Inexplicable Candidate Choice

Live TV debate between leading candidates has become a key feature of the presidential campaign in the United States since 1960, when two-time Vice-President Richard Nixon, of the Republican Party, agreed to a face-off with his Democratic Party opponent John F. Kennedy. Many assessed Kennedy performed better, and he went on to win the race and become the country’s youngest president at 44 years.  The fallout has been devastating for Biden. It was a lost battle from start to finish—a complete knockout. Someone summed it up: “This wasn’t a debate; it was a medical emergency”. Biden’s loss was Trump’s gain. By the time the next debate takes place in September, Trump would have had a monumental mileage. 

From the “most unlikely” to the “probable” winner in next November’s presidential poll, former US President Donald Trump rides and races with a visibly more confidence than he really was at the beginning of the year. His long-time critics are conceding that he has a fighting chance of winning against his successor. Two thirds of Republican voters believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and that Biden is not a legitimate president. Were President Biden to lose to his predecessor, he would not be the first sitting president to suffer so. Since the 1960s, sitting Presidents Gerald Ford (Republican), Jimmy Carter (Democrat), George H. Bush and Trump failed in their bid for a second term. If Trump staged a comeback after four years in the wilderness, he would create a record since more than a century.

Titanic rematch

If the Democrats choose to be bound by a ridiculous precedent, the Republicans are shackled by an overwhelming majority of them continuing to believing that the 2020 presidential victory was stolen from Trump. After Biden’s dismal debate, sections of Democrats talked about a replacement candidate. With a lone exception, no former presiding occupant of the White House has bounced back to the powerful position after an interlude. Grover Cleaveland is so far the only former president who returned to his old job at the White House for a second, but non-consecutive, term in 1892.

Some say it is a choice between the bad and the worse. Others are vehemently opposed to one candidate and strongly support the other in these difficult times that portend harder times ahead. Age is a national issue and Biden, to many, is an embarrassment. The Democrats are unwilling to dump the “tradition” of allowing an incumbent to seek a reelection if he desires so. Millions think Biden is out of pace with everything. Others simply cannot stand the sight of Trump. European leaders seem to prefer Biden to Trump who wants it to chip in more for military defence.  

A fortnight before the Biden-Trump debate, YouGov released its survey results indicating 58 per cent of American voters want Trump to contest the November 5 election notwithstanding the 34 felony convictions he was given. Biden’s public approval rating in May showed just 36 per cent, which was the lowest rating of his presidency. “Democrats are vainly trying to distract voter doubts about the visibly aging President Biden and focus on the incumbent’s predecessor Donald Trump’s character. Trump is seen as relatively agile, alert and active with a decisive mind than the slow-moving opponent. Nearly four years after the 2020 election, most Republicans and millions of non-party members think that Trump was the actual winner. 

Now, American media are on their guard in deference to the massive miscalculation they made in 2020, when they almost unanimously disparaged and downgraded him as “unqualified” for the top job. One newspaper scorned at him by inserting one of his events to an entertainment page. Trump is by far the star campaigner for Republicans with tickets for the House of Representatives and Senate elections which coincide with the presidential poll next November. This remains so notwithstanding the 34 felony court convictions he carries. Biden (US), Sunak (UK), Macron (France) and Trudeau (Canada) have less approval ratings than does Trump as of June. At the time Trump left office in January 2021, 41 per cent of Americans rated his administration successful. The 55 per cent of people considered him successful. Three and a half years of review have convinced millions of Americans that he was a man in action. 

Bewildering

Promises should not be false starts destined to a dead-end. Assurances not likely to be fulfilled, when flaunted too often and for too long, result in disillusion and consequently risk high dangers.  Latest indications are that if the voters went to the polls today, they would pave way for the Republicans to take over the senate. Many voters want Biden to quit. In the June D-D celebrations of the 80th anniversary, Biden was seen lost, disoriented and out of step. Media focused on his gaffes. Some people called him a “national embarrassment of epic proportion”. If such is his condition today, how will his reflexes be as time progresses in the next four and a half years if he does scrapes through winning a reelection in November? This comes at a time when Americans feel that their dominance as the world’s No. 1 power is on the decline.

Were such contests and challenges to occur in any of the developing countries or of the non-Western make, commentators would have attributed it to lack of democratic culture, ignorance and poverty. But when it happens in the “greatest” democracy, world’s No. 1 economy and mightiest military power, such remark is taboo. Strange? Not to those closely monitoring and studying the hypocrisies promoting superiority or asserting exceptionalism for a passage to short-term expediency.  To his supporters, Trump represents an indictment what all has gone wrong with the US in the new millennium. Biden’s health and reflexes do not synchronise with his body language and weak narratives. Unless something unusually dramatic happens in their camp, the Democrats might find floating voters to tilting in large droves towards the less dissatisfactory of the contestants.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)