and
their failure to offer a viable way forward
forAmericansociety.
“ShelbySteeleisoneoftheveryfewwritersable
to tell home truths about the plight of
BlackAmericans....InShamehe has produced
his most complex and challenging work.”
—WALL STREET JOURNAL“Steele speaks with passion,
eloquence and unremitting honesty.”
—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW.