When Rudy Giuliani ran for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, the Right broke out into a debate over whether America’s Mayor was a real conservative. I found this tedious. Though Rudy was not my preferred candidate among that class (and his antics in recent years perhaps vindicate that), the way his opponents tried to sweep away his heroism on 9/11 appeared rather shallow. Ideological litmus tests do not trump the kind of test he’d already passed: leading the nation from the depths of grief and despair and shock back into the light.
I was one of the conservatives who opposed Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2016, and as he racked up conservative victories in office and presided over economic growth, we were often asked if we felt foolish yet. I can’t speak for others, but I had not premised my opposition on an ideological litmus test. Every president is tested, I would respond, and President Trump hasn’t been tested yet.
Then, suddenly, he was. When I taught my children how to play chess, I hesitated before teaching them the designated point value of each piece. There will be times that a player’s knight is more important to his or her strategy than a rook, though the latter is “worth” more. Similarly, I can see how some will value certain of the president’s policies more than I would, others less. But if we’re putting them up on the scale, one far outweighs others: what I consider the 2016-2020 version of “The Test.”
That was the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was not an easy test, but it is precisely where our chief executive, who is neither a legislator nor a judicial backstop, is needed most. Trump’s initial mistake was to fumble the ability to establish a serious testing regime, the foundation from which contact tracing and targeted intervention would be built. From there, the president’s leadership did not much improve: He took to ridiculing mask-wearing, which may not be the silver bullet some treat it as, but it is far from useless. A coronavirus outbreak in the president’s inner circle, and then the vice president’s, suggests an administration resistant to learning its lesson or willing to model the behavior it recommends among the public, and the president’s continued public scorn for his own scientific advisers leaves the public confused and susceptible to less reliable sources of information.
I reject, of course, the asinine claim that every world leader is personally responsible for each COVID death in his or her country. But that does not absolve Trump of all of it.
I also disagree with the perceived threat posed by a Biden administration. The extreme direction in which his party is headed is clear. But it is less clear to me that a Joe Biden presidency would haplessly elevate those extreme elements. It is possible his nomination itself showed he has a few more allies than previously assumed. This hurts the case for Trump because it removes the professed urgency of his message: Apres moi, le deluge.
On my own scale, there are less tangible items that I think are important. As a conservative, the environment the president has built, in which he seems to be present in every molecule of cultural and political oxygen, is unhealthy, and I am concerned that a vote for his reelection would constitute a vote for this as the new normal. And I consider his bad tweets often to be more than gracelessness; some have policy consequences, others seem designed to deepen the division pulling Americans into a spiral of tribalism that continues to splinter society. And his use of birtherism to catapult to fame on the Right, and his similar race-baiting of foreign-born members of Congress, if further rewarded, will do lasting damage.
The Washington Examiner’s endorsement of Trump over Biden (or neither) weighed the records of the two men and their respective parties. It is a legitimate process, but I come to a different result.
I have no trouble acknowledging the president’s achievements. His peace agreements and the building of alliances from the Middle East to the Balkans represent the most impressive diplomatic run since the Reagan administration and outweigh his clumsiness on North Korea or his counterproductive trade war with China. His judicial branch legacy is deeply conservative. His defense of due process in higher education is admirable. His authorization to take out some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists shows his caution in deploying troops does not translate to isolationism.
Those who back the president’s reelection may value those achievements more than the drawbacks I have mentioned. I do not. But both sides, I gather, value the free and open and respectful debate that animates a functioning self-governing society.
Seth Mandel is executive editor of the Washington Examiner Magazine.
