The Sad Choice: the Lesser of Two Scoundrels

In the fall of 1960, I was witness to a conversation regarding the Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign.  My father and our next-door neighbor were engaged in a discussion on the merits of the two candidates.  We were driving somewhere, maybe to a baseball game, with three or four of us kids in the car.  Neither man seemed overly agitated or even in disagreement, as I recall.  I believe they both intended to vote for Nixon.

But at one point the neighbor turned to all of us in the back seat, almost as if he suddenly realized that the kids were listening intently.

“Now, boys,” he said, “you understand that we’re talking about choosing the better of two very good candidates.”

Times have certainly changed.  First of all, a similar discussion today would more likely be condemnatory of one of the candidates, a reflection of how polarized our political identities have become.  It is no longer possible to think well of both candidates in any Republican versus Democrat race, and it certainly isn’t even a consideration in a presidential contest.  When was the last time a Democratic nominee was other than demonized by the Republicans?  Or vice-versa?  Maybe it would have been Carter v. Ford in 1976, or, if not, then Nixon v. Humphrey in 1968.  But certainly since Carter v. Reagan in 1980, when conservatives finally got their nominee, there has been blood in the political waters when it comes to presidential campaigns.

The Republican brand has moved farther and farther to the right, there to be scorned by Democratic loyalists, and the Democrats, either in staying left (Mondale and Dukakis) or when moving right themselves (Clinton and Gore) have been vilified by Republican partisans.  This year the candidates are ideologically despised even though Hillary Clinton is a moderate by almost any objective standard of measurement and Donald Trump is essentially impossible to classify (so much so that most of his own party don’t really want to own his positions on most issues).

But no matter.  Secretary Clinton is castigated as being radically progressive and Mr. Trump is decried as being wildly reactionary and dangerously plutocratic.  If their names were Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, I’m convinced the characterizations would be the same, which is to say that the political attacks are almost pre-ordained by both sides.  Yes, some Democrats expressed mild interest in John Kasich, but had he been nominated, I have no doubt but that he would have been found unacceptable on ideological grounds.  And some Republicans claimed to have a willingness to consider a Bernie Sanders nomination, but had that come to pass, they would have quickly hung the pejorative label of  “socialist” on him and lambasted him as much as Ms. Clinton is being lambasted now.

This election may also be the first that features two candidates who, by their own actions, have made the discussion of their qualifications another means of damning the opposition.  Mr. Trump has been establishing his unfitness for the presidency for over a year now, and he shows no sign of adopting a presidential image as the nominating conventions approach and the “real campaign” begins.

And Ms. Clinton, despite her very impressive résumé, has now been revealed to be lacking in sound judgment on matters of national security.  That, at least, is what her opponent will claim is the verdict from FBI Director James Comey, who reported her use of private email servers, while she was Secretary of State, amounted to extreme carelessness.  He didn’t recommend criminal charges against her, but he did say, quite clearly, that a person in her position “should have known that an unclassified system was no place” for the emails she was sending.

And in reporting the details of his department’s investigation, Mr. Comey also implied that Ms. Clinton had lied about her handling of the emails that she did receive and send, at least as to a handful of them.  She had said repeatedly that she never sent or received emails that were marked classified at the time.  Comey says, however, that over one hundred, out of the 30,000 his department reviewed, were so designated, and that eight were marked “Top Secret,” the highest classification.

It boggles the mind to comprehend what Ms. Clinton was thinking as she travelled abroad and casually sent these emails on an unsecured server.  And it is even more baffling to contemplate why she would not be truthful in revealing her actions (at least once the story became front page news).  But she is nothing if not her husband’s wife – he the highly talented, even brilliant, politician who still couldn’t keep his pants on and then couldn’t avoid trying to pretend they weren’t off when they were.

And so the forthcoming campaign will be nothing to write home about, unless you are more interested in being entertained than in choosing the better of two candidates for the nation’s highest office.  Both candidates are flawed, neither deserves the trust of the electorate, and yet one will become the person who controls the most powerful military in the world and who presides over the most potent economy in the world.

But entertainment aside, consider the plight of the true independent: that rare voter who doesn’t identify by party brand or ideological perspective.  That sad individual has a perverse Hobson’s choice: he or she can consider the options, weigh the alternatives, ponder the decision, calculate the ramifications, and then, ultimately, realize that, as tarnished as Clinton’s candidacy is, she is still the only real choice.  For while she may not be trustworthy, or even likeable for that matter, she is competent and qualified.  Trump, on the other hand, continues to establish beyond the point of reasonable disagreement, that he is mendacious in the extreme and wholly unqualified by experience and temperament to be the president.

Republicans will vote for Trump and Democrats will vote for Clinton, because that is what loyal members of the two parties do.  But independents cannot vote for Trump if they truly care about their country.  They, sadly, must vote for the lesser of the two scoundrels.