President Trump, infected by the Covid-19 virus, was hospitalized and after four days, he abruptly left the hospital without required isolation or quarantine and returned to the White House and stood in the White House balcony without a mask in defiance and waved to his captive audience outside. It is a classic spectacle of a Don Quixote fighting against a windmill. It was insane.
The result was predictable. He became an instant superspreader of the virus. His brash and reckless behaviour has already infected at least 14 White House officials including Miller, his senior advisor. The White House is in total chaos and disarray. All his chiefs of staff in the Pentagon are in quarantine. Essentially, his elite administration is paralyzed. The nation is gripped by a lurking fear and apprehension posing a threat to its stability and security. Former defense secretary James Mattis truly said: “Trump is dangerous and unfit.”
He lied to people, downplaying the severity of the threat of the coronavirus crisis, describing it just like any other flu which would disappear. He spurned the counsel of health scientists to wear masks and maintain social distancing. He continued to hold campaign rallies without health precautionary measures. The result is the needless loss of over 210,000 American lives, the highest anywhere, on his watch. He abdicated his leadership when it was most needed.
It is a critical moment for the nation, faced with a stark choice between survival and death and extinction. A choice between eccentricity, tantrums, sanity, and seriousness of purpose. The choice is simple. The only alternative is Joe Biden, who will restore the confidence of the nation by redeeming his pledge to confront the deadly virus, according to the advice of medical scientists, adopting a pragmatic economic recovery plan, and salvaging the destroyed American global reputation.
Biden has vowed to be a president for all Americans, even those who do not support him. He believes in the US -- red, white, and blue. He vowed to “restore the soul of America” thus.
Biden would embrace the rule of law and democratic institutions. He is working towards a universal health care plan. Trump’s domestic policy was an unmitigated disaster scarred by his flip flopping and meddling in rules and regulations. Trump scorned rules and regulations, democratic practices, and conventions. He destroyed and dismantled democratic institutions riding roughshod with Congress, the judiciary, the White House, the press, and the media. He subverted democracy by running the administration by his presidential executive orders, sidelining Congress and abridging the constitution.
Biden recognizes the current crisis of a lethal pandemic and economic meltdown. He has an economic recovery plan -- “build back better” by bolstering manufacturing and a clean energy economy. The economy under Trump is in tatters because of his inept handling of the coronavirus crisis. The American economy is in deep recession.
Twenty million people have been thrown out of employment, and homes are without food on the table. 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been wiped out, the stock market is in a state of constant turmoil, shocks, and shudders. Tax cuts were only for the rich and wealthy, trade deficit is at an all time high, and budget deficit has reached 3 trillion dollars. Economic growth is not about data only, but about people at the end of the day.
Biden will restore America’s global reputation by standing up for American allies, respecting international agreements and institutions, and not courting autocrats. Trump’s intimate one-on-one meetings with Putin smacked of his involvement in the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s foreign policy, if any, inconsistent and lopsided as it was and based on his instincts and impulses rather than strategy or principles, was a fiasco. His brand of unilateralism, his mantra “America first,” denouncing multilateralism, shredded America’s international relations.
His extreme protectionist policy sent shockwaves to America’s trading partners. He alienated America’s traditional allies in the West when he imposed tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of EU goods, showed contempt for NATO, and made disparaging remarks about Macron, Merkel, and Trudeau.
Biden recognizes the fateful threat of climate change and has put forward an ambitious $2 trillion plan to slash carbon emission and promote a green economy. But Trump pulled out from the Paris Climate Change International Agreement. Yet, the climate crisis in America continues to worsen. Hurricanes and rising temperatures are more frequent than ever. The West Coast is ablaze.
He abandoned the Iran Nuclear deal clinched by five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany and EU. He withdrew disdainfully from the WHO, UNESCO, UNFPA, and the UN Human Rights Council. He downsized the State Department. The world watched with bated breath in shock, disbelief, and horror.
Trump muzzled the press and media. He scoffed at the media as “enemies of people” dishing out what he described as “fake news, hoaxes, and witch hunts.” He only valued “alternative facts” and not facts.
Many claim Trump is a serial liar. Trump denied his misconduct in falsely implicating Joe Biden, his rival, in a concocted allegation against him about a controversial financial deal in Ukraine, warranting investigation of his role by the House Judiciary Committee which subsequently impeached him for obstruction of justice in the investigation. He was, however, acquitted by the Republican-dominated Senate. Now, The New York Times’ startling disclosure of his serial tax fraud adds to his litany of lies and deception.
He tinkered with the constitution by deploying troops against the people protesting for “Black lives matter,” dividing the nation. He is spreading disinformation in his campaign rallies and through social media about his adversary Joe Biden turning over the country to leftists and anarchists, destroying law and order. In the dissemination of disinformation, Trump excels in Orwellian doublespeak perpetrated by the totalitarian Stalinist Soviet Union.
Americans would be playing a risky gamble if they chose to elect Trump for a second term, with his proven track record of being incompetent and disruptive, unprincipled and intemperate, given to deceit and dissimulation, and prone to ruling more like a czar.
Americans deserve better. What America badly needs now is not a megalomaniac wheeler-dealer fiddling with American lives and its future, but a leader of character and integrity, experience and competence, temperament, compassion, and decency.
Abdul Hannan is a columnist and a former diplomat.
