IT’S emblematic of the current moment in American politics that the incumbent president’s physical and mental health remains a bigger cause for concern than that of his challenger even after the latter survived an assassination attempt.

After informing his Praetorian guard that he was keen to be reunited with his shoes, Donald Trump, a couple of streaks of blood running down his face from where a sniper’s bullet had grazed his ear, told his Secret Service protectors to wait while he pumped his fist and encouraged his audience to ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ before he was led offstage. The clenched fist went up once again as he entered a black van.

Images from the incident will no doubt enhance Trump’s chances of re-election four years after a defeat that many of his supporters believe was unfairly engineered. His biggest advantage, though, remains his doddering opponent in the race who is barely able to walk, let alone convincingly run.

The Democratic Party ought to have recognised long before the presidential debate debacle of June 27 that relying on Joe Biden to defeat Trump a second time was a mug’s game. It has been fairly obvious for what in political terms is an eternity that a physically and intellectually enfeebled president isn’t up to the task.

Trump remains a threat, Biden a liability.

Biden’s apparent personal conviction that only he can stave off the serious risk of Trump’s return to the White House does not stand up to scrutiny. No one can claim with any certainty that Kamala Harris or another alternative would be an adequate bulwark against the Republican candidate, but their chances of making any kind of impression on the electorate diminish with each passing day.

This week’s choreographed coronation of Trump at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee would have been reminiscent of a Nuremberg rally even without the supplementary advantage of the revanchist führer’s injured ear. His running mate is Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who described Trump eight years ago as a putative ‘American Hitler’. He later had a MAGA epiphany, and now blames the Democratic campaign for Saturday’s violence, even though the motives of the shooter, a 20-year-old registered Republican, are yet to be determined.

It will be both surprising and unfortunate if Biden does not step aside before the Democratic Party’s equivalent event in Chicago next month. This year, coincidentally, is being compared to 1968, when a Democratic convention in the same city attracted radical protests and shocking police violence. The likeliest Democratic nominee, Robert F. Kennedy, had been shot dead less than three months earlier, about two months after he shared with a crowd the horrifying news of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination.

The rebels of 1968 were particularly infuriated — like King and, to a lesser degree, Kennedy — by the horrors their nation was perpetrating in Vietnam. Precisely a year before he was cut down, King excoriated his nation’s government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”.

He was right then, and he would be right today — but that does not penetrate the consciousness of the American political class, which has vociferously been decrying political violence lately while insouciantly ignoring the extent to which the repressive apparat of the state strives to sustain an appalling status quo at home, while taking various organs help to implement it abroad. Foreign policy is supposedly Biden’s strong suit. As far as anyone can see, it entails endless conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the destruction of Palestine.

Biden’s record as a borderline segregationist senator beholden to corporate America and the national security state, then as vice president and eventually president, does not add up to much. It’s accurate but insufficient to claim that Trump would be much worse. The Clinton and Obama Democratic presidencies paved the way for George W. Bush and Trump. Biden could still bow out to give his possible successor a fighting chance. Divine intervention might be required, given his claim that only the Almighty could persuade him to do the decent thing. But family, friends, allies and donors could help to end what has aptly been described as elder abuse.

The gerontocracy that stretches from the White House to the divided Senate and the rabidly conservative supreme court isn’t America’s only problem. Chances are that both its global hegemony (Biden claims to ‘rule the world’) and the viability of the republic founded in 1776 will diminish in November, for better (in the case of the hegemony) or worse.

This verse from an ostensibly apolitical song Paul Simon wrote circa 1968 sadly continues to resonate: ‘Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon/ Going to the candidates’ debate/ Laugh about it, shout about it/ When you’ve got to choose/ Every way you look at it you lose.’

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2024