Trump’s Revenge Fantasies and Kamala’s Incoherence

 The dangers of a presidential candidate’s threats of retribution. Martin Gurri on the VP’s fogbound foreign policy.

 

I want to start by suggesting something controversial: The character of the president of the United States matters.

In ordinary times, this would be so obvious it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. Unfortunately, we don’t live in ordinary times. Instead, we live in a time where basically everyone has accepted that the current president lacks the mental capacity to do the job properly—and yet, he’s still in the Oval Office. 

Today we bring you two op-eds about the two people vying to replace Joe Biden. And both candidates are seriously lacking in different ways.

In the first piece, columnist Martin Gurri looks at Kamala Harris’s suitability for the role of leader of the free world. 

“It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the policies and character of the president are the keys to war and peace in the world today,” he argues. And the disconcerting thing about Harris, he says, is that despite being on the brink of power, she remains “a virtual blank slate on foreign affairs.”

“In her four years as senator and four as vice president, Harris has managed to say nothing meaningful on the subject—a curious reticence, given that American politicians love to strut and lecture on the global stage,” writes Martin. 

Can we even paint a coherent picture of how Harris, if elected, will deal with the world? Martin, who predicted the rise of Trump in 2016, says the answer is “yes”—just about. 

Read Martin Gurri’s mix of analysis, projection, and speculation in “The World According to Kamala Harris.” 

From the incoherence and shape-shifting of Kamala Harris to the worst impulses of Donald Trump. . .  

We’re at the stage of the campaign when negative stories about the two candidates are coming thick and fast. 

The biggest anti-Trump hit so far this week came from Jeffrey Goldberg. The Atlantic editor reports that during a private conversation in the White House, Trump once said “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” 

Goldberg says that two people heard him say this. A Trump spokesperson flatly denies it. “This is absolutely false,” wrote Alex Pfeiffer in an email to The Atlantic. “President Trump never said this.” General John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, says he heard the same thing—and now warns that Trump would, if elected, “rule like a dictator.” But Nick Ayers, Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, said Wednesday: “I’ve avoided commenting on intra-staff leaks or rumors or even lies as it relates to my time at the White House but General Kelly’s comments regarding President Trump are too egregious to ignore. I was with each of them more than most, and his commentary is patently false.”

Voters can be forgiven for being a little weary of overblown warnings that a Trump victory would mean the arrival of fascism in America, or the end of American democracy. It’s hard to buy those warnings given that, well, we had a Trump presidency. We survived. So did the country.

I get it. 

And yet, on the campaign trail, Trump hasn’t done much to counter the charges of authoritarianism. He’s talked about the “enemy within.” Or threatened his political enemies with prison. Things that don’t exactly scream democracy.

The thing about the story of the boy who cried wolf is that a wolf does eventually show up. That’s the subject of our second piece today. Read my column here: “Donald Trump’s Revenge Fantasies.”