Tom Horner Gets It Right

This is not surprising or unusual...my reflections on his most recent post

Hello LiIT Denizens -

This started out as a comment in response to a wonderful Substack posting by my friend, Tom Horner, one of the smartest political observers I know. Once my comment got longer than Tom’s post, though, it seemed more polite to post it here rather than in his comments.

Give it a read because, as is so often the case, Tom is right here in both broad sweep and the details.

In every way I can think of, this election offers us a clear choice. For too long - far before Trump arrived on the scene - we've been governing ourselves poorly because of our increasingly partisan environment. Trump has played a role in widening that gap as has social media and the struggles of the media but the trend was happening before any of those factors. I mark the rise of Newt Gingrich in the 90s as an inflection point, for example.¹

Whatever the causes and accelerants, though, we've muddled through the last three decades with a series of Rube Goldberg public policy fixes such as executive orders, continuing resolutions, omnibus bills and legislative tricks like motions to recommit. We've kicked all but the most urgent debates so far down the road, they're still paving out that way.

These kludges have kept us going but governing by gimmick and imbuing every public policy debate with existential significance it is a terrible way to run a country, especially a country as large, influential and - yes - essential as the United States. Our track record in this area reminds me of the saying I think is attributable to Buckminster Fuller: "A coffin will keep you afloat; that doesn't mean you should design a lifeboat on the same principles."

One of the effects of this dysfunction IMHO is that it has required us to use some of the civic "equity" accumulated over the preceding 200+ years. Yes, we kept the government funded for another year but only by employing a last-minute legislative sleight-of-hand and only after demonizing one another - again - so that we could claim to our respective bases that we didn't compromise.

This is going to sound like an "Get off my lawn" old guy pronouncement - and it is - but we've about burned through our equity. What we do in response to that reality is up to us. As Mr. Horner eloquently reminded us, that's what's at stake next Tuesday.

Our choices are actually pretty clear and simple in my mind:

If we’ve had enough of this, if we want to start pulling back from this period of poor governance and replenish our civic equity, the best thing we can do to promote that future is vote for Harris. Not because we agree with all - or even any - of her policy prescriptions but because - as her speech last night told us - she sincerely wants to be a force working to bring us together, not drive us apart. We can't fix entitlements or the deficit or the climate or the border or any other hard problem - and all of these are hard - until we re-establish a base of common interests and shared values. I'm not talking policy here, I'm talking values. Like the idea that all are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights. That freedom is better than its absence and that how we care for the most vulnerable among us matters. That helping your neighbor isn't dependent on their political identity. We need to renew our commitments to those principles.

Harris can't fix any of that but I am confident she won't deliberately make it worse.

Which brings me to the other choice before us. If you believe our country is irredeemably broken and beyond our ability to fix, that we've entered an era of decline where we're fighting for a share of a shrinking pie, then a vote for Trump makes sense. In word and deed, Trump’s entire life is one example after another of “I got mine.”

This is, of course, the same basis for his political career. From its earliest moments, it has been wholly bonded to a simple proposition: "they" are trying to take things away from "us."

Immigrants are trying to take away our country. Liberals want to take our guns. Trading partners are trying to take our money. The Democrats are stealing our election victory. Brown people want to erase our white, Christian culture.

On every issue, at the base of Donald Trump's thinking is a mindset that this is a zero-sum world in which the only way "they" can win is if "we" lose. And it is powered by a look-back sense of grievance. “I am your retribution,” Trump has repeatedly vowed. Google all the times he’s said that to different audiences; he will get “us” revenge for all the things “they” have already taken and stop them from taking more.

Just as electing Harris isn't a cure-all, electing Trump isn't the apocalypse; we still have a bit of equity banked and there are still institutional forces that will counterbalance his most awful instincts. Trump can’t single-handedly make us a failed state but four more years of his example of divisiveness and demonization might put us on the path toward it.

Which, in case you're wondering what that means, would put us in a group that includes Afghanistan, Haiti, Russia, Somalia, Syria and Lebanon.

I know which future I prefer and which sort of country I want to live in. I know what sort of country I want to leave to my children and their children.

What say you? Check out Mr. Horner’s post and share your thoughts. How do you see the stakes in this election?

About the header image: I asked Midjourney for “competing speakers on soapboxes talking to diverse crowds of listeners.” This was one of the four options it returned and I picked it mostly because of the colors.

1. Old folks like me might remember that Gingrich circulated to his House Republican colleagues a list of words they should use when describing Democrats and their policies, words like "betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors." That was outrageous at the time but it’s been normalized three decades later. By both the left and the right.