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Comparing the U.S. presidential candidates in a crisis
| ALEXANDER PANETTA | The crisis cascading through American cities has allowed voters to make real-time comparisons of two presidential candidates’ leadership styles.It’s been instructive.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have responded to civil unrest by revealing different behaviours, priorities and ideas about government itself.
The current president called for the military. Biden called for social change. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee forecast a years-long battle ahead against racial disparities in health care, economics and policing.
“A wake-up call for our nation. For all of us,” is how Biden described the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., which triggered a wave of protests across the country, as well as a third-degree murder charge against the police officer who kept his knee pressed on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.
“It is the work of a generation,” Biden said of the task facing the country. Trump demanded a swift restoration of stability.
He has prefaced his public remarks by expressing sympathy for Floyd, and for peaceful protesters.
He has also referred to his administration as the best for black Americans since Abraham Lincoln ended slavery (he tweeted about low unemployment, reduced criminal sentences, and new tax incentives for businesses).
But that’s not his main message on the current crisis. The message that dominated Trump’s public speeches and social media feeds was to threaten military action against “thugs … violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa.”
The message that dominated Trump’s public speeches and social media feeds was to threaten military action against “thugs … violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa.”
A revealing word count
One way to gauge their contrasting priorities is simply by counting the sentences in their speeches — the number devoted to quelling violent protests versus the number expressing sympathy for protesters’ concerns.
Trump’s last two significant public statements, over the weekend and on Monday June 01, included twice as many, then about 20 times as many, sentences about restoring order.
A Biden speech Tuesday June 02 in Philadelphia featured the opposite: he briefly condemned looting, then spoke about 30 times more about protesters’ concerns.
It’s a relatively rare natural experiment for voters to observe candidates in a real pressure-cooker setting relevant to the actual job of being president.
What often happens in a presidential campaign is, at best, loosely connected to the task of leading the U.S. executive branch.
Candidates will offer 10-point plans for this or that proposed law, but details of a law are really up to Congress.
Obamacare is a classic example of this. What Barack Obama proposed as a candidate for health reform, and what Congress eventually passed during his presidency, were very different.
A test involving what presidents actually do
But this crisis has brought into relief two important parts of a president’s job — in fact, they are two of the most important parts of the job, along with international relations, leading the military, and instructing the bureaucracy.
One job is running the Justice Department.
The other is setting the tone of a national conversation — using what President Teddy Roosevelt called the bully pulpit.
In a speech highly critical of U.S. President Donald Trump and his response to the death of George Floyd, former vice-president Joe Biden acknowledged that racism has long torn the U.S. apart. 3:09
Biden referred to it several times in his speech Tuesday. He called for an era of action to reverse systemic racism, with long overdue and concrete changes.
Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, denied last weekend the idea that systemic racism exists in U.S. police forces.
More government or less
Biden had made clear he sees a larger role for government in health care, and mentioned it Tuesday in the context of racial justice.
He noted the higher rates of illness and death from COVID-19 in black communities. He said he wants to expand U.S. health insurance programs to cover more people, and that he would roll out new economic proposals soon.
A Trump White House policy adviser also said a series of economic announcements is coming. She talked about the importance of deregulation.
“Moving government out of the way,” is how Brooke Rollins described it in a panel interview Monday with Politico.
She said, for example, that a single mother in Detroit who wants to start a hair salon has too many rules to follow.
She and Trump in recent days have also referred to his policy of supporting charter schools, to offer alternatives to under-performing public schools.
