Strength, and grace, under fire exemplify leader America wants

Donald Trump is rushed off stage by secret service agents after he was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday night. Picture: EPA

Campaigns for the White House are often settled by how voters answer three questions.

Who’s the stronger leader? Is the election a referendum on the incumbent or a choice between the contenders’ values and views?

Who offers a more appealing vision for the future?

The answer to the first question has been known since this contest began.

Polls have long shown Americans believe former president Donald Trump is in better physical and mental shape to handle the next four years than incumbent President Joe Biden.

For many voters still up for grabs, any doubts were likely settled on a stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening.

There Trump, his ear bleeding after being hit by a bullet in an attempted assassination, got to his feet in a scrum of Secret Service agents and thrust his fist in the air. The crowd roared and began chanting “USA! USA!”.

Trump’s iconic gesture of defiance and reassurance showed his strength far more definitively than any speech, television ad or social-media posting could.

The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has focused its first three days on framing the election as a referendum on the incumbent and his record. That wasn’t hard, given voters already had more positive perceptions of the economy and border security under Trump than under Biden.

Wednesday night’s speech by Trump’s running mate, senator JD Vance, won’t make a crucial difference. It may help highlight Biden’s failings, but people vote for the top man, not No.2. Parking Vance in the Great Lakes states is useful. But in 2022 he was elected to the Senate by six percentage points while the rest of the Ohio GOP statewide ticket won by 17 to 25 points. This suggests his appeal to swing voters needs work.

Still, Team Trump got what it wanted with Vance – youth (at 39 he’s half Trump’s age), an articulate and ferocious attack dog (courtesy of Yale Law School) and philosophical compatibility (a MAGA convert).

Joe Biden during his debate with Donald Trump in Atlanta on June 27. Picture: AFP

Trump’s Thursday night (Friday AEST) acceptance speech will be the convention’s most important moment.

He told the Washington Examiner he had planned to deliver a “humdinger” with a full-throated attack on Biden. After the weekend’s shooting, he said, he rewrote his speech: “This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together.”

Trump’s instinct to pivot to unity and optimistic vision is right. He can attack the Biden record but need not go into much detail: he’ll be pushing on an open door. Undecided or soft Trump voters know the country’s challenges. They want to hear his answers to them and how he’ll work on behalf of all Americans.

Focusing on grievances about the 2020 election or mistreatment by prosecutors will cost him the opportunity to convert many fence-sitters. A softer – one might even say presidential – tone would do him good. If Trump makes his case that way on Thursday night, he’ll leave Milwaukee on a rocket.

On Monday night, Trump silently entered the RNC, his face unusually emotional, even subdued. The gravity of being targeted for assassination clearly affected him. There are reports he’s feeling enormous gratitude for being alive. He should express that.

A good night for Trump on Thursday will make it all the harder for Biden to shift the election from a referendum to a choice – an effort already hampered by his disastrous debate performance in Atlanta last month. It confirmed the deep concerns many Americans already had about his physical and mental fitness.

A July 10 Fox News poll shows Biden’s dire situation. Asked if his age and mental soundness put “US national security at risk”, 63 per cent of respondents said yes – including 62 per cent of independents and 34 per cent of Democrats. Sixty-three per cent of voters also think the President is only somewhat or not at all “involved in making important decisions”.

An even greater percentage (71 per cent) said the White House hasn’t been “honest and transparent” about the President’s “mental fitness”.

That last number suggests swing voters will find it hard to trust anything Biden says.

Though it could be close, the only way for Democrats to win may be to replace Biden. The efforts to encourage the 81-year-old to step aside are intensifying. Democrats were in a precarious state before Saturday; in the wake of Trump’s grace under pressure that evening, they’re now in desperate straits.

The Wall Street Journal

Karl Rove helped organise the political action committee American Crossroads and is author of The Triumph of William McKinley (Simon & Schuster, 2015). He also twice masterminded the election of Republican George W. Bush to the White House.