Election

It is fifteen days before this country will elect either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to the presidency.  I share the general opinion that neither is qualified for, competent to hold, or deserving of the office.  Each of them advocates  some very bad policies and has some very bad views about the role of chief executive.  Beyond that I see both of them as fairly despicable human beings.  Based on the evidence the public  image  of Trump as an arrogant, ignorant, blustering, narcissistic, deeply  vulgar, unprincipled, bullying bastard  and the public  image of Clinton as a vicious, devious, power and money obsessed, deeply corrupt, conniving, lying bitch seem accurate enough.  It is difficult to imagine liking or wanting to spend time with either of them.  Yet they are what we are stuck with.

Trump’s story is the stranger of the two.  Clinton  obtained her party’s nomination by running a traditional Democratic campaign against an exceptionally weak field – utilizing her and her husband’s contacts and powerful associates and being threatened only by the remote chance a politicized Democratic  Department of Justice might indict her for one or more crimes.  He won the Republican Party’s nomination over a large and strong group of contenders including several who were well qualified to be president  despite his having no obvious qualifications, no record of commitment to or even interest in usual Republican principles or issues, and outright hostility to the notions of limited government and limiting the powers of the executive in a year when reaction to Obama should have made those things important to voters.  He won despite evidence from polls showing he would be far less likely to be elected than would any of several of his competitors for the nomination in a year when one would have guessed Republican voters distressed by the actions and direction of the government would be especially eager to take back the White House. 

He won not as a conservative or a partially libertarian conservative or a  religious conservative or a moderate  but as a strident and often demagogic populist. Populism from William Jennings Bryan to Huey Long to George Wallace has usually  made its appeals  emotionally to the fears and the envy and resentment of some of the less thoughtful and successful members of society. This leads to fair questions about the voters who supported Trump in the primaries.   I think many  were ordinary Americans who  were so angry about what was being done to them and their country by the present administration  and at the feeble resistance  which had been put up by Republican politicians that they fell mainly unthinkingly for  the person who most loudly and vigorously seemed to share their anger and to be willing to stand up and be tough.  To be sure there were also some  bellicose authoritarians   and racially prejudiced nativists supporting Trump,  but I would guess the first group far outnumbered them. However, the actions of the ordinary Americans   were  bad enough.  Justified anger and frustration do not excuse a failure to think.  In supporting Trump in the primaries,  a large number of Republican voters seemed to have behaved  pretty much as the ignorant buffoons of the left’s stereotypes of them. 

The question of whether Trump or Clinton would be worse is not an easy one. Those who have said she will be wrong about almost everything but will be so only within normal and manageable boundaries, while he is capable of being wildly, surprisingly, and disastrously wrong have a point. So do those who have said that on any group of seven controversies, she likely will be wrong on all seven  while he randomly might be right on three or four.  Assuming the Republicans hold the house and senate, the congress would seem to be more likely to resist her bad plans than his, but he has so many enemies among Republican politicians that the difference may be small.  There is some reason to believe that electing Trump would disrupt some of the harmful bureaucratic and regulatory plans and activities of the present administration which would continue by inertia if Clinton wins, but that is far from clear in most cases. The question of which of them is the worse human being seems close to being a toss-up.  I cannot decide which of the two  would be a worse president.  So, unless something changes in the next two weeks, I plan to vote for Gary Johnson and hope whoever wins between Trump and Clinton  will not be as bad as I think he or she will.  However I would not want to place a bet on that hope.