Kathianne
07-13-2023, 10:56 AM
Been saying it for nearly 20 years now:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-character-mattered-in-washington-biden-trump-wasp-culture-3a478ad5?st=fs8vxnquq5j7y8b&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
When Character Mattered in WashingtonAn insistence on decency in presidential candidates might be a start to restoring national political life to a respectable level.
By Joseph Epstein
July 12, 2023 5:43 pm ET
I admire my friends who no longer watch cable news. I doubtless take in too much of it, typically switching among the three main networks: Fox, CNN and MSNBC. I watch most of it with a book or magazine in my lap, but stories about the seemingly endless lawsuits against Donald Trump and accounts of the skullduggery of Hunter Biden and his father (“the Big Guy”) get my attention.
I find I wish neither our 45th nor 46th president well. Mr. Trump, who comes across so bold, and Joe Biden, who wishes to seem so sly, strike me as roughly equal in their depravity. I think of the one as the Manchurian Cantaloupe and the other as the Old Gaffer. Schadenfreude, the pleasure found in the fall of the mighty, isn’t something I have often felt. But I sense a strong strain of it in connection with their careers, whose falls I eagerly await.
Each man has risen to the presidency thanks, mostly, to the unattractiveness of his electoral opponent. Each man was elected as a lesser-evil choice, yet both have succeeded in vastly polluting the tone of our country’s political life. Lesser-evil choices sometimes turn out to be evil enough.
...
Is there any way to get these two bozos off the national stage? Neither political party seems ready or willing to do so. The party that prides itself on probity and family values is likely to be represented by a man found liable for sexual abuse, while the party that prides itself on fairness and social justice by a man whose son has allegedly siphoned off millions from the sale of political influence that he may have shared with his father. The probable choices of Messrs. Trump and Biden reveal that the chief interest of both parties is to win and move on to power. Neither seems the least interested in character.
He goes on about 'return of WASP culture' of which I take it more to mean general civility and actual care for country.Regardless of our differences, the point that both choices being unacceptable doesn't mean it's right to just vote 'party' for the win is best...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-character-mattered-in-washington-biden-trump-wasp-culture-3a478ad5?st=fs8vxnquq5j7y8b&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
When Character Mattered in WashingtonAn insistence on decency in presidential candidates might be a start to restoring national political life to a respectable level.
By Joseph Epstein
July 12, 2023 5:43 pm ET
I admire my friends who no longer watch cable news. I doubtless take in too much of it, typically switching among the three main networks: Fox, CNN and MSNBC. I watch most of it with a book or magazine in my lap, but stories about the seemingly endless lawsuits against Donald Trump and accounts of the skullduggery of Hunter Biden and his father (“the Big Guy”) get my attention.
I find I wish neither our 45th nor 46th president well. Mr. Trump, who comes across so bold, and Joe Biden, who wishes to seem so sly, strike me as roughly equal in their depravity. I think of the one as the Manchurian Cantaloupe and the other as the Old Gaffer. Schadenfreude, the pleasure found in the fall of the mighty, isn’t something I have often felt. But I sense a strong strain of it in connection with their careers, whose falls I eagerly await.
Each man has risen to the presidency thanks, mostly, to the unattractiveness of his electoral opponent. Each man was elected as a lesser-evil choice, yet both have succeeded in vastly polluting the tone of our country’s political life. Lesser-evil choices sometimes turn out to be evil enough.
...
Is there any way to get these two bozos off the national stage? Neither political party seems ready or willing to do so. The party that prides itself on probity and family values is likely to be represented by a man found liable for sexual abuse, while the party that prides itself on fairness and social justice by a man whose son has allegedly siphoned off millions from the sale of political influence that he may have shared with his father. The probable choices of Messrs. Trump and Biden reveal that the chief interest of both parties is to win and move on to power. Neither seems the least interested in character.
He goes on about 'return of WASP culture' of which I take it more to mean general civility and actual care for country.Regardless of our differences, the point that both choices being unacceptable doesn't mean it's right to just vote 'party' for the win is best...