The Dismal Choice, Ver. 3.0

So, gentle readers, here we are again.

With apologies for my extended absence from Ricochet, as I did four and eight years ago, I return to offer my thoughts on Tuesday’s election. And even as I write that Election Day is Tuesday, I am gripped by the fear that the accompanying sturm und drang will likely extend days, weeks, or even months beyond Tuesday, and if Donald Trump should ultimately prevail we can expect four of the sturm-iest and drang-iest years we’ve seen since, well, his first term. One shudders at the thought.

I’ll vote for him anyway.

As was my experience four and eight years ago, I will cast my vote not without a measure of trepidation. My misgivings stem not from any fears that Mr. Trump will end democracy or throw his detractors into internment camps or any of the tyrannical measures envisioned by the cast of shrieking halfwits on MSNBC. Rather, like four and eight years ago, it’s again vexing to confront the fact that in a nation of more than 330 million people, it is these two who have emerged to compete for the presidency. Surely we can do better.

But, sadly, not this year. So, if one is not a hardened partisan on either side, one must hold his nose and conjecture as to which candidate will leave the country in a better condition in four years, by which time, we pray, the system will have corrected itself and produced more suitable aspirants to the job.

Once again, while fully aware of Mr. Trump’s deficiencies, I choose him over Ms. Harris, whose own deficiencies make her even less qualified to be president.

Recall that in Harris’s previous run for president, her campaign was so anemic that, to no one’s sorrow, she dropped out of the race in early December 2019, weeks before the Iowa caucuses. And even after maneuvering to be named as Joe Biden’s running mate and assuming the vice presidency, so poorly was she regarded, even among Democrats, that she was labeled as Biden’s “insurance policy” against impeachment or 25^th Amendment scheming.

And yet, as the current election drew near, when Joe Biden’s senility could no longer be concealed from the public, when his decline became undeniable even among his allies, when he was cajoled or threatened or somehow persuaded to relinquish his quest for a second term, his mediocrity of a vice president was thrust forward and rebranded as the second coming of Cicero. Viewing the process has been rather like seeing a Ford Pinto given a glossy red paint job and renamed a Ferrari. It wouldn’t take many laps of a Formula 1 race before people came to realize it doesn’t belong.

As a Californian, I have followed Harris’s career for some time. She has always struck me as a dim bulb, though this, sadly, is hardly a disqualification for high office in either party. (Watch C-SPAN for even an hour if you doubt this.) But while her dimness hasn’t impeded her ascent in politics, what I find most off-putting about her is her pairing of a middling intellect with an unctuous, dripping self-regard, to a degree exceeding even that which is found so often among senators that one must suspect it is a prerequisite for the job. (Writing less charitably of the vice president for NRO three weeks ago, Charles C.W. Cooke labeled her an idiot, the evidence for which premise has only accumulated since.)

While the election and its aftermath may be dismaying to contemplate, what is perhaps even more so is witnessing the utter degradation of the American news media, once populated by people we assumed to lean left while giving sufficient thought to their own credibility that they maintained some measure of objectivity. Alas, no longer. Those outlets we call legacy or mainstream media have gone all in for Kamala Harris, deluding themselves—and attempting to delude you—into believing the red Pinto limping around the track really is a Ferrari.

The examples are far too numerous to list, but a recent, incandescently glowing example was CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, who packed so many distortions into the opening of her Oct. 30 broadcast that one must admire, in a perverse sense, the Soviet-style brazenness of it. President Biden’s calling Trump supporters “garbage” was inadvertent, you see, and Trump is graceless for declining to accept Biden’s comically lame attempt to conjure up his magical, exculpatory apostrophe.

For any of you who even now remain undecided on how to vote, I recommend the method I used to land, however reluctantly, with Team Trump: I made one of those Venn diagrams of which Ms. Harris has expressed such fondness. My political wish list includes a secure border, protection for children before and after birth, support for law enforcement, reliability for our allies (most especially Israel), and instilling fear in our adversaries. When I asked myself which candidate was more likely to share these goals, the answer was clear. It was Donald Trump, after all, who as president gave us a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and put a warhead on Qasem Soleimani’s forehead, to all of which I can only say, “Huzzah.” No Democrat, least of all Kamala Harris, would have even considered any of these steps.

I give Harris credit for her peculiar style of oratory, one that allows a listener to take any utterance from her, be it a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire speech, then rearrange the words in any order one chooses to find the meaning hasn’t changed, which is of course to say there is no meaning. Consider also Harris’s inability to answer the most basic, foreseeable questions from her friends in the media, even the second, third or fourth time they’re asked. If I have to hear about her “middle class” upbringing and the “hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the American people” and “in terms of” this or that and “what I call an opportunity economy” for four years, I fear I’ll go berserk. As far as I can determine, she has never had an interesting thought or said an interesting thing in her entire life.

Yes, Mr. Trump is a deeply flawed candidate, but to oppose him the Democrats have offered us a rara avis: a candidate with less intellectual agility than even Joe Biden and less personal charm than even Hillary Clinton. There may be a bit too much P.T. Barnum in Mr. Trump, but if there’s going to be a circus, I’ll vote for the ringmaster over the clown every time.