The truth sometimes stutters

Like many other global citizens with an interest in American politics, I watched the recent presidential debate between US President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump with alarm and dismay, emerging profoundly depressed by Biden’s lackluster performance. His rousing State of the Union speech last March, which I also watched, had raised my expectations, as it surely did the Democratic Party’s, that he would come out swinging and send Trump flying out of that arena with the punch to end all punches.

He managed to throw a few good ones – I especially liked “You have the morals of an alley cat!” But in the end – or should I say, pretty much throughout the debate – he lost steam, stuttered and strayed. Fighting Joe stayed home; Soporific Joe turned up. Even Trump, who lied his way through the debate with his customary sneer and swagger, seemed surprised by the win being handed to him by his opponent and by all the media commentators looking on.

Those commentators would later do the math and conclude that Trump had told about 30 lies and misrepresentations over the 90-minute bout, while agreeing that Biden had also made some false assertions, though none as outrageous as Trump’s charge that Democratic policy included killing babies even after they were born. None of this post-mortem will matter to Trump’s base, used to swallowing whatever comes out of The Donald’s mouth as God’s own truth. It mattered to Biden’s, because it seemed to confirm their deepest fears – and what had until then been a nasty snicker from the other side – that the incumbent was mentally and physically inadequate to the task of leading America for four more years, let alone beating Trump in November.

When I reviewed the transcript of that debate – which I suspect will rank near the bottom in the history of presidential debates for quality of thought and expression – I had to conclude that the truth was poorly told and the lies came through loud and clear. Biden ran through the numbers with professorial precision: “40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally… billionaires pay 8.2 percent in taxes… $8,000 per family written off under the Affordable Care Act… everybody making under $170,000 pays 6 percent of their income” and so on. But Trump’s strategy was much simpler – just repeat the same incendiary claim, over and over again, and don’t bother with the details: “the worst president we ever had, the worst administration in history, we’re no longer respected, they think we’re stupid, we opened our borders to people from mental institutions, insane asylums, terrorists, people are dying all over the place….”

In rhetorical heaven, the truth would ring like a bell and be heard from sea to shining sea, while falsehood would seethe and slither in whispery incoherence. Instead, what we saw confirmed the opposite – that in today’s media, prone to hyperbole and uncritical amplification, the brazen lie will travel farther than the complicated truth, which can be messy, inconvenient (as Al Gore pointed out) and unpopular.

Furthermore, and even worse, the truth all by itself won’t win elections. We’ve seen that happen many times, and we don’t even need to cross the Pacific for proof.

In the second op-ed column I wrote for this corner more than two years ago titled “Myth over matter,” I said: “The most daring kind of fiction today is out of the hands of creative writers like me. It is being created by political propagandists who are spinning their own versions of the truth, and who expect the people to believe them. The short story and the novel are no longer the best media for this type of fiction, but the tweet, the Facebook feed, the YouTube video and even the press conference.”

“Today’s savviest political operators know this: spin a tale, make it sound appealing, trust ignorance over knowledge and make them feel part of the story. ‘Babangon muli?’ Well, who the heck dropped us into this pit? It doesn’t matter. Burnish the past as some lost Eden, when streets were clean, people were disciplined and hair was cut short – or else. Nevermind the cost – ‘P175 billion in ill-gotten wealth’ is incomprehensible; ‘a mountain of gold to solve your problems’ sparkles like magic.”

Biden isn’t just fighting Trump, but a growing global disdain for intellectual acuity, in favor of populist platitudes and despotic bombast. Sadly, none of this analysis, of which Joe Biden surely must be aware more than anyone else, is going to help him and his party defend democracy in America if he sticks to his dated notion of an idealist America that clearly no longer exists. To buy time and opportunity for that hope, he may have to do what he has never done, and yield his place to a fitter champion. (Biden famously labored to overcome a childhood stutter and being bullied for it by reciting Yeats and Emerson in front of a mirror.)

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have called for Biden to stand down, a rising chorus that has been joined by important leaders and donors of the Democratic Party. There’s wishful speculation that – despite the obligatory public display of bravado and strong familial support – the more sensible Joe will prevail and see the election as being more than a personal Rubicon but indeed, as he himself puts it, an existential battle for democracy itself. If Biden goes down, the chances are he won’t be alone; the Republicans will win both the House and the Senate, giving Trump virtual carte blanche to reshape the rest of America in his own sour image. (And for us Filipinos, a Trump win will mean even less leverage in the West Philippine Sea, not that the US under any president will likely go to war on our behalf for a pot of soil at high tide; but isolationist Trump will be far more willing to bargain our rights away with China for economic and political gain.)

As distant onlookers with a strategic investment in November’s outcome, let’s pray that Sensible Joe will get the better of Fighting Joe, and give the stuttering truth a chance.

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Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.