All three presidential debates and the Alfred E. Smith dinner are behind us and it is time to breathe a collective sigh of relief. We never have to see these two on the same stage again.
He is a boorish caricature of a carnival huckster. Everything (and I mean everything) is either the worst (think President Obama or NAFTA) or the best (think his properties or judgment). His world is not gray, it is exceedingly dark. Fortunately, the world I live in and the people I know are not quite as downtrodden as he suggests.
She is an uninteresting caricature of a policy wonk. She has a plan for everything (and I mean everything), whether the economy or climate-change, and they’re all on her website. Her world could not be more gray, as she seamlessly moves between public and private forums searching for whatever is most politically expedient. Fortunately, the world I live in and the people I know are not quite so chameleonic.
He is a cad. He is disrespectful, even disdainful, of vast swathes of the electorate. He says whatever flows through his brain at the moment without considering whether it might be true. It’s possible that he is so egocentric that he believes that him saying something makes it true. How else to explain him declaring that Mexico will pay for a wall, that Buffett takes the same tax breaks he does, or that he is the only person who can fix our problems. He is an entertainer, not a problem solver. He is the first presidential nominee in history who is more comfortable cutting Vince McMahon’s hair than having a reasonable rational discussion about any given topic of domestic or foreign policy. And he is angry. Why? Life has been so good to him that when he was on the edge of bankruptcy, his lenders allotted him a $450,000 a month spending allowance.
She is uninspiring. She is disrespectful, even disdainful of vast swathes of the electorate. Whether she is an inveterate liar is debatable, because politicians are forced to hedge so often that inevitably something said in one setting will contradict something said in another setting. She has more baggage than a large Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Some of it is her own and justly earned (emails, pay to play), some of it is her husband’s and not always fairly attributed to her. But when you are allowed to cherry pick a senate seat because your husband is a former president, it isn’t outside the pale to be saddled with some of his baggage. Her penchant for secrecy and defensiveness are not the normal traits of someone seeking to be the most watched and listened to person in the world.
It is almost a cliché at this time to wonder how we ended up with these two particular candidates. They each have their hard-core followers, people who would support them no matter what they so, no matter what dirt about them is revealed. This is a shame. And they have their hard-core detractors, people who would prefer voting for the actual Hitler or Stalin before voting for Trump or Clinton, as the case may be. This is even more of a shame.
One of them will be POTUS. I shudder, yet I will vote, as I always do. Next time, I will explain my vote.
The paragraph starting off with, “She is uninspiring [to Bob Burpee],” is very interesting. With a couple minor edits (changing “she” to “he,” “husband” to “brother,” etc.), it could’ve been about Bobby Kennedy.
You crack me up.
I’m with Ian – I too was drawn to “chameleonic” like a moth to a flame.
You did a nice job capturing the essence of both candidates quite succinctly and yet quite descriptively as well.
It will be an interesting next few days to say the least…
I have a new favorite word! Chameleonic.
Have you looked into any of the vote swapping sites that are out there? I’m not sure I trust them.
Wow! So I wasn’t the only one drawn to the word “chameleonic”. Like moths to a flame. I will figure out how to work that into at least three conversations today.
Agree with everything stated. It’s all “bread and circuses”.