Truth Above Lies

The following editorial recently appeared in our local newspaper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer.  It was written by Brent Larkin who was the Plain Dealer's editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.  I thought it was an excellent summation of the current situation.

CLEVELAND -- Five little words, one gigantic lie.

“I alone can fix it,” Donald Trump promised on that night in Cleveland four years ago, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

But President Trump doesn’t fix things. He breaks them. Give him four more years, and he’ll break America.

In Cleveland, Trump ranted about “poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad.”

He sang that same song Thursday night, again claiming his party’s nomination -- this time, on the South Lawn of the White House.

But the grievances Trump complains about now are happening on his watch.

Nevertheless, Trump and his shameless enablers somehow think they can trick voters into ignoring reality by convincing them Joe Biden is a hybrid version of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

If they succeed, it will rank as the greatest political swindle in the history of presidential elections.

The contrast between Trump and Biden could not be more striking. Biden may not be an ideal choice for president, but he possesses all the essential human qualities Trump lacks and will never have – notably, compassion, a conscience and an awareness that truth matters.

Now, as the campaign heads into the final nine weeks, Biden’s lead is comfortable, not insurmountable. And the just-concluded convention made clear that Trump’s two-part comeback plan involves persuading all voters Trump’s coronavirus leadership has saved lives, and convincing white suburbanites that Biden’s election would wreck their lives.

The second part -- regarding Biden -- might work with sustained misleading salesmanship from the Trump campaign.

The first part can’t, because it requires selling Americans on what surely ranks as one of the biggest lies ever told.

With polls showing that a majority of voters are appalled by Trump’s epic leadership failure in combating the coronavirus, a significant portion of every night at the convention was devoted to depicting his efforts related to the virus as herculean, perhaps one of the great success stories in human history.

Never mind that this president downplayed the deadly dangers for months, suggesting the virus would “disappear” when the weather warmed. Never mind that he seemed to lose all interest in the hard work of leading, instead abdicating the fight to the governors. Never mind he promoted witch doctor cures and repeatedly lied about testing.

As George Packer wrote in a brilliant June 2020 piece in The Atlantic, “Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state.”

Now, in late August, they still do.

The virus claimed 4,027 lives during the four-day convention, based on data derived from ongoing tracking of cases by The New York Times. Health agencies and states reported 169,550 new cases. By Election Day, the U.S. death count will have soared past 200,000.

Here’s a number almost as scary: A CBS News/YouGov poll taken in late August found 57 percent of registered Republican voters believe the number of coronavirus deaths is acceptable.

Wonder how they would explain that to the friends and families of the more than 180,000 Americans no longer living.

Part two of the Trump comeback plan requires the campaign to depict Biden as a dangerous radical whose socialistic policies would forever destroy the American way of life. Its central premise is that when rioters are done burning the nation’s big cities, those black and brown people are headed to the suburbs. They will overrun neighborhoods. Crime will rise and property values will plummet.

It’s dark. It’s dystopian. It’s dangerous. And it might work, causing the race to tighten.

Thirty-six Augusts ago, I was on the convention floor in sweltering Dallas when Ronald Reagan accepted the GOP’s nomination for a second term with a sunny and optimistic prognosis of a nation whose “heart is full … her future bright.” The upbeat tone that night resulted in Reagan’s “morning in America” ad, widely considered on of the best television spots ever produced.

Fast forward to that night four years ago in Quicken Loans Arena, when, as Trump stood smiling and smirking, obscene and ignorant roars of “Lock her up” cascaded from the crowd, echoing off the ceiling where the Cavaliers championship banner hung.

In class and character, the Republican Party of 1984 bore little resemblance to Trump’s Republican Party of 2016 and 2020. Trump’s ominous warning this time was little different than his message of 2016.

“Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our future,” he warned Thursday night.

The worst president in history wants to take us back to the future.

If we let him, this won’t end well.