Can we still focus on what matters in the presidential campaign?
On Oct. 21, 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt motored through the five boroughs of New York City in an open car as a pelting rain fell throughout the day.
There were a couple changes of clothes and shots of bourbon to keep him going but the point was to show that Roosevelt, in ill health, still had the physical capacity to assume the presidency.
Less than three weeks later, he won a landslide victory and five months after that, he was dead. He was only 63.
The Democratic Party had foreseen the situation and dropped leftist Vice President Henry Wallace from the ticket in favor of the more moderate Harry Truman, anticipating that the vice president might have to assume the presidency.
Roosevelt’s victory was not propelled only by the stunt in New York. He had a well of support and gave vigorous speeches (heard on radio). He obviously convinced Americans he could still do the job.
However, we live in a very different era. The scrutiny of presidential candidates is much, much greater. Still, can a single event move the momentum of an election and change history?
Some believe the image of a bloodied former President Trump, fist raised in defiance, will be a definitive moment in the campaign — not only for the toughness it symbolizes and the victimhood that is central to Trump’s campaign — but because it will make Democrats pull their political punches and cool personal attacks.
Will it become a kind of shield for Trump, or will some voters see his survival as a mark of destiny? Many things — relevant and irrelevant — move voters.
One can hope for a cooling of rhetoric, but some Republicans have already accused the Biden administration of trying to kill Trump, and in his most recent interview, President Biden suggested he won’t stop attacking Trump’s character. Both sides will continue to portray the other as an “existential” threat to the nation.
And the reality is that character should continue to be a central issue in this campaign.
Democrats will stress the former president’s felony convictions and indictments, impeachments, January 6th and his often non-existent relationship with the truth; while Republicans will try to make the case that President Biden’s faculties are failing, his judgment impaired, and they will allege shady dealings as his son Hunter’s tax evasion trial unfolds in September.
Many Americans will vote for a candidate because they hate the other guy, and not because they believe the guy they are voting for is the best person to lead the country forward. That’s sad but true.
The debate over President Biden’s candidacy — abruptly ejected from the news cycle by the events in Pennsylvania and now the GOP convention — will never be over because this is an issue that will not die. There is nothing the president can do to stop the questions surrounding his capacities. People saw what they saw. The proffered excuses don’t really wash. Pointing at his past record does not address the future.
Yet, if there are deals in the coming months to calm the Middle East and inflation cools, his team will argue that it shows that President Biden can still do the job, keeping in mind that the team around a president is just as important as the principal.
Is it too much to hope that perhaps Americans might focus instead on policy issues that animate this campaign — the economy, foreign policy, reproductive rights, immigration, climate change, and so on? The media can help by relegating the horse race and the “he said/he said” stories to the inside pages and relentlessly focusing on the side-by-side comparisons of the proposed policies of the two candidates/parties.
That’s what actually matters and endures.
• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86. His new book “American Dreams: The Story of the Cyprus Fulbright Commission” is available from Amazon.com.