BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JULY 22, 2024

President Biden, for the “good of the country and his party” ended his campaign for the Presidency over the weekend and endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris.

The media have been consumed by the immediacy of this wild and crazy time in America, as you’d expect. But as difficult as it seems there are more long-term issues at stake. More coming.

Popular opinion has it that Harris is the heir apparent and recent events would bear that out. But her nomination is not a done deal. The convention outcome is still subject to the whims of the kingmakers (superdelegates) and influencers, and the unbound convention delegates. More will depend on her polling numbers, which have not been much better than Biden’s, although they should experience a bump up.

The overriding issue is whether she can beat Donald Trump. Campaign politics is first self-survival. It’s human nature. If enough are convinced that a Harris candidacy will hurt down-ballot candidates and worse, cost Democrats control of Congress, survival instincts may well affect her nomination. Many Democrats have a visceral disgust of Trump and Trumpism and consider his defeat and exile their first priority.

The good news for Harris is that she will attract support from voters done with Trump, as Fox commentator Britt Hume pointed out recently. Biden benefitted from the dump Trump political center in 2020 and Harris would likely do so in 2024.

Joe Biden has done the right thing. Whether he began harboring doubts about his ability didn’t matter anymore. Public perceptions were clear. The perceived or real risk to the country and to the Democratic Party were too great. He has a 50-year career in American politics to look back on. He finally climbed his way to the Presidential summit, which always seemed to be his crowning ambition.

In the meantime, while the Democrats coalesce, we wait for the real Donald Trump to reveal himself. Trump could still win, but it will make a tremendous difference which of his personalities prevail. As President for another four years Trump could have a tornadic impact on the country, our system of government, political behavior and social order.

After watching his acceptance speech, I read the transcript several times trying to decide which Trump was delivering it.

There were several personalities at the podium. Pre-speech publicity created the impression that a new leader would appear after the attack in Butler, PA; that Trump had been reincarnated as a somber, humble human being, touched by the hand of providence that protected him from certain death by an assassin’s bullet.

Much of the speech shaped that image with the silky prose of a first-class speechwriter. “Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed. We are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart,” he said. There would be no mention of Joe Biden, the publicists said.

But then the old personality traits broke through the facade of the speechwriters’ calming prose. “Crazy Nancy Pelosi” he called the former Speaker. “And I say it often,” he went on, “if you took the ten worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it the ten worst edit them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done, only going to use the term once. Biden. I’m not going to use the name anymore. Just one time. The damage that he’s done to this country is unthinkable. It’s unthinkable.” Trump was his old self, to be loved or hated.

There’s just no in-between with him. As the cliché goes, he is who he is.

There was no shortage of the old Trump in the other passages. He was full of hyperbole, exaggerations, self-aggrandizement and falsehoods (feel free to call them lies). He was so braggadocios I thought he was going to declare himself a deity.

“I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country…“I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately, bring down interest rates and lower the cost of energy. We will drill, baby, drill.”

He was so full of rhetorical wizardry. I was reminded of a post on Facebook containing dialogue penned by Catch-22 author Joseph Heller 70 years ago. It fits like a glove on Trump and too many other politicians:

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

The former President’s nature didn’t retreat.

“Trump responded to the news of Biden dropping out with a post on Truth Social, stating that Biden was ‘not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve’ and ‘never was,’” according to the Daily Caller. “Minutes after the announcement, Trump reportedly told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in a phone call that Biden is ‘the worst president in the history of our country.’”

He has had similar words for Kamala Harris.

Back to more serious challenges. The demolition of our electoral system will be with us to November and probably beyond. It has potentially catastrophic impact.

However, it is the beyond that bothers me the most. I often use the analogy pollster David Winston used to use to describe the gravity of the situation we are in. Two people are looking at a house. One says, it needs new windows, a porch and fresh paint, ignoring the fact that the house is on fire.

Our House is not on fire but it is a fire hazard.

The American people must do what they can, beginning now, to put a stop to the decimation we have tolerated for years. The anger, the divisiveness, the extremism and the savagery of our politics is going to ruin what two centuries of generations have bequeathed to us.

Our venerated system of self-governance is being undermined by a foundation that’s crumbling and cracking. There is no easy course toward restoration. It is too late for simple solutions and glittering generalities.

There are five foundational blocks that Jerry Climer and discussed in our book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People. There are others but these are among those that if restored are our best hope of political and social renewal. They are:

• Civics and history education
• Civil discourse
• Reform of Congress that is transformative, structural, and procedural
• Restoration and reform of political and social institutions, including the media, advocacy, political parties, and campaign finance, among others.
• Civic Engagement beginning with local government and politics and running through all levels.

Change is inevitable in a constantly rejuvenating representative Republic like ours and that’s a good thing. But change doesn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It doesn’t stand much of a chance against the forces loose in our country without an informed and empowered electorate.

It can’t be left to politicians. That has been evident for a long time.

It’s time for the citizenry to step up before another bizarre election season that will begin before this one is over, makes it even harder to fix what’s broken.