Trump v Biden is a clash of lightweights

The chaotic first presidential debate exposed Donald Trump and Joe Biden as third-raters.

Democratic challenger Joe Biden and President Donald Trump face off as debate moderator Chris Wallace struggles to keep control. Picture: AFP

Calling Donald Trump a disrupter is a weasel word euphemism. Trump told 80 million Americans in the opening presidential debate that he would not necessarily accept defeat and urged his supporters to “watch” carefully because he would not tolerate a “fraudulent election”.

This constitutes qualified approval to deny the legitimacy of a Joe Biden victory. It violates the constitutional foundations of American democracy and accountability. This stance is indefensible, but nobody should be surprised.

The risk for Trump is that it casts him as a loser. The breaking news that Trump has tested positive for coronavirus is another wildcard in an unpredictable month for America. Trump winning on a sympathy vote? That won’t happen. But the optics of Trump succumbing to the virus cannot help his re-election campaign.

This week Trump opened a dangerous door that should never be opened. Democracies cannot function without accepted transitions of power. In his January 2017 inaugural speech Trump honoured the “peaceful transfer of power” towards himself — now he casts doubt on whether he accepts the “peaceful transfer of power” away from himself.

This is Trump laying a claim to be more important than US democracy itself — the ultimate stance of the incurable narcissist intoxicated by power. Trump’s remarks should be opposed by every section of opinion.

And it raises an intriguing question: why are Australian conservatives so perpetually forgiving of a President who violates virtually every norm of conservative behaviour? Defending Trump because he opposes the anti-liberal progressive left is good therapy but constitutes intellectual failure — if you think culture underwrites politics, if you believe in effective US global leadership, if your concern is for prudent, stable and responsive politics, then Trump cannot bother the scoreboard.

The Trump-Biden debate this week was a spiteful, chaotic, abusive, brawling encounter with both candidates revealing their contempt for each other. The deeper story, however, is much worse. It goes to democracy, legitimacy and violence.

Neither Trump nor Biden is a suitable candidate for the presidency. They are third-raters in their contrasting ways. The mindless propaganda from their media champions is numbing in its absurdity. These candidates are a sad commentary on US democracy and the Republican and Democratic parties.

Writing of the debate in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan said: “The President depressed everybody, even his own supporters, by acting like a bullying nut. He left people anguished about the future of the country. By the time it was over people were thinking, deep down: the incumbent is an incompetent who’s out of his mind.”

The Financial Times editorialised: “By far the bleakest lesson of the night, though, is that fears for the election itself are warranted.” It warned that Trump, by stoking the idea of voter fraud — when the evidence was thin — was creating a pretext “to contest any adverse result for him” and was encouraging “his base to take matters into their own hands”.

Trump’s character flaws are writ large. He violates any shred of Burkean conservatism. As for Biden, Noonan branded him “a befuddled man” who “can’t tell you what he’ll do in part because he doesn’t want to and in part because he doesn’t really know”.

Trump and Biden are out of their depth given the historic challenges facing America — the pandemic, partisan violence and an economic crisis. Beyond that, neither is fit to address the divided house America has become, Trump because he is a prime agent of discord and Biden because he is a figurehead designed to disguise the historic lurch to the left of the Democrats.

Trump’s decision not to debate but to bully may be the turning point. If he loses in November, this debate will symbolise the point at which Trump’s intimidation engine finally exhausted and ran out of gas. Above all, on display in the debate was the destructive rancour tearing at America’s polity.

Just as Trump and Biden cannot tolerate each other, so their partisan foot-soldiers cannot tolerate each other. Many of these partisans are unlikely to accept defeat at the ballot box. The risk is that this election, regardless of the result, will merely intensify America’s domestic political war.

Trump over four years is a documented phony tough. The debate — in what was supposed to be a serious process — revealed he has learnt nothing. The singular feature of Trump’s performance was his startling disinterest in appealing to those millions of American voters who are not his followers.

Biden, on the other hand, was desperate to show he could abuse as well as Trump. This was a weak man trying to show his muscle, calling Trump a clown, a liar and a racist. But if Biden wins, how long will he last in the White House?

These candidates were wrestling in the mud together. Yet both were craven in their weakness towards the radical wings of their own partisans who engage in violence.

Asked directly whether he would condemn white supremacist and militia groups Trump equivocated, said he was “willing”, then asked compere Chris Wallace to name a group and, when Proud Boys was mentioned, a far-right group with a record of street violence, Trump again equivocated, saying “stand back and stand by”, a remark interpreted by many as encouragement. It was pathetic, but standard Trump. Forthright condemnation was needed, politically and morally. It was easy, but Trump declined. Why?

When Trump then pressed Biden over Antifa, a far-left movement ready to use violence, Biden lurched into apologetic mode and referenced a former FBI director to the effect that Antifa was “an idea, not an organisation”.

Let’s get real — whether it’s an ideology or a movement misses the point; it believes in violence. Trump interjected on Biden: “You’ve got to be kidding.” Biden criticised violence but was soft on Antifa. Once again, pathetic, but standard Biden.

Biden has an each-way bet on many issues. He announced the Green New Deal “will pay for itself” and then claimed it wasn’t his policy. He attacked Trump over the Supreme Court but refused to say whether he wants to expand and stack the bench. He parades his Catholicism while his party attacks the Catholicism of Amy Coney Barrett.

But Biden was lucky. Trump wouldn’t let him talk and gave him an easy pass. Coming from behind, Trump needed to decisively outpoint Biden and, on this test, he failed. Incredibly, Trump scarcely bothered to sell his own achievements, with The Wall Street Journal concluding Trump seemed “overconfident and underprepared” — yet that is his modus operandi. Trump didn’t project as a president. Maybe he energised his base but others may conclude his frustrations painted him as a loser.

The debate revealed both candidates obsessed by their opponents’ flaws. That’s under­standable. Trump is debasing American institutions and democracy. A narcissist ready to sell out friend, foe or ally alike, incompetent in managing the challenges of his times — the coronavirus and an assertive China — Trump is cunning in dividing the country for his personal gain.

The persuasive judgment on Trump’s presidency comes from a man who knows him well, soldier and former defence secretary Jim Mattis, who recently said: “We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.” Mattis said Trump “is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try, instead he tries to divide us”.

After he returned to civilian life, Mattis would sometimes visit the families of soldiers who died under his command, families still grieving, often still angry. Mattis went to honour the fallen.

Trump, by contrast, denigrated men killed in action as “suckers” and “losers”, according to Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, referring to an incident when in 2018 Trump declined to visit an American war cemetery near Paris.

Goldberg said he had multiple sources. When Biden raised the issue in the debate, Trump didn’t deny it — he just lurched into an attack on Biden’s son Hunter. There is, of course, a deeper meaning — this is a President who struggles to understand duty, sacrifice and honour. Remember he denigrated former Republicanpresidential candidate, senator and war hero John McCain, tortured by the North Vietnamese after his plane was shot down. Trump said: “I like people who weren’t captured.”

Biden had the best line on Trump’s record: “Under this President, we become weaker, sicker, poor, more divided and more violent … he’s Putin’s puppy.” It’s true the coronavirus has ruined Trump’s once formidable re-election platform based on record low unemployment and jobs for women, the underprivileged and African-Americans. But leaders stand or fall on the central challenge of the times — and Trump cannot escape his relatively poor performance in combating the virus.

Biden’s problem is so obvious — his main argument is that he’s not Trump. If you want to liquidate Trump, then vote for Biden. It might work but it remains a weak proposition.

Biden cannot inspire or energise or mobilise. There is little groundswell for Biden in his own right and in a presidential election that’s a problem. And Biden’s efforts in the debate were unconvincing: if he won it was more because of Trump’s blunders.

The more people see of Biden, the more unconvincing he may look. In the debate Biden pumped out his chest, saying, “I am the Democratic Party right now”, playing down his concessions to ultra-leftist Bernie Sanders. But his efforts bordered on farce. The truth is that Biden has negotiated many policy positions with Sanders and has sued for internal peace with much of the left. The Democrats have proudly marched to the left since the Obama presidency, driven partly mad by Trump and by their activist base, embracing identity politics, critical race theory, retreating on law enforcement, embracing radical climate change action, tax increases, along with protectionism and government intervention as the new economic orthodoxy.

The Australian Strategic Forum 2020

For Australia, Biden’s climate change policy may become a decisive event. Every sign is this will become his cause, tied into a post-coronavirus economic recovery agenda. Biden will return America to the Paris climate accord, pledge to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, champion renewables, reach out to China on climate policy, and put the US oil and gas sector under immense pressure. That agenda will cause multiple political problems for Scott Morrison.

In reality, Biden has been contaminated by his need to fight Trump. He has been compromised by the necessary tactic of proving he could resist, hit back and beat Trump at his own brutal game. Biden offered no sense of presidential anticipation. All he achieved was to exceed the low bar Trump had set for him.

What are the odds Biden would even see out a four-year term? When Wallace asked Biden why he took no action with Democratic mayors sitting pat during large-scale violence and mayhem in their cities, Biden said: “I don’t hold public office.” These are classic weasel words too. Here is a Democratic nominee virtually conceding his lack of authority inside his own party.

Give Biden his due, however, on the pivotal question. When pressed, he was contemptuous of Trump’s election threats, saying: “He’s not sure what he’s going to accept. Well, let me tell you something. It doesn’t matter, because if we get the votes, it’s going to be all over. He can’t stay in power. It won’t happen.”

So it is reduced to this: praising a candidate because he promises to accept the decision of the American people. Such is the debasement Trump has brought to the US system. The President said the election result might not be known for months. Asked if he was counting on the Supreme Court including new judge Barrett to settle any dispute — given his criticism of fraud with mail-in voting — Trump said: “Yeah, I think I’m counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely, I hope we don’t need them.”

Trump kept repeating “this is not going to end well” and then, raising voting manipulation, he said, “I can’t go along with that” because that would mean “you have a fraudulent election”. How might Trump contest any defeat? The moral with Trump is there are no boundaries. You never know what comes next. By declaring this the most vital election in US history, Trump creates an existential event — can he afford to admit defeat? The next month is a period of high danger in American life.