While marketed as the first debate of this year’s presidential contest, last week’s meeting of Joe Biden and Donald Trump was more debacle than debate. I opted for listening to music – Mahler’s 2nd to be specific – rather than subject myself to what I feared would be a horror show. As I have learned since, I was wise to protect myself from the televised exchanges and the post-mortem punditry. By all accounts, democracy suffered a stinging defeat.
How has it come to this?
Two generations ago, Epharisto Matsuaire, an Oxfam community organizer from Zimbabwe, offered a look into the answer to that question. In response to Oxfam’s quest to define community leadership, Matsuaire asserted that a good leader loves the people, tells the truth, and knows when to go away. By that standard, we were 0 for 2 last week. Joe Biden arguably loves the people and, more often than not, tells the truth (or at least places some stock in it.) He just forgot to go away. Donald Trump has demonstrated both that he’s incapable of loving anything or anyone not in the mirror and that he has an utter disregard – if not disdain – for truth telling. And he too, sadly, forgot to go away.
So, is there any hope? Precious little, I fear. Maybe there’s a reasonable alternative to Matsuaire’s measure by which to judge the candidates. Surely there are other metrics, but I can’t think of any that would give me hope for a good outcome in November and, more significantly, for the future of our democracy. But, in the name of grasping at straws, here’s one small ray of hope. Neither Biden nor Trump has yet secured the nomination of his party. Either or both could step aside, or party leaders and would-be alternate candidates could force an open convention in the name of producing a better candidate for the November ballot. To be clear, there is zero evidence that either candidate or party has the will to spare us a Biden-Trump rematch. But, as you can tell, I’m given to grasping at straws when not escaping into music.
Thankfully, Gustav Mahler wrote nine symphonies, and there is a lot of other great music to help drown out the cacophony that is today’s political reality. It may not save democracy, but perhaps it can contribute to saving spirit and avoiding despair.
Right there with you Jay. Though my drug, er, I mean music of choice runs more toward David Bromberg and Muddy Waters. “Some people try to tell me that these blues ain’t bad….”