BIDEN’S VP LIST: A WHO’S WHO OF HIGHLY SKILLED WOMEN LEADERS

Joe Biden’s commitment to name a woman as his running mate has drained the boredom out of one of the more unremarkable rituals in our quadrennial election pageantry.  Instead of filling the summer with coy no-comments from a predictable cast of ambitious white guys, Biden has introduced us to an ever-growing list of strong, accomplished women generally unknown outside of their states or districts.

Critics of this women-only selection process have pontificated about the evils of filling such an important job on the basis of gender. How silly is that? For the past 231 years, all of our presidents and vice presidents have been men. The argument is vanquished by its own speciousness. Biden’s veepstakes are expanding, not limiting, our notion of what presidential looks like.

Other than Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Kamala Harris (CA), who competed alongside Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, most of the potential veep names bandied about are those of female leaders whose skillsets have been hiding in the shadows of national obscurity. 

They include:  Senators Tammy Baldwin (WI), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Maggie Hassan (NH); Congresswomen Val Demings (FL) and Karen Bass (CA); Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico; former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano; Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; former Georgia legislative leader and candidate for governor Stacey Abrams; and former national security advisor Susan Rice. 

These candidates have been the subject of considerable news coverage these past few months. Most of them went from a Google trending flatline of zero to the top of the search metric within days of being identified as a possible vice presidential nominee.  Never has there been so much focus on highly skilled women leaders. Of course, in a government dominated by white men, there hasn’t been a lot of competition for that distinction.  After all, we’re talking about a country where women account for less than 25 percent of the Congress and 18 percent of the governorships.

Yet, this protracted national conversation about the comparative skills and backgrounds of a dozen or more top notch women leaders doesn’t, in itself, bend the aging arc of patriarchy into a magic wand of gender parity.  But it’s a much needed start, particularly compared to where we were at the conclusion of this year’s Democratic primary process.  

Only months ago, the Dems were rightly boasting about their unprecedentedly diverse cast of presidential candidates. They were male and female; young and old; gay and straight; white, black, Latino and Asian. Yet, when the dust settled, Joe Biden,  a 77-year-old icon of the white male establishment, assumed the mantle of the party’s presumptive nominee. 

So when Biden announced in March that “there are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow,” and that he would select one as his running mate, eyes were understandably rolling in many feminist circles. After all, the guy had just kept the glass ceiling intact by securing four more years of a “Men Only” sign for the oval office.  There was no mood to break into a round of the Hallelujah Chorus for the veep consolation.

The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse perfectly captured this sentiment when she adroitly wrote: “Most feminist voters I know don’t want ‘a woman’ in the White House just because an older man announced in advance that he’d earmarked a special lady-slot for someone wearing a pantsuit.” 

We are now four months past Hesse’s touché moment.  Biden’s lady-slot move seems to be having a sustained positive impact on actually getting to know the strengths and skills these women bring to the table.  Until recently, most of them were seen first as representatives of their gender, and secondarily – if at all – as serious thought leaders. 

Social and organizational scientists have been tracking this phenomenon for decades (here and here).  Those who are the demographically few among the many in any organizational setting have a difficult time freeing themselves from their gender, race, or other identity status. They find it much harder to be taken seriously by the many, typically a male majority.  

For example, we knew Rep. Demings was the “black woman” named as a Trump impeachment manager. Now we know her background as a social-worker-turned-cop who served as Orlando’s police chief. We also know her ideas about dealing with the ongoing issue of police violence in the black community.  The same goes for every name on Biden’s list.  The news these past few months has been filled with stories about their backgrounds, including details of their accomplishments and policies they have supported.  

Think back four years ago. Who were the women Hillary Clinton considered for her running mate? There was only one: Elizabeth Warren. The other eight were men. How about Barak Obama in 2008? Again, only one woman: Kathleen Sebelius, then governor of Kansas. The other seven on his short list were men. Warren and Sebelius were both the few among the many, and neither received serious or substantive attention as a possible veep pick. 

As cheesy and patronizing as Biden’s no-men-allowed standard might have looked in March, the process nevertheless delivered a stunning antidote to the perverse leadership numbers game that has kept the national spotlight away from the few women among the many men.  When it comes to “Joe’s List,” women have gone from the few to the only. For the first time in their careers, most of them have appeared on the Sunday talk shows and have written op eds for the New York Times. Freed from being tokens of their gender, we get to know them for their character and substance.

The openness with which these women have approached their vice presidential candidacies stands in sharp contrast to the annoying male norm of publicly feigning interest while jockeying for the job behind the scenes.  Stacey Abrams captured the reason for such an assertive, straight-forward approach when she told the New York Times: “We know extrapolations are made from single moments,” she said. “Part of my directness in answering the question about V.P. is that I don’t want anyone” — whether a Southerner, an African-American, a woman, or all of the above — “to ever look at my answer and say, ‘Well, if she can’t say it, then I can’t think it.’”

The Biden project is by no means a cure-all for gender disparity in our political system. But it’s a worthy first shot at leveling the playing field.  If it gets more people to completely reimagine what a president or vice president looks like, to apprehend that they don’t have to come in pin-striped power suits and red ties, it will have been a step well worth taking. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA! THE WORLD WEEPS FOR THEE

Donald Trump rode into the White House on his high horse of protecting white America from the dreaded Other. He vowed to slay the dragons of otherness: Mexican rapists and drug dealers; black and brown lowlife losers from shithole countries; and, of course, his imaginary caravans of violent gang members invading our southern border.  

As the curtain rises on Act Three of this Shakespearean-like tragedy, King Donald is encountering an abrupt plot reversal.  After nearly four years of trying to remake America in his own white nationalist image, the King has come face-to-face with the real dreaded Other.  

And it is us. 

The world, it turns out, has taken a good, long look at America in this troubled summer of our discontent, and found it to be . . . well, a real shithole.  

Trump was counting on his hosting of a summit of G7 world leaders in June as a symbol of what he branded as “transitioning back to greatness.” The conference, in his mind, would mean that those nasty little blips of a pandemic and demands for racial justice were yesterday’s fake news, and that he had moved on to greater missions, like leading on the world’s stage.  German chancellor Angela Merkel, however, rained on Trump’s transitioning parade by calling the U.S. gathering a health risk in light of our country’s unbent coronavirus curve. Other G7 players agreed and the conference was called off.

It turns out that the G7 rebuff was a mere prelude, an appetizer if you will, in a nasty, karmic feast of crow laid upon Trump’s table for his dining pleasure.  As of Wednesday, American travelers are prohibited from entering the European Union.  This will go down in the annals of international diplomacy as an elegant act of the pot calling the kettle orange (orange, of course, being the new black). 

Trump thinks he invented travel bans. He spent the first months of his presidency barring Muslims from entering the country.  He’s still trying to build a wall to keep the Mexicans at bay. His only aggressive pandemic moves involved travel bans, first against China, then Europe. 

To this president, the coronavirus was just another vile foreigner to be kept forever offshore. The disease, of course, was deeply into globalization.  By the time Trump boarded up the country’s entry portals, the virus had already taken up residence in the homeland, quickly spreading to millions, and killing tens of thousands.  

Europe now has a handle on the pandemic, unlike America where COVID runs rampant while Trump runs for cover. Based on the metrics of the past two weeks, E.U. countries as a bloc have slowed their new infections to 16 per 100,000 people. For the same period, the U.S. stands at 122 new cases per 100,000 people, a ratio that that grows exponentially by the day.  Who can blame them from treating us as the highly unmasked, infection-prone fools that we are?

Yet, this startling new phenomenon of the world seeing America as the ugly other, is by no means limited to the coronavirus. We have been steadily losing value, prestige and power as a country since Donald Trump took office.  He has belittled NATO and military alliances in Asia. He pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord and tore up the Iran nuclear deal. He took the U.S. out of the World Health Organization in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years.  He has insulted virtually every foreign leader who’s not a ruthless dictator.  

But it has gotten so much worse in the past few weeks.  Just as heads the world over were shaking at Trump’s utter failure to lead on virus mitigation, a Minneapolis police officer pressed his white knee into George Floyd’s black neck for nearly nine minutes, killing him and setting off a series of Black Lives Matter protests throughout the world.   Nothing has been the same since.

Trump threatened to call out the military and have protesters shot.  He had mostly peaceful protesters in front of the White House tear gassed and sprayed with rubber bullets so the president could walk to a nearby church for a photo op.  He retweeted a video of a man shouting “white power” slogans.  In another tweet, he sent images of black-on-white assaults and asked why white people weren’t protesting. 

And the international community, our longtime allies, responded with a stunning sense of shock, bordering on disbelief.  The Guardian reported that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, paused for 21 seconds after being asked to comment on his country’s southern neighbor.  The silence was broken with these words: “We all watch in horror and consternation at what is going on in the United States. It is time to pull people together.”

E.U. leaders called out the Trump administration’s “abuse of power” and racism.  The Spanish prime minister expressed solidarity with the demonstrators and concern for America’s growing authoritarianism.  Another European official told a reporter that recent U.S. developments have left most political figures on his continent “shocked, appalled, and scared. . . they are locked in a Trump-induced coma.”

The world has long been fascinated with America. George Floyd’s death triggered massive protests all over the globe in large part because of that fascination, that connection people of all countries have with the U.S.  Here’s what former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt told The Atlantic: “Normally, when something happens – a war, an earthquake – everybody waits to see what the Americans are doing . . . and they calibrate their own response based on that.”

That protocol is no longer operative.  No country in its right mind is copying us today. As New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman wrote the other day, “We’re not leading. We’re not following. We’re lost.”

Sure, we still have the expertise, the world’s best universities and the most innovative companies. Our country has produced more Nobel prize winners, and has more organizations devoted to social justice than any other. But those riches, that helped mold what is best about America, lie dormant now because we have a president who rejects both science and justice.

Donald Trump is the personification of Green Day’s American Idiot, a cartoon character who sputters aphorisms about America First and a return to greatness.  He is a deeply broken man who has turned our country into the dreaded and diabolical Other.

BUSTING POLICE UNIONS: NOT A PANACEA FOR REFORM

Less than a month ago, police unions sat, with comfort and arrogance, atop the power pyramid of this country’s labor movement.  Through campaign contributions and endorsements, they curried favor with the politicians who legislate and negotiate their working conditions.  They won job protections most private sector union members could only dream of.

Then, in the eight minutes and 46 seconds it took Minneapolis police to kill George Floyd, all that leverage and power went poof. It may have been the quickest power reversal in labor history. 

Calling for profound structural changes in policing, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the first step is to deny police officers the right to bargain collectively.  Black Lives Matter and at least one national labor union have called on the AFL-CIO to kick all police unions out of the country’s labor federation. Scores of progressive commentators have jumped on this binary bandwagon, insisting on the elimination of cop unions (here, here and here). 

I will argue here that the choice is not binary, and that there are far better fixes for this mess than to deny collective bargaining rights to the 800,000 workers – including 175,000 people of color – who police the streets of this country.

Negotiating over employment terms – things like pay, vacation, insurance, discipline and a grievance procedure – is hardly the source of our policing problem. Collective bargaining is content neutral; it is a process, not a result. The content of the agreement produced by that process is largely determined by how much power each side has. 

Mayor Frey’s frustrations are understandable.  Minneapolis’ police union is led by a macho, right wing zealot whose resignation has been demanded by state and national labor leaders.  (Unfortunately, democracy – in a union or a country – is no guarantee that the elected leader won’t be an idiot.) Yet, Frey was being irresponsible and disingenuous when he said collective bargaining had to be abolished in order to achieve meaningful police reform. He, or someone on the city’s behalf, agreed to accept a contract he now says was a bad deal. 

So Mr. Mayor, instead of burning down the union hall, negotiate a better contract.  The power dynamics couldn’t be better for him, and for other cities that want to make it easier to rein in errant cops. A month ago, that wasn’t the case.  The power of police unions flowed from law enforcement’s generally high police favorability ratings. That, in turn, placed a high value on police union endorsements from public officials involved in negotiating contracts and writing laws.  That meant powerful leverage for police unions.

And they used that power well.  Discipline language in police contracts (here and here) goes far beyond the basic standard of fairness and due process used in most private sector labor agreements. For example, many police contracts purge prior discipline from an officer’s record. That means an arbitrator deciding whether to uphold discipline for excessive force will be barred from giving any weight to prior acts of brutality. Other provisions require cops accused of misconduct to be given days or weeks to prepare for an internal investigative interview.  Some contracts prohibit a civilian review board from meting out punishment, and others require police management to complete an officer’s investigation within a defined time period. Since an arbitrator’s job is to enforce the contract, many have overturned discharges on the basis that contractual disciplinary procedures were not followed.

In the three weeks since George Floyd’s murder, the pendulum has swung far and wide, from police union power, to a national consensus favoring massive structural changes in policing.  Polling shows that a substantial majority of Americans support recent protests and want meaningful police reform.  This overwhelming change in public opinion has pulled even Senate Republicans out of their comfort zone. Almost overnight, they developed a sudden dim view of the choke hold and no-knock warrants.

Police union leaders are going through a similar death bed conversion by realigning their goals to comport with the diminution of their bargaining power. The three largest PD unions in California took out full-page newspaper ads this week calling for reducing the use of the force, more officer accountability and a rooting out of racist cops.  Washington, DC police union leaders signaled an interest in loosening some of the contractual restraints on management’s ability to discipline. The national president of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the country’s largest police union, also expressed support for revising disciplinary rules.

The Supreme Court once referred to labor union contracts as “living documents,” meaning the parties can and should modify their agreements as conditions and circumstances change. There is no problem created by collective bargaining that can’t be fixed by more bargaining.  Calling for the abolition of police unions is a grotesque overreach.  More than 90 percent of most police contracts have nothing to do with the issues triggered by the murder of George Floyd.  They cover such matters as pay, clothing and equipment allowance, work schedules, vacations, holidays, sick leave, insurance benefits and drug and alcohol testing.  

The policing problem now before the country, of course, goes far beyond a few incorrigibly abusive officers. The “defund the police” rhetoric of Black Lives Matter, and others, speaks wisely to a need to completely reimagine the role of dealing with public safety.  Why would we want to break all of the police unions before doing the reimagining?  Wouldn’t it be better to involve them in helping to alter the paradigm so that whatever we call them – cops, public safety specialists, social workers, facilitators – they will have an ownership stake in the change?

There has never been a better time to rewrite police disciplinary rules. The old ones were products of a different era, if only weeks in the past.  The union power propelling those lopsided agreements has turned into a public mandate for deep structural police reform.  

As a retired union negotiator, I remember what it feels like to go to the bargaining  table with less power than you’d like.  I also know that the choice in those circumstances is clear:  Sacrifice the merely nice in order to hang on to the essential.  In this case, that means union concessions on disciplinary rules in exchange for the right to continue bargaining collectively. 

That would be a win for both sides, and for the rest of the country.

THE WORDS OF GEORGE FLOYD AND DONALD TRUMP: A PORTRAIT OF AMERICA’S DISGRACE

George Floyd and Donald Trump represent the insidious polarities of black oppression and white privilege, of powerlessness and excessive, abusive power. One was a black man down on his luck, unemployed due to the pandemic, dead due to a white cop who took a knee on his neck. The other is a rich white man packed with privilege, who secured the presidency by trying to make racism great again.

Together, they represent opposing archetypes in our abyss. They demonstrate how far we have fallen from America’s ideals and values, and the enormity of the work needed to restore our country’s soul.  

What follows are the words of both men. In Floyd’s case, they were among his final utterances (here and here) between his Memorial Day arrest and death at the hands of Minneapolis police. In Trump’s case, his words were spoken or tweeted in response to the protests over Floyd’s murder.  Floyd’s remarks are in bold. Trump’s quotes are in italics. Together, they depict a gaping and deeply infected wound in the fabric of American life.  

“Please, man, I’m claustrophobic.”

“My Admin has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln.”

“I can’t breathe, please.”

“Just spoke to (Minnesota) Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

“My neck, (long guttural groan) my neck.”

“(If protesters had breached the White House fence), they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons I have ever seen.”

“Please, please, I can’t move.”

“The lowlifes and losers are ripping (cities) apart.”

“Please, the knee in my neck. I can’t breathe.”

“The thugs must be stopped.”

“Can I have some water?”

On a conference call with governors and mayors: “Get a lot of men. You have to dominate. If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“I’m your president of law and order.”

“My neck hurts.”

“When someone is throwing a rock, that’s like shooting a gun. You have to do retribution.”

“Everything hurts.”

“Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors. These people are ANARCHISTS. . .The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe (Biden). Is this what America wants? NO!!!”

“They’re going to kill me.”

“I am mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to . . .protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.”

“Don’t kill me.”

“I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel . . .to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property.”

“Mama, Mama. I can’t breathe.”

Against that backdrop, together with Trump’s declining poll numbers, the 45th president of the United States summoned the news media to the Rose Garden Monday and insisted that he is “an ally of all peaceful protesters.” As he spoke those words, peaceful protesters in front of the White House were being attacked by smoke, flash grenades and tear gas at the hands of riot officers and mounted police. 

The mission, on orders of the Trump Administration, was to clear a path so the president could safely walk two blocks to a nearby church and pose with a Bible for a photo op.  The New York Times reported that the stunt was the idea of his daughter, Ivanka, who accompanied him and pulled the Bible he used as a prop from her $1,540 MaxMara bag.  

George Floyd did not live in the world of photo ops and $1,540 designer accessories. He died after allegedly trying to buy cigarettes with a $20 counterfeit bill. Neither his life nor his humanity mattered to the four police officers who ushered him to his death.  To them, Floyd was, in the poetry of our president, just another “lowlife thug” they needed to “dominate.”

To be sure, a Trumpian testosterone tour of military might is the last thing we need right now. The road to fixing this problem is long and winding. But it necessarily begins with the acknowledgement that black lives matter. It ends only when that truth is fully codified in the policies and procedures of everyday life, and in the hearts of those who hold power.  

Until then, justice and peace will continue to elude us. 

TALE OF TWO DISASTERS: THE VIRUS AND TRUMP’S WAR AGAINST IT

As the superman of divisive politics, Donald Trump is faster than a seething bullet point. He emits more steam than a powerful locomotive, and is able to leap over truth, justice and science in a single bound. 

The good news?  COVID-19 may well be his kryptonite. The man who wormed his way into the White House on the premise that “I alone” can solve America’s problems, has choked badly and publicly at the pandemic’s every turn.  

Up until now, the singular distinction of this misbegotten 45th presidency has been Trump’s Houdini-like escape work in separating himself from the shackles of his many vile, dastardly deeds.  He grabbed pussies, caged children, praised neo-Nazis, paid hush money, sought election interference, told endless lies. With each repugnant move, we waited for him to fall, as did mere mortals before him for acts far more benign. Yet, he not only carried on, he became more brazen in his odiousness.

Then came the novel coronavirus, radically and permanently altering the terrain and architecture of our lives. Everything changed. The rhythms of our days. The sleep quality of our nights. Our thoughts, emotions, plans, uncertainties.   Sometime between early and late March, life was scrambled, turned on its head and, for far too many people, ended.   

The uniqueness of this fragile and perplexing moment is that we are all experiencing the adversity together in, as the cliché goes, real time. To be sure, our pain levels vary depending on circumstance. Yet we share the agonizing sense of loss, of grief, whether over a COVID death, job loss, separation from those we love, decimated retirement accounts or the inability to envision better days ahead. 

Against that backdrop, Donald Trump trotted out his old theatrical, make-it-up-as-you-go routine designed to cast himself in the best possible light. The virus, he said, was no big deal and would soon disappear. As infections increased exponentially, he changed character and became our “war-time president,” pledging to eradicate the enemy.  As the death rate surpassed 1,000 a day and the economy began to tank, he waved the white flag and said it was time for the country to get back to business.  

There have been dozens of role changes since then. One day he was the all-powerful Oz who would tell the governors what to do. The next day, it was all up to the governors, with Trump blasting them on Twitter if he didn’t like what they did. He even managed to encourage and embrace protesters fighting social distancing guidelines issued by his own administration.  Then came his death-defying Mr. Science act with Clorox Bleach, and pill-popping an anti-malarial drug the FDA says can result in death. 

The fact that The Donald was acting erratically and doing dumb stuff wasn’t new. His schtick hasn’t changed in years. What changed was us, his audience.  Most of us had acquired a pre-COVID immunity to his verbal regurgitations. Sure, he told us Mexico would pay for the wall and that his call to the Ukrainian president was perfect. We might roll our eyes and create a meme, but we didn’t lose sleep over it.  

We are now in a whole new ballgame, the worst crisis in a century. We’re holed up at home while this plague ravages the country. For the first time in more than three years, many of us looked at this president through the lens of neither the resistance nor MAGA. We simply wanted him to lead us out of this mess.  Instead, he failed miserably, day in and day out, on national television, where his ratings were high but his leadership nonexistent.  

As the president performed in his daily televised briefings, these were the stats weighing on his audience:   COVID deaths, nearly 100,000; infections, 1.6 million; jobs lost, 38.6 million; families with young children that don’t have enough to eat, 40 percent; increase in cases of serious mental illness since start of pandemic, 300 percent. 

But hark, comes now President Donald John Trump to address the American people on the crisis that has paralyzed our lives.  He looks directly into the Klieg lights and pauses a bit for effect before uttering his momentous declaration:  “We have met the moment, and we prevailed.” 

PREVAILED! Really? Never in the history of the English language has a word been so tortured, so drained of meaning.  Our country is overcome with massive deaths, infections, unemployment and hunger. And this guy takes a victory lap.  Sure, Trump and truth have had a difficult relationship. He said Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a fraud, that Meryl Streep is over-rated and that his IQ is one of the highest. We’ve grown accustomed to his lies.  But this is different. 

We are all feeling the pain of this pandemic. Trump’s claim that he has “prevailed” over it, is a profane rejection of our experience. So is his campaign’s rant about the virus being a political ploy to make him look bad.  This president, based on recent polling (here, here and here), has made himself look bad. About 75 percent of us remain vigilant about social distancing and hold tight to our anxiety over falling victim to this disease. Add to that the fact that Trump’s approval ratings have reached new lows and that Joe Biden is out-polling him. There is every reason to believe that most Americans know full well that the only thing this president has prevailed over is his total diminishment and failure as a leader. 

It would be foolish, of course, to count Trump out for reelection.  We know from 2016 that he is a master of grievance politics, adroit at igniting the passions of those intent on clinging to the unsung glory of white male privilege. 

Still, his cataclysm in dealing with this pandemic leaves us with hope. Some of his softer votes four years ago came from folks who were fed up with both political parties and took a chance on Trump because of his aura of a rich business leader; a guy who could get things done.  That illusion has now been laid bare.  While tens of thousands died, while millions lost their jobs, while families went hungry, Donald Trump worked desperately to protect only himself. The I-alone-can-fix-it guy completely blew it. 

In order to turn the corner on our dual disaster, we need two things in 2021:  a vaccine and a new president.

NEW PRESIDENTIAL MATH: COUNTING SEXUAL ASSAULT ACCUSATIONS

Tara Reade’s sexual assault accusation against Joe Biden has produced some apoplectic commentary predicting the death of the #MeToo movement (here, here and here).  It’s time for a collective deep breath. The movement may be undergoing some natural growing pains, but it is very much alive and well.  If you don’t believe me, ask Harvey Weinstein (New York State Correctional Facility) and Bill Cosby (Pennsylvania State Prison).

The theory of the case for a faltering movement lies with an ambitious rhetorical flourish that guided #MeToo’s branding: “Believe Women.” It perfectly captured the abrupt – if long overdue – paradigm reversal involving sexual misconduct. Suddenly, hundreds of powerful men were losing their jobs and reputations based on women’s sexual harassment and assault complaints, along with substantial corroborating facts.  

For way too many years, women complaining of sexual abuse were not only disbelieved, they weren’t taken seriously. The men said it never happened, or if it did, it was consensual: “He said, she said.” And “he said” was the default position for being taken seriously. The #MeToo movement reversed those power dynamics and made “she said” the default position.  Hence, “Believe Women.”

Yet, the phrase was never intended as a legal standard of proof. It didn’t advocate that a woman’s accusation of sexual abuse, in and of itself and without regard to evidence, meant the guy did it, end of story. In hindsight, “Listen To Women” might have been a more elegant choice of words.  But “Believe Women” had a righteous symmetry to it in a culture where many sexual assaults went unreported due to the cultural propensity to believe men and disbelieve women. 

Now comes our malignantly divisive political environment where everything in sight is a potential weapon.  During the 2018 confirmation hearing on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, a parade of Democratic leaders, including Joe Biden, trotted out the “Believe Women” mantra after Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when the two were in high school.  Kavanaugh denied the allegation, just as Biden denied Reade’s accusation.  That has produced an uproarious Republican chorus of hypocrisy charges against Biden and his defenders.  Tara Reade is a woman, their syllogism notes, so she must be believed, just as Biden and the Democrats insisted that Blasey Ford must be believed. 

Inconsistencies, particularly those based on disparate facts, is a way of life in politics. They also constitute fair game for criticism. But here’s what they won’t do: turn the clock back on the #MeToo reckoning that women’s sexual abuse charges must be taken seriously. The very fact that Reade’s accusation against Biden has been the biggest non-pandemic story for the past 10 days is evidence that she is very much being listened to.

What, then, do we do about that story?  For starters, we ought to feel sad. Really sad.  The Democratic primary process discarded every candidate who was not a white male pushing 80. In an understandable obsession to dump Trump, the working assumption was that this wasn’t the year to “risk” nominating a woman or a person of color.  The final two white geezers standing were Biden, 77, and Bernie Sanders, 78. Since the former vice president was seen as electable, and Sanders was seen as a socialist, the endgame didn’t last long.  As a result, in the most important election of our lives, the presidential sexual abuse allegation box score now stands at: Biden 1; Trump 20+. Although the forced choice is clear, just doing the math is sad. (Elizabeth Warren may have a plan for this, but if she were the nominee it wouldn’t be needed.  Just sayin’.)

We need to take Tara Reade’s accusation seriously. Based on everything I’ve read, her complaint, although definitively unprovable, is nevertheless credible. Reporters spoke with two of her friends who said Reade described the alleged 1993 assault to them back in the 1990s. Most of the 20-some sexual assault and misconduct complaints made against Trump involved similar corroboration. 

The natural inclination in this overheated political moment is to grab hold of those facts that support our desired election outcome. The Trump campaign has already produced video ads portraying Biden as a creepy groper. Some Biden supporters are attacking Reade’s veracity and questioning her motives. In the Twittersphere, there is a battle between “I Believe Tara Reade” and “Tara Reid is a Liar.” Viewing sexual assault charges through a political lens diminishes the gravity of all such offenses. 

Biden’s response to Reade’s accusation was a mixed bag. On the positive side, he didn’t call her a liar, question her motives or denigrate her in any way. In other words, he totally discarded Trump’s playbook on dealing with sexual assault charges.  On the down side, he waited too long before responding, relying instead on leading Democratic women, many of them his potential vice presidential candidates, to sing his praises.  

When he finally issued a 1,006-word response, 659 of those words were about pro-women policies he supported. Although his record on women’s issues is certainly relevant to the campaign, making it the major portion of his defense to a sexual assault charge was cringeworthy. At best, it was a non sequitur. At worst, it was using a voting record to get a pass on a sexual abuse accusation. Either way, it was tone deaf.

Yet, on balance, it was a more enlightened Joe Biden than the one who ramrodded Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination through his Senate Committee in 1991, never taking Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual misconduct against Thomas seriously.  Even at 77, the former vice president remains an educable work-in-progress. The same cannot be said of Trump.

Therein lies the reason why there is no lingering mystery about what to do on November 3. Our choice is between Trump and Biden. It’s the difference between darkness and light, between ineptness and competence, between evil and mostly good. So, take Tara Reade seriously. You can believe her every word and still be compelled to vote for Biden.

Here’s why: Donald Trump is an accused serial sexual assaulter and admitted groper, who just let tens of thousands of Americans die while he denied the Coronavirus. He needs to go, and a vote for Joe Biden is the only way that will happen.

As Don Rumsfeld said in another context, you go into an election with the candidate you have, not the candidate you want.

SEARCHING FOR HOPE IN A PANDEMIC

I was drunk through most of the 1970s. As I twelve-stepped my way into sobriety 40 years ago, I severed all ties with pessimism.  Granted, there wasn’t much about the ‘70s to get all giddy and gaga about, unless you really adored leisure suits. My negativity and cynicism mixed much better with a beer and a bump than it did with AA meetings and bad coffee. The lesson learned was that we can’t always control the events in our lives, but we can chose how to react to them.  So I’ve been a registered optimist since 1980 and, as a result, a lot happier.  

These past couple of months, however, have posed the single largest challenge to that world view since my conversion to hopefulness. With apologies to Thomas Paine, these are the times that try the optimist’s soul. 

How do you find even a thin ray of light in the darkness of our new existence? The soaring numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths are baked into the daily metrics of our lives, like the pollen count and chances of measurable precipitation. More than 26 million American jobs have been lost. Economists predict that 21 million of us will be pulled into poverty.  Food bank waiting lines stretch for miles throughout the country.  Not exactly the kind of stuff that lends itself to an optimistic spin.

The basic contours of any crisis are pollenated with an abundance of pessimism.  Yet, with effective, focused, purposeful leadership, we can optimistically and hopefully work our way out of the abyss. On a national level, however, those were not the cards we were dealt.  Instead, 2020 will forever be known as the confluence of two hideous events: the most deadly pandemic in a century, and the reign of our most unhinged and incompetent president ever.  

Donald Trump addresses the crisis in protracted daily news conferences.  I challenge you to find even the tiniest needle of genuine hope in his haystack of delusions, reversals, fabrications and other cognitive constipations he brings to the table.  The diabolical intersection between Trump and this pandemic was on full display Thursday when, on that single day, our country’s COVID-19 body count surpassed 50,000, and warnings rang out to ignore the president’s soliloquy on injecting bleach. 

It’s not just his crisis management incompetence that clouds any path to optimism. Trump failed miserably at what should have been his easiest task: pulling this fractured and wounded nation together, united – despite political differences – in the singular goal of working together to survive this virus.  History offers an abundance of precedence for that approach. For most of us, a threat to our survival outranks partisan and policy differences. Our humanity, in the broadest sense of the word, becomes our loadstar.  

Donald Trump, however, was born without a humanity gene. Not once has this president showed a modicum of empathy for those who lost their lives or their livelihoods in this pandemic.   The closest he comes to expressing grief is when he ruminates about the loss of an economy he thought would buy him reelection. 

It’s the same old story. Unable to pivot, Transactional Donald sticks with the schtick that brought him to the party: an unnatural enthrallment with himself, and intense grievances with everyone not wearing a MAGA hat.  Although the virus infects without regard to party affiliation, the national response is all tangled up in red and blue.   To mask or not to mask became a political litmus test as soon as Trump announced he wouldn’t wear one.

Given all that doom and gloom, you may be wondering whether I have abandoned my vow of optimism.  No, not even close.  The optimistic viewpoint is not a snapshot in time. It’s not looking at a train wreck and calling it “fantastic,” (as Trump might if he thought it would get him votes).  That’s being delusional, not optimistic. Optimism is being hopeful that the horror of now can eventually be converted into a better place.  No successful movement for change has ever been propelled by the hopelessness of pessimism. 

The most hopeful sign lies in the answer to this constantly asked question:  When will we get back to normal?  Never.  When normalcy left us, it did not buy a return ticket. It’s not coming back. And that is very good news.  What is happening to us right now is so deep and pervasive that it will change us in profound ways, and give us a unique opportunity to create a brand new normal. 

Those New Deal programs of the 1930s that lifted up millions of poor and working class Americans didn’t just serendipitously appear one day.  They evolved as the new normal from out of the ashes of the Great Depression, a disaster every bit as devastating and painful and game-changing as this pandemic.  Then, like now, the crisis dramatically identified the cracks, strictures and gaping holes in our body politic.  There was no going back to normal again.

Through the audacity of pain, this pandemic has drawn us a road map for change. Things like wealth redistribution, universal health insurance, paid sick and family leave for workers were mocked as “socialist tropes” by many on the right just months ago. Yet, the multiple trillion dollar relief bills passed by Congress recently made strides in all of those directions. Even some Republicans are pushing the Trump administration to confront the pandemic’s disparate impact on people of color and to address racial disparities in health care. As we eventually attempt a reset on normal, it’s hard not to see momentum on those issues continuing.  

There is something else to be guardedly hopeful about.  For the first time in his presidency, Trump is struggling – really struggling – to shake off his brazen ineptness and idiotic stumbles. This is decidedly not normal.  This is the man who boasted about sexually assaulting women. He put children in cages. He colluded with Russia. He obstructed justice. He tried to force foreign countries to help him win reelection. He was even impeached, and then acquitted.  Through it all, his approval ratings, although low, were relatively constant.  Recent polling shows that the president is rapidly losing the public’s confidence in handling the pandemic.  

Just think about that: The guy who says he could get by shooting someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue is politically done in by a virus he said would be gone by April.  That’s the meaning of – that’s the beauty of – optimism. 

AMERICA THE UNEXCEPTIONAL

As we bury our COVID-19 dead, let us dig the deepest grave of all for the only victim that deserved to die:  American exceptionalism.  

For more than 200 years, we have clung to the dangerously delusional notion that our country is vastly superior to all other nations. The myth of American exceptionalism has found its way into every Fourth of July parade, every Veterans Day memorial, every politician’s rhetorical flourish.

Ronald Reagan called America a “shining city on a hill.”  Thomas Jefferson referred to it as the world’s “empire of liberty.”  Abraham Lincoln said it was the “last best hope of earth.” 

And then came the Great Trump Pandemic of 2020.  The president spent months dismissing the approaching plague as a “Chinese virus” that would pose no problem for Americans.  Despite his rosy, it’s-nothing-to-worry-about prognosis, the White House, according to the New York Times, knew in January that the coronavirus would strike us so hard that the death toll could hit 500,000.  

Trump’s administration was also aware that the country seriously lacked sufficient medical equipment and gear to deal with the pandemic’s magnitude.  Yet, it did nothing in January or February to prepare for the coming avalanche.  By late March, the only sign of American exceptionalism was that the United States had more cases of the deadly virus than any other country in the world. On Saturday, it also claimed the trophy for the most COVID-19 deaths. 

The concept of America as innately superior and exceptional has long been a deeply embedded national illusion. The dynamic is reminiscent of George and Martha’s imaginary child in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf. On some level we knew it wasn’t true, but like Albee’s quarreling protagonists, the more we pretended that it was, the better we felt, and the more real it seemed.  

In a deliciously ironic twist, the term American exceptionalism was coined quite sardonically in 1929 by Joseph Stalin. American communist leaders had argued that the country’s unique brand of capitalism was an exception to universal Marxist laws.  Stalin’s response was to condemn the “heresy of American exceptionalism” and expel the U.S. delegation from the Communist International.  

As the years passed, however, American exceptionalism was thoroughly drained of any trace of Stalin’s sarcasm.  Instead, it reflected a deeply held – if misguided – belief that our country was somehow divinely inspired to be the very best the world has to offer. A 2017 Pew Research poll showed that only 14 percent of Americans believe there are countries better than ours. Obviously, this view that America is and always has been superbly exceptional, ignores a number of ignoble chapters in America’s story. To name just a few: massacres of native Americans, slavery, Jim Crow Laws and rampant, ongoing discrimination on the basis of race, sex and national origin. 

Even before the Trump pandemic, the data consistently refuted the claim of American exceptionalism. According to a variety of studies, America ranks 33rd for political freedom, 19th for happiness, 13th in quality of life, 45th in infant mortality, 46th in maternal mortality, 36th in life expectancy, 27th in healthcare and education and 48th for protecting press freedom. Of the G7 nations (U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK), America’s income inequality is the highest. 

Whatever lingering doubt there may have been about America’s status as the world’s shining city on a hill was decisively resolved by our country’s despicable bungling of the biggest crisis in our lifetime.  Many other nations, with far fewer resources, have totally out-shown the United States in marshalling a response to the pandemic.  For example, to name just a few, the governments of South Korea, Germany, Finland, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada and Denmark have far and away surpassed the U.S. in battling this virus (here and here).

Amazingly, the United States had as much if not more information about the Coronavirus as those other countries.  They succeeded because they acted quickly and decisively based only on the scientific data, not on the political optics of a leader’s reelection campaign. Donald Trump, on the other hand, spent more than two months ignoring that data and rejecting repeated warnings to prepare for what would be the plague of the century.

As a result, one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world, is still scrounging around for ventilators, personal protective equipment, hospital beds and body bags.  The president performs on his daily reality television show, spewing forth false information, mixed messages, and nauseating self-promotion. Anxiety-stricken Americans tune into this spectacle looking for guidance on this terror that has gripped our lives. Instead, they see a president insulting his political opponents, accusing hospital employees of stealing protective equipment, and boasting about his television ratings. 

Hardly American exceptionalism.  Yet, America used to do some exceptional things.  At the very start of the Ebola crisis in 2014, the Obama administration sent thousands of medical workers to fight the disease at its epicenter in West Africa, an effort that not only slowed the disease in that country, but blocked its spread to the U.S.  

Not surprisingly, Trump has done just the opposite.  Not only has he failed to establish a cohesive national plan to combat the virus, the president has avoided any effort to coordinate with other countries, preferring instead to slam doors in their faces.  He tried – unsuccessfully – to buy a German company working on a Coronavirus vaccine so that the U.S. could horde the medication.  He ordered companies making masks and ventilators not to comply with contracts to deliver some equipment to other countries.  One of those countries was Canada, which has been sending medical personnel from Windsor, Ontario into Detroit to help care for COVID patients.

No country is inherently and permanently bad or good.  Like people, nations are mixed bags, package deals, the contents of which depend on all sorts of variables, like polices, resources and leadership.  The notion that we as a nation are exceptional, that we are the best, blocks our ability to grow, to become better, to learn from other countries. 

As our 45th president has so ably demonstrated, the narcissistic illusion of perfection is a virus of the soul that disposes of the need to change.  Until we come up with a vaccine, let’s keep our social distance from American exceptionalism. 

THE AUDACITY OF AUTHENTICITY WITHOUT VIRTUE

What do you call a president who, in the middle of a deadly pandemic, repeatedly spews falsehoods, insults political opponents and praises himself?  A-U-T-H-E-N-T-I-C. You call him authentic.

After all, the 2016 presidential election was all about authenticity (here, here and here). The pundits and the pollsters kept telling us that, for all of his failings, Donald Trump was seen by voters as being authentic. The Donald won the election, the story line went, because he was real and Hillary Clinton was fake.  This bizarre binary standard for evaluating politicians extended into 2020. Reams have been written about potential Democratic presidential candidates and their authenticity or lack thereof. 

Why are we treating authenticity – irrespective of the content of a person’s character – as a virtue?  Clearly, Trump is no phony. He’s the real deal. But the deal is terrible. He is authentically bad, immoral and indifferent to the needs of others. Why is that kind of authenticity virtuous? How did we get here?

Well, don’t blame Aristotle. The architecture he provided for ethical systems that lasted centuries revolved around such virtues as courage, honor, temperance, truthfulness, justice and friendship. Authenticity did not make his list. In fact, Aristotle went in the opposite direction, advising us to emulate others who have these virtues until they become habitual with us. 

Then, in the 18th century, a Genevan philosopher named Jean-Jacques Rousseau, advocated an alternative view, one in which authenticity – being true to one’s self – sits atop his ethical hierarchy. Rousseau, according to academicians who studied him, saw pure, unvarnished authenticity as the most important source of happiness and psychological coherence. He believed that people are naturally good and that their authentic selves cannot harm others since “their self-love is moderated by concern for others.”   Rousseau developed this school of thought roughly 300 years before Donald Trump roamed the earth.

The late social critic and academic Christopher Lasch was, however, very aware of the self-absorbed Trumpian archetype. More than 40 years ago, he wrote a book called The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. In it, Lasch noted the similarities between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and authenticity. He wrote that narcissism and authenticity are both characterized by “. . . deficient empathetic skills, self-indulgence and self-absorbed behavior.” In other words:  An authentic narcissist is still a narcissist. And wholly without virtue.

The political fascination with authenticity did not begin with Trump. It exploded with him and, if we are lucky, it will end with him. But this bizarre phenomenon has been building for some time. Think back to the Bush v. Gore election in 2000.  The rap on Gore was that he was too stiff and had a propensity to overinflate his resume. Bush, despite – or maybe because of – an  antipathy toward good syntax, struck people as more real, the kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with.  

This desire for authenticity in leadership is certainly understandable. Politicians have long been seen as crafty, cagey characters who say one thing and do another, who appear overly buttoned down and tightly scripted.  Add to those perceptions the current environment of rampant distrust and disgust with our government and political systems, and you can begin to see the attraction of someone who simultaneously wants to trash the status quo and appears to be genuinely authentic.  

Like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  Yes, they are lightyears apart in so many ways.  Yet their appeal has embraced the same two elements: being authentic and promising to blow the system up.  Sanders’ brand of authenticity is considerably different than Trump’s.  Bernie is not a narcissist.  But his fans constantly boast about how their candidate hasn’t changed in 40 years.  Indeed, there is a lot of truth to that.  Sanders has forever believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat, the evil of capitalism and value of class warfare.  

In many ways, Sanders’ authenticity is more pure and moral than Trump’s.  In the finest Rousseauian tradition, Bernie is stridently faithful to his principles. They reflect his true self and he is not of a mind to modify them in order to enlarge his base.  Therein lies a serious problem for a presidential candidate. His allegiance to an ideology makes him authentic, endears him to his followers and advances his movement. But given his narrow appeal to a minority of the electorate, and the absence of the slightest rhetorical nod to wanting to be “president for all Americans”, he lacks the votes to win.  To Bernie, being true to himself is more important than winning.

That is decidedly not the case for Donald Trump.  To him, it’s all about winning. He has no ideology or core beliefs. His positions on . . . well, on everything, change with the wind, depending on what he thinks will help him win.  He spent the first three weeks of the coronavirus crisis insisting it was a hoax that would soon go away. Then he became a “wartime president”, leading the battle against the dreaded enemy virus. As cases started doubling every few days, as temporary morgues were built near hospitals, he talked about a quick return to normal. On Sunday, responding to a bipartisan outcry, he backed away from abruptly ending the war, saying, “Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won.”

 All of these dramatically disparate moves were about only one thing: Trump’s perception of what would best help him win reelection.  That’s authenticity. That’s being true to his narcissistic self. 

It has been said that this life-and-death crisis we are going through will forever change us. Let us hope that one of those changes is a massive rejection of the notion that we should pick our leaders on the basis of unbridled authenticity, regardless of how obnoxious and odious a candidate’s behavior may be.  

Aristotle had it right. Virtue doesn’t lie in being true to whatever kind of self we may have. Virtue is about qualities like courage, honor, honesty and justice that provide a better life for all of us.  Authenticity without virtue is no more than a fool looking into a mirror.

OUR COMPOUNDED VIRAL CRISIS: COVID-19 & TRUMP

And on the 56th day of the pandemic, Donald Trump crawled out from under his rock of make-believe and denial, to declare: “This is a bad one. This is a very bad one.”  Gone was talk of the coronavirus being a “Democratic hoax.” Gone were assurances that “it will work out well,” and will soon “just go away.” Could it be that The Donald has finally seen the light? Either that or, as the New York Times reported, he saw a new scientific warning that, without drastic actions, 2.2 million Americans could die. Worse yet (for him), he could lose the election.

Many of us thought Trump hit rock bottom when he had children snatched from their parents’ arms and tossed into cages. Wrong. For this volatile and mercurial president, there is no bottom in sight. All we have, as the past few weeks have shown, is a metastasizing obliteration of everything we value in a leader. Like decency, humanity, empathy, humility, insight and competence.

Historians will one day divide the Trump administration into two chronological periods: before and after the plague of COVID-19. Americans rarely experience the fear and pain of a crisis at the same time. Hurricanes, fires, tornadoes and the like devastate regionally, leaving the rest of us to breathe an empathetic sigh of relief as we send thoughts and prayers to the victims.  Not since the 2001 terrorist attacks, have we suffered together as a nation, experiencing the same foreboding – over both the present and the future. There is now, as there was then, a dramatic loss of social equilibrium.

Our world, as we know it, is shutting down.  Churches, schools, restaurants and workplaces have been shuttered. Flights, sporting events, Broadway plays and community festivals have been canceled. From the dark depths of our existential isolation, we ponder the unknowable and unthinkable: How long will this last? Will I lose my job? Will my 401(k) come back? Will I, or people I love, get this virus and die?

This national angst and anxiety cried out for leadership, someone to soothe our souls, acknowledge our pain and provide us with credible information and constructive steps to deal with the crisis.  Bill Clinton did that after the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed. George W. Bush did that after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Barak Obama did that after the Charleston church shooting.

Donald Trump, however, will go down in history as the only president who grabbed hold of a national crisis and made it worse.  Rather than trying to unite the country by appealing to “the better angels of our nature”, as Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War, Trump turned a deadly virus into a bitterly partisan litmus test. He insisted that talk of an epidemic was designed to hurt him politically.   Until just recently, when U.S. cases of the virus began to grow exponentially, national polling confirmed the absurd and unprecedented results of this politicization of a disease.  Democrats were seriously concerned about the coronavirus. Republicans were not (here, here and here).  

To be sure, Trump did not cause this virus. What he did, however, was inexplicable, inexcusable and downright dumb. This president totally shut down the very essence of who he is. Gone was the bombastic, I-alone-can-fix-it authoritarian, a guy who routinely abandons the rule of law in order to have his way with the world. 

This is the same president who told border patrol agents to break the law in order to keep immigrants from entering the country, promising to pardon them if they were arrested.  He started his presidency by slapping a constitutionally dubious Muslim travel ban together, letting the courts sort it out later. He did the same with cutting off funds for sanctuary cities, placing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, funding his Mexican wall, among many other issues. He moved quickly, unilaterally and often illegally, but won more than he lost in subsequent litigation.

Here’s a thought experiment: Turn back the clock to January 21, when the first U.S. coronavirus case surfaced. Imagine Trump, in his finest bellicose and authoritarian persona, doing what he did Monday with his “bad one” rhetoric, and ordering, in an abundance of caution, a ban on groups of 10 or more gathering together.

Imagine further that he declared a national emergency back then, instead of waiting two months, and issued an executive order closing all schools, non-essential businesses and public transportation, all to protect Americans from the tragic experiences of other countries.   Sure, some of us liberals would have yelled about his authoritarian overreactions. The ACLU might have gone to court.  But, if come May or June there was a substantially smaller spread of the virus here than in other countries, Trump would claim hero status. And for the first time in his life, such self-adulation would have credibility. With mere months to go before the election.

Of course, that would have involved concepts foreign in Trump’s orbit, like strategic thinking, science and planning ahead.  This is a president who lives only in the moment. All that matters to him is how he looks in that moment. He didn’t want the stock market to tank and make him look bad.  So when the Dow took a big dip, he insisted the Democrats created the virus as a hoax to torpedo the economy and hurt his reelection chances.  He insisted there was nothing to worry about and encouraged people to take no precautions.  As the number of infected Americans began to rise, he told one lie after another. When there were 14 cases, he claimed the number would soon drop to zero. The number is now more than 5,000.  He insisted millions of people would be tested. The United States, to this day, remains the least tested among industrialized countries.  He said a vaccine was at hand. It is not.  

As a result, our country is engulfed in two crises of astronomical proportion.  One is COVID-19, a disease caused by a fast-spreading virus that will, according to medical experts, infect at least a third of the country, potentially killing millions of us. The other crisis is one of deplorable and morally bankrupt leadership, a president who can’t see beyond his own ego needs, one who – slogans notwithstanding – has never put the American people first. 

Scientists are confident that the virus will eventually be controlled.  As for our other crisis, the only shot we have at eradicating the poison from our democracy is the ballot box.  May November 3 bring us the vaccine we need to restore dignity and decency to the American presidency.