What Me Worry?

I'm not Gonna Nitpick...for now.

“We have to stay woke. Everybody needs to be woke. And you can talk about if you’re the wokest or woker, but just stay more woke than less woke.” 

—Kamala Harris in 2017, according to the Free Press

Why am I not buying the various narratives being produced by my centrist fellow-travelers, like this excellent piece by Ruy Teixeira, arguing that the Harris-Walz ticket is too liberal for comfort? There are all these telltale sniffs of slovenly, knee-jerk leftery to the ticket. There was Harris’s tragic delusion in 2020 that social media “progressives” represented the heart of the Democratic Party—they didn’t, just a noisier body part. There is the hint of Teachers Union orthodoxy—keeping the schools closed during Covid—beneath Tim Walz’s smile. As Jonathan Chait noted in a recent piece:

“Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values,” Walz said on a recent call. “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

Actually, if you’re even vaguely familiar with the history of the 20th century, you know that one person’s socialism is another person’s repression. And “progressive values” can turn reactionary when it comes to State mandated experiments with social engineering (like DEI programs) and industrial policy. It has been a mission of Sanity Clause to call out the lazy, elitist cultural policies of the left. So why am I not so bothered by salon pinkery of the Democratic ticket?

Well, because of the other main mission of Sanity Clause: to make sure that Donald Trump never serves as President again. Why am I so offended by Trump? Well, he’s prohibitively offensive. Here’s a Truth Social tweet from the week:

What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE,” the post read. “He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!”

This is the work of a madman. I have four grandchildren. I don’t want them to grow up thinking this is what a President of the United States sounds like. There is also the gold-sneaker-Bible-peddling huckster aspect. What a classic American type: the Duke and the Dauphin in Huckleberry Finn (a book liberals banned), Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry. P.T. Barnum—there’s a sucker (a word Trump has used disgracefully; see below) born every minute. And there is a subtle toxicity to the man: He has suddenly found the mistaken overlap between insane asylums and asylum seekers—and hopes, clearly, that some of his less astute supporters will mistake the two.

But my disgust with Trump is deeper, more personal. He made a mockery of the values and issues and study to which I devoted my life. Yes, I loved—do love—the game of politics. But I also loved the nuances of public policy. Daniel Patrick Moynihan taught me to look clearly as the distressing realities of urban pathology. Richard Holbrooke told me that China was the most important country in the world for the rest of my life and “You can’t ever really know it, but you’re world-illiterate if you don’t try.” David Petraeus gave me reading lists about counterinsurgency warfare and then invited me out to Fort Leavenworth to study with his brilliant team, which was putting together the Army’s Counterinsurgency manual. I took all these experiences seriously. I was especially influenced by the rigor of the military intellectuals Petraeus had recruited. We had blundered into Iraq, prosecuted a war without having an endgame. Lives were being lost. A better way out had to be found. I was skeptical they’d find it, but they did—through hard work and discipline, and a readiness to sacrifice for the greater good.

When Trump called the military “suckers” and “losers”—and he did, his Chief of Staff General John Kelly swears to it—he was taking down all of us who try to be patriotic, who take governance seriously. He was saying policy wonks were losers. He didn’t care about deficits—he blew massive holes in them—or even the border (he forced his flunkies to tank the bipartisan immigration deal). An endorsement from Elon Musk changed his position on electric cars; he announced his openness to accepting bribes from the fossil fuel magnates. He did not take the intricacies of running a democracy seriously. He didn’t care about the finely-balanced system of checks and balances and data collection. Another Trump term, I believe, may not result in a dictatorship, but the wobbly wheels of government might start coming off. The precision and concessions needed to keep a democracy afloat may start to fail. We may lose the extraordinary country we have, bit by bit; and then, cataclysmically, if the machine isn’t carefully tended and lubricated.

So, anyone but Trump. I’ve believed that the Democrats have empowered Trump with their cavalier arrogance when it came to social policies—their identity politics, their jargon games, their disdain for the less educated. And they made it worse for themselves this year by hanging on to a good man, Joe Biden, who had passed his time. Without the Biden anchor, we’ve returned to the presidential ballpark that existed in 2016 and 2020. It will be a close run thing, but Trump can beaten. And I’ll call out Harris and Walz when they take positions that endanger the chances of doing that. But I’ll not nitpick them. And I’ll enjoy the ride for one last reason:

The joy and energy and optimism Harris and Walz are bringing to the effort. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that. I hadn’t realized how oppressive the dueling pessimisms trotted out by right-wing populists and left-wing academics had made me feel. I’m easy with all the smiling; I’m thrilled with the needling and prodding of the bloated Orange delusion. It’s just a goddamn relief. We can fight over school choice and electric cars and pronouns when the Trump carbuncle has been removed from the soft underbelly of our body politic. For now, I’m hoping to laugh all the way to the polls.