Month: October 2020

Categories
Politics

The candidates deliver their closing arguments

The closing minutes of the second and final presidential debate seemed to pack the entirety of the campaign into two minutes.

The setup came in a question from moderator Kristen Welker, who asked both President Trump and his rival Joe Biden what they would say in their inaugural address to Americans who did not vote for them.

Trump, who went first, did not answer the question. Instead he predicted that if the former vice president were elected, “you will have a depression the likes of which you’ve never seen, your 401(k)s will go to hell, and it will be a very sad day for this country.”

When his turn came, Biden said he’d choose “science over fiction,” “hope over fear,” “deal with systemic racism,” ensure that “everyone has an even chance,” and create “millions” of new jobs in clean energy. The former vice president said he would represent all Americans “whether you voted for me or against me.”

The moment marked the last chance for each candidate to deliver a closing message to a national audience; the campaign equivalent of the final minutes of a soccer match when the sides scramble furiously to score.

Trump’s argument may be one of necessity: His concealing, dismissing, mismanaging and ultimately losing control of the pandemic has left him pointing to the stock market, which in the closing days of the campaign hovers at pre-pandemic levels, as a proxy for his performance.

That someone who played a successful businessperson on TV now clings to a financial market as a political life preserver brings its own irony. To the extent stocks have held their ground, they’ve done so thanks in part to a pandemic-induced lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve. In another twist, the central bank’s chairman was, at least until COVID-19 arrived, a regular Trump target.

Though stocks might hold sway with some of the roughly one-third of Americans who have a 401(k) plan, there aren’t enough of them to reelect a president. Even in normal times, share prices are hardly a proxy for prosperity. And the times are anything but normal. More Americans lost their jobs in two months last spring than during the Great Depression and the recession of 2008 combined.

For his part, Biden, if you untangle the syntax, sought to unite. The economy matters there, too. The fault lines laid bare by the pandemic include widening inequality, which the pandemic threatens to accelerate without a Biden administration and its allies in Congress finding a way to rebuild a safety net that has frayed beyond repair.

In a New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month, 91% of likely Democratic voters said they support a new $2 trillion stimulus package to extend unemployment insurance, send stimulus checks to most Americans, and provide financial support to state and local governments.

Predictably by now, the survey divided sharply on partisan lines. With one exception: The proposed stimulus also commanded support from a majority (56%) of likely Republican voters.

Whether measured in lives ended or upended, the pandemic’s toll grows by the day. The coming together that Biden is offering may be taking shape already.

Categories
Politics U.S.

Trump is planning his post-presidency

Until Monday, the most compelling image of a failed presidency might have been Richard Nixon’s waving goodbye from the South Lawn as he left the White House for the last time as president.

Donald Trump’s removing his mask and saluting Marine One as it left that same lawn on Monday rivals it. Even for an administration defined by chaos and unpredictability, Trump’s behavior has reached a new level of bizarre.

On Tuesday, the president instructed his administration to stop negotiating with Democrats in Congress on an economic relief bill until after the election, putting at risk a pandemic-ravaged economy and causing financial markets (formerly a point of pride for Trump) to tumble.

As with most things Trump, the country has struggled to make sense. Theories abounded. Trump is experiencing mania brought on by the steroids his doctors have administered, went one. He’s making a political calculation that a stimulus package would benefit blue states, held another.

But Trump’s actions make sense for other, more Trumpian, reasons. An investigation into the president’s finances by The New York Times shows that Trump has avoided paying taxes for years. The reporting also shows that his businesses are “beset by losses” and that he has hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due.

Trump’s best hope for financial survival may be another reality show. “The Apprentice” brought Trump a total of $427 million, the Times found, and allowed him to inhabit the character of a billionaire character that he played all the way to the presidency. It cannot be lost on Trump that making reality TV is arguably the only business in which he has ever succeeded.

Add to that the polls, which consistently show Trump trailing his opponent, Joseph R. Biden, in most of the states and counties Trump won in 2016 and would need to carry in November to have any hope of reelection. Trump has not added to his support among any voters who did not support him four years ago, the polls show.

Taken together, circumstances give Trump every incentive to make these remaining weeks of his presidency all about him (that’s been his North Star throughout) and to stage-manage pictures, like the mask-less salute, that might work as the intro to a series.

The more conflict that Trump can sow and the more visuals he can compile, the more compelling a character he can be in the television future that awaits. America has never seen a reality TV show staring a former president, let alone one who appeals to the worst instincts of his supporters.

The White House is now the set of a TV pilot. The less likely it becomes that voters will green-light a second term, the more we can expect to see Trump chasing not votes but ratings.

Categories
New York City

Pandemic homecoming

“Welcome back to America, do you recognize it?” a friend emailed recently, a day after I landed back in the U.S. from a seven-month stay with my partner in South Africa.

Though I can’t speak about America, I can say that the neighborhood where I live here in New York City has changed in some by-now familiar ways. Most people wear masks when they go out. Stores have made face coverings a condition of entry.

The state is encouraging everyone to download an app that sends you COVID-19 exposure alerts. Signs posted on windows and fences remind you to stand six feet apart.

KEEP THIS FAR APART

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For the past week, I’ve kept apart, mostly in my apartment, where I wait to see whether I experience any symptoms of the coronavirus. I go out for solo strolls. So far, I feel fine.

Maybe it’s me but the ambient noise — the low-level hum that courses through the city – seems a tick lower than when I left in February. Trash trucks make their rounds, though the streets seem less tidy.

The world has come some way in its understanding of the coronavirus. “I struggle to tell from the news reports how terrible contracting COVID-19 may be,” I wrote on April 1, six days into a 21-day nationwide lockdown in South Africa. “Some people seem to experience mild symptoms, others no symptoms; some people die. I hope never to find out.”

We know more now about how to stay safe. Unlike the U.S., countries that instituted strict lockdowns have bent the curve of new infections. On April 15, I wrote: “So far more than 2 million people around the world have become infected with the coronavirus. Nearly 129,000 have died.”

By now more than 34 million people around the world have become infected and more than a million have died. The virus is projected to take many more lives.

On a whim the other day, I reached for the book “Kitchen Confidential,” which I’ve owned but until now not read. Even before the pandemic, I didn’t frequent restaurants. And I don’t cook, really. Still, the book feels like a discovery.

The vibrancy of the writing aside, Anthony Bourdain’s account of kitchens – their intensity and banging (as in people kicking closed oven doors) and heat – how working in one might be the closest thing to being part of the crew of a pirate ship – makes me yearn to stand shoulder-to-shoulder (safely) with others. I rarely thought this before the pandemic, but I look forward to one day buying a beer in a crowded bar.

That’s how home feels different now. We’re socially distant.

It’s autumn in New York. The days are mild and sunny and dry. The nights clear and cool for sleeping. The nearby ocean lends its warmth. I always like the season. But this year especially, it hints at a future when the pandemic is far away.