It could be painful, but look at the presidential candidates we’re down to. There are — there must be — redeeming traits in each. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be the last ones standing. But there also are questions about all three of them that scare people.
With Hillary Clinton and her vacillating sincerity, the question is: can we trust her? With Donald Trump and his vague command of coherent policy, credible preparedness, or his own temper (just imagine him with the nuclear codes), can we (or any nation) tolerate him? As for Bernie Sanders, who promises the sky, does he live in the real world?
Then again, when’s the last time we had a perfect candidate? One with perfect integrity, perfect temperament, perfect transparency, a perfect grip on reality? Not as long as I can remember.
So as a nation, come November, we’ll swallow our standards and hold our noses and vote. It won’t be the first time.
But I’m still scared, because none of the three, I fear, can successfully, effectively lead. Not after the nastiest contests in modern memory and especially not if we end up again with what we have now: one party in the White House, the other controlling Congress.
Clinton? Republicans hate her. Maybe even more than they hate President Obama. They would say she can’t tell a truth from a lie. They would stand in the way of everything she’d try to do. Think about this: Obama entered office without the 55 percent negative nationwide rating that Clinton carries like an albatross, yet Republicans brazenly built barriers meant to block virtually every policy he pursued. Can anyone seriously imagine Clinton could charm them down?
Trump? Despite the passion of his proponents, his own negatives are the highest of any presidential candidate in history; he’d be lucky if they sank to Clinton’s level. Sure, more than 10 million primary voters have taken him seriously, but most of the nation still doesn’t. Trump assures us that if elected, he would be so “presidential” that we’d all be “bored,” but since his trademark since the get-go has been to degrade and denigrate every detractor in his path, his pledge to act presidential is no more believable than the color of his hair. Given the open animosity from leaders in the very party he purports to represent — from Mitt Romney to John McCain to Jeb Bush to Ted Cruz —the odds of Trump even winning the heart of the Republican Party, let alone anyone else’s, are low. Even Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said Thursday that he’s “not ready” to endorse Trump.
Sanders? This one’s not hard. He calls himself a “democratic socialist,” but if you properly define the word, socialism means government ownership of the means of production. Sanders advocates more government intervention than we’re used to, but that’s a far cry from socialism. (In the Soviet Union, I once did a story about the fact that even the kits used by sidewalk shoeshine men belonged to the government. That was socialism!) But do conservatives care about the difference? He’d be tagged with a dirty label of his own making, which would scare off elected legislators who might want to support his policies but also want to be elected again.
What’s more, for many of us, none of these candidates has the capacity to inspire. Donald brags, Hillary shouts, Bernie repeats himself. Can we expect our next president to deliver stirring oratory that might bring us around, like JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you” or Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill”? Hardly.
Given their undeniable negatives, whatever positives these candidates have to offer probably won’t compensate. Not with the citizenry, maybe not with the legislators whose patronage a president needs in order to lead.
Which leaves us where? We’ve all heard the political chant “Four more years.” This time, it takes on a whole new meaning: four more years of gridlock.
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen is an author, public speaker, and former foreign correspondent for ABC News.
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