Learning from a messy presidential debate -- Oct. 1, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Not that time stood still during the first presidential debate, but at one point I desperately checked the clock: How much longer can this last?

The 90-minute dumpster fire, street brawl, fiasco, expletive-deleted storm – pick your description -- still had nearly 30 agonizing minutes to go.

The way President Donald Trump behaved, he seemed determined to ensure he’d never again have to debate Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump broke the debate rules his campaign had agreed to, insulted Biden repeatedly and made many baseless claims.

His blab-athon – by one count he interrupted Biden or moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News more than 120 times – was over the top.

It was classic, classless Trump -- shocking but not surprising.

Trump is a showman, and his fans love his “gladiator” style. This time, even his allies said his jabs missed the mark.

Biden did not take Trump’s bait. He mostly kept his cool, though he called the president a “clown” and said, “Shut up, man,” when Trump was talking over him. Vigorous and sharp, Biden was not the least bit sleepy.

This doesn’t mean Biden’s performance was flawless. In a rare policy moment, he refused to say whether he supports ending the filibuster in the Senate or adding justices to the Supreme Court, both favored by progressive Democrats.

Trump again refused to offer any details of his supposed health care plan.  

The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates promised Wednesday to consider format changes so the two remaining presidential debates will be more substance oriented. Good luck with that.

Trump who trails Biden in most polls, tries to deflect attention from his record on the coronavirus by sowing confusion and distrust in our revered institutions – public education, public health and the electoral process, among others.

The president continues to claim, falsely, the only way he can lose is if Democrats steal the election.

The presidential winner should be decided Election Night, he says, even if millions of mail-in ballots are uncounted. He wants to install Amy Coney Barrett as the ninth Supreme Court justice to help settle the election.

Without evidence, he constantly claims Democrats will flood the polls with fraudulent votes and voters. Meanwhile, voter intimidation and suppression are in the air.

Trump and his family are recruiting an “army” of supporters to watch for fraud at early voting places and on Election Day.

“We need every able-bodied man, woman to join Army for Trump’s Election Security Operation,” Don Trump Jr. said in a video the Trump campaign posted on social media Sept. 23.

President Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox: “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys” at the polls.

But when Trump observers tried Tuesday to enter early voting places in Philadelphia, they were turned away. Trump tweeted:

“Wow. Won’t let Poll Watchers & Security into Philadelphia Voting Places. There is only one reason why. Corruption!!! Must have a fair Election.”

Three exclamation points do not make corruption the only possible reason poll-watchers were denied entry. As usual there’s more to the story.

Tuesday was the first day of early voting in a few satellite locations where people could register and vote. Rules are different at those locations than at regular polling places, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Election officials are also following safety restrictions because of the pandemic, the paper said.

Every state sets its own election rules. In Virginia, a poll watcher must be registered to vote, and the state limits on the number of poll watchers allowed per party in polling place.

As we go into the final weeks of the 2020 campaign, we can expect more Trumpian efforts to erode confidence in the election.

But remember this: Our neighbors, mostly volunteers, work the long hours at the polls and tabulate the ballots. State officials, not Trump, certify the winners.

I’ve been a city poll worker, and I know how hard these volunteers work for a fair election.

After the debate, analysts kept using the same word to describe it: chaos. Messy and stinky work too.

I won’t be surprised if democracy’s longest hour and a half was a preview of the election chaos ahead.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Scared yet? Fear again a campaign tool -- Sept. 10, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER 

Since businessman Donald Trump glided down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president in June 2015, he has stoked fear.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said that day. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems . . . they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

In the home stretch of the 2020 campaign, Trump is running as the law and order president, claiming Democrats will tolerate lawlessness.

“You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” he warns, raising the specter of anarchists running loose to loot, burn and obliterate American cities whose police have been defunded by Biden and “radical socialist Democrats.”

Former Vice President Biden does not support defunding the police and has made clear rioters, looters and arsonists should be prosecuted.

“Donald Trump keeps telling us if he was president, you’d feel safe. Well, he is president – whether he knows it or not,” Biden tweeted.

Fear is a time-tested campaign tool used by both parties to excite voters. More than half a century ago this week – on Sept. 7, 1964 -- perhaps the most effective presidential campaign ad in history aired on TV.

Known as “Daisy,” the 60-second, black-and white spot for President Lyndon B. Johnson shows a little girl counting as she picks petals off a daisy. An ominous male voice then counts down to a nuclear blast, and the camera focuses on the child’s eye, which transforms into a massive, fiery mushroom cloud. 

“These are the stakes,” Johnson intones in a voiceover. “To make a world in which all God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

The Daisy ad was shocking at the time, but it’s more subtle than campaign ads we see today.

It didn’t even mention Barry Goldwater, LBJ’s Republican opponent, and it ran only once – although it aired repeatedly on talk shows and news programs.

Goldwater was already trailing Johnson, so it’s unclear how much the ad contributed to Johnson’s landslide victory of 486 electoral votes to Goldwater’s 52.

To win reelection, Trump doesn’t need to scare vast numbers of people into voting for him – just enough to carry the battleground states, as he did in 2016.

But will it work? In 2018, Republicans wielded the cudgel of fear in congressional races, and Democrats still flipped about 40 House seats to regain control.

Trump’s strategy is to attack Biden with everything and the kitchen sink.

Biden wants to raise your taxes, offshore your job, throw open the borders, wage endless foreign wars, surrender to China and destroy the suburbs, Trump says. That’s a hefty agenda for someone Trump derides as “Sleepy.”

As technology accelerates, campaigns can target digital ads to individual voters through social media in record time.

Hours after news broke of journalist Bob Woodward’s bombshell book, “Rage,” a new Biden ad on Twitter played audio tape of Trump saying to Woodward about COVID-19: “I wanted to always play it down . . .  I still like playing it down.”

The ad faults Trump for failing to inform the public accurately and blames him for tens of thousands of lost American lives.

“It’s unconscionable,” Biden tweeted. Trump maintains he just wanted to avoid panic.

The anti-Trump Lincoln Project, founded by a group of Republican operatives, fills social media with ads attacking Trump and Republican senators.

A new Lincoln Project ad hits a new low. The ad shows hideous pictures of flesh-eating parasites and likens Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, to a parasite.

Still, the worst in negative ads and fearmongering may be yet to come.

Of the nearly 70,000 political television ads that ran in the final days of the 2016 campaign, fewer than one in 10 were primarily positive, according to a CNN analysis of data from Kantar Media/CMAG.

The reason is both parties believe, as Richard Nixon did, that fear is a great motivator. Nixon’s speechwriter William Safire wrote in his book “Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House”:

“People react to fear, not love – they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true,” Nixon said.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Cause, effect and the need to test for COVID-19 -- column of Aug. 27, 2020

By MARSHA MERCER

A wise editor of mine used to say, “Wet streets don’t cause rain.”

John’s point, of course, was not to confuse cause and effect. I’ve thought about his warning often since President Donald Trump began his counter-narrative about coronavirus testing.

As the number of positive cases of COVID-19 soared this summer, Trump repeatedly blamed the tests for causing the cases.

Testing “makes us look bad,” he tweeted in June.

At the Tulsa rally a few days later, he said, “I said to my people, `Slow the testing down, please.’”

His aides tried to pass that remark off as a joke, but Trump said, “I don’t kid.”

“Cases, Cases, Cases! If we didn’t test so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases,” he tweeted in July.

And, he told reporters, “When you test you create cases.”

That’s all wrong. Pregnancy tests don’t create babies.

Not only the number of cases but the positivity rate – the percentage of tests coming back positive -- also soared in many places.

“A higher percent positive suggests higher transmission and that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who haven’t been tested yet,” the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health says, noting it may be a time to add restrictions to slow spread of the disease.

On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly posted new guidelines on its website that likely will sow confusion and discourage people from getting tested.

“If you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms, you do not necessarily need a test,” the latest guidance says.

Previously, the CDC urged all people who had come in close contact with an infected person to get tested.

The timing could not be worse. Hundreds of thousands of children and older students are going back to school and college. To keep them, their teachers and other essential workers safe, people need to know if they’re infected so they can self-isolate.

The new guidance cites as an exception “vulnerable” individuals and advises everyone to listen to health care providers and local public health officials.

“I’m dumbfounded by this recommendation,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of infectious diseases research at the University of Minnesota, said on CNN.

It may take four or five days for exposure to show up on a test, he said, but people still need to be tested.

Trump and everyone who comes near him at the White House are tested repeatedly. He doesn’t need to wear a mask, he says, because everyone gets a test.

Good for them. But what about the rest of us?

Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services in charge of testing, denied Trump pressured the CDC and said the guidance had been updated to reflect “current evidence.” But he didn’t present any.

“All the docs” including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had signed off on the new guidelines at a meeting, Giroir said.

Not so, said Fauci. He had seen an earlier draft but wasn’t present when the final version was approved. He had a good excuse.

“I was under general anesthesia in the operating room and was not part of any discussion or deliberation regarding the new testing recommendations,” he told CNN. Fauci had surgery Aug. 20 for a polyp on his vocal cords.

“I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact, it is,” Fauci said.  

About 40% of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, the CDC estimates, and the chance of people with no symptoms infecting someone else is 75%. That’s why knowing who is infected and having them quarantine for two weeks is important.

Trump has consistently attacked his own health experts, pressuring the CDC to rewrite guidelines for opening schools and businesses and rushing at “warp speed” to have a vaccine by Nov. 3.

Everyone wants to live in the world again, and most of us rely on science for the facts. 

That means we need to know more – not less – about the coronavirus, who has it and how it works.

For now, wear a mask, wash your hands, keep your distance, stay home if you’re sick, and remember: Wet streets don’t cause rain.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Reopen schools? Washington doesn't know best -- July 9, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When it comes to managing schools, Thomas Jefferson had it right when he said: “The government closest to the people serves the people best.”

One size doesn’t fit all, especially during a raging pandemic. 

And yet, President Donald Trump and his allies are pressuring schools across the country to do things Trump’s way.

The president wants all schools to fully open in person this fall. He has threatened to withhold federal funds from school districts that take a more cautious approach.

Democrats and teachers’ groups say they want to reopen schools but do so safely, perhaps with some online classes.

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans accuse each other of playing politics. In an election year? Say it isn’t so.

Whatever happened to local control?

Trump was all-in on local control when it came to making hard decisions about shutting businesses down or even wearing face coverings to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. He left it up to governors and local officials.

Had he articulated a national strategy of testing, contact tracing and treatment, we might have contained the virus, as some European countries have done.

Instead, because Trump believes his re-election depends on a recovered economy, he urged states to reopen, disregarding federal guidelines for doing so safely. This, sadly, led to a surge in cases, hospitalizations and deaths in states that followed his edicts.

Now, he has both feet in local schools.

Trump again refuses to listen to public health experts, including the Centers for Disease Control, which issued guidelines for reopening schools.

“I disagree with the @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

Vice President Mike Pence then announced the CDC would issue “a new set of tools” in a few days.

I’ve taken a look at the existing school guidelines, which set out three levels of risk. You don’t need a medical degree to know the lowest is virtual-only classes and events, highest is full-sized, in-person classes and events, and the middle involves students staying with the same teacher all day.

The current guidelines prescribe cleaning, physical distancing and planning protocols with at least a dozen instances of wiggle words like “if feasible” and “when possible.”

For example, “Face coverings should be worn by staff and students (particularly older students) as feasible, and are most essential in times when physical distancing is difficult.”

The first paragraph of the seven-page guidelines emphasizes: “These considerations are meant to supplement – not replace – any state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, rules, and regulations with which schools must comply.” (Bold-face words are in the original.)

Trump still could take the lead in insisting that more federal funds go to schools so they can buy the electronic devices needed so kids don’t have to share as well as cleaning and other supplies.

Schools also may need to hire staff. It’s not fair to ask overworked teachers who are risking their lives in the classroom also to disinfect the playground equipment.

House Democrats included $100 billion in funding to support schools in the relief bill that passed in May, but Senate Republicans nixed the money.

New York City and other school systems have decided full, in-person education is too risky.

Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos specifically scorned Fairfax County Public Schools, one of the largest in the nation with 189,000 students, for offering parents a choice of fully remote instruction or two days a week in the classroom.

Most of Virginia’s cases and deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, have occurred in Fairfax and other Northern Virginia counties.

But other parts of the state have had few, if any, virus deaths. Decisions about 

reopening schools likely will differ, and they should, depending on risk to public health.  

One size doesn’t fit all for the entire country nor is it a good idea for a whole state.

Let local school districts decide how to reopen without undue pressure from Washington. They know best their local needs.

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Stay at home, vote at home -- April 23, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

As a few states bow to pressure to reopen businesses, medical professionals warn COVID-19 is sticking around and could get much worse.

The disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has claimed nearly as many lives as the Vietnam War, likely will surge this fall and winter during the regular flu season. Now is the time to plan for safe, secure elections in November.

In-person voting can be dangerous during a pandemic. In Wisconsin, at least six voters and a poll worker appear to have contracted COVID-19 during the state’s April 7 election, when voters, many without masks, stood in line for hours to cast ballots.

And in Florida at least two poll workers tested positive after that state’s primary in March.

A majority of poll workers in the 2016 and 2018 elections were 61 and older, a high-risk category for death from COVID-19.

Virginia is among nine states that have loosened restrictions on absentee voting, at least for the summer primaries. States are evaluating how to allow the November elections to proceed without jeopardizing public health. In Virginia, voters will be able to cast an absentee ballot without an excuse starting with the November general election.

Norman Rockwell’s image notwithstanding, in-person voting on Election Day has been in decline. In the 2016 presidential election, 57.2 million voters – two in five – cast their ballots absentee, early or by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

While states set the rules for state and local elections, Congress has authority over federal elections.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ron Wyden of Oregon have introduced a bill to help states expand early in-person voting and absentee vote-by-mail during the pandemic. The bill has 25 Democratic cosponsors, including Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but no Republican senators are on board.

Voting by mail is not a way-out, fringe idea. Five states, including red-state Utah, conduct elections by mail. Others are Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. 

Almost no cases of election fraud have been discovered.

Mail-in voting does require an efficient postal service. Typically, voters receive ballots in the mail, which they return by mail, at designated locations or drop boxes. States track ballots with bar codes and through the postal service and have harsh penalties for voter fraud.

The main way states detect voter fraud is by identity verification, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which supports mail-in voting.

In Washington state, election officials compare every signature on every ballot to make sure it matches the one on the voter registration record.

Clearly, setting up a mail-in voting system that has voters’ confidence takes thought and time, but it can be done.

A majority of voters – 58% -- approve of changing election laws permanently so everyone can cast ballots by mail, a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released Tuesday found. Another 39% oppose permanent change, but one-fourth of that group said mail-in voting should be allowed this November.

The idea is most popular with Democrats – with 82% in favor – and independents (61%).

Among Republicans, only 31% support it. That probably reflects President Donald Trump’s strenuous opposition to mail-in voting. He calls mail-in voting corrupt and horrible.

More to the point, he has asserted that mail-in voting, “for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans,” although he cited no evidence Democrats fare better with mail-in voting. Analysts say there isn’t any.

Voters may remember Trump repeatedly insisted during the 2016 campaign that Democrats were rigging the election – until the moment he won.

And he’s at it again. Just the other day, he sent out a fundraising appeal saying the Democrats are trying to “steal” the election.

It’s wrong for the president, any president, to undermine the electoral process, along with other American institutions.

Trump himself voted absentee by mail in the Florida primary. A reporter asked how he reconciles his mail-in voting with his opposition to it for other people.

“Because I’m allowed to,” he said, adding that it was different when he did it because he was out of the state.

That kind of flawed reasoning makes no sense in the best of times and won’t work in the time of a pandemic. Voting is a civic duty. It should not be life-threatening.

© 2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Bridging partisan divide in the new normal -- April 16, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the new normal of the coronavirus, I mostly stay home. About once a day I go out to stretch my legs.

My unscientific survey of life in Alexandria indicates people are heeding the message to keep their social distance. A few even carry sticks with flags at one end to remind people not to get too close.

Many people, though certainly not most, wear masks or face coverings outside.

My experience may be colored blue. Alexandria votes Democratic.

Polls show Democrats are more concerned than Republicans about the coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease it causes. A new study from Stanford University also found partisan differences in social distancing.

Using smartphone location data and an online survey, the researchers looked at the period from Jan. 26 to April 4 and found localities with more Republicans engaged in less social distancing, even when controlling for factors such as state policy, population density and local COVID-19 cases and deaths.

The divide may be attributable to how political leaders and the news media portrayed the threat, analysts suggested. 

Partisanship showed up Wednesday in Michigan, which Donald Trump flipped from blue to red in 2016.

Conservative groups staged “Operation Gridlock,” a protest in cars and on foot at the state Capitol against stay-at-home restrictions ordered by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. Some demonstrators waved Trump flags, wore Trump hats and shouted, “Lock her up!” and “We will not comply!”

Michigan has the nation’s fourth highest number of cases and the third highest number of deaths from the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University.

“There’s no cure, there’s no vaccine, it’s incredibly contagious and it’s deadly,” Whitmer said on CNN, calling for personal responsibility.

Trump is desperate to get the economy moving again; he believes his re-election depends on it.

But health officials as well as some business leaders, governors and mayors urge caution. Don’t reopen the country until testing is widely available so we have a better idea how many Americans are infected, they say. 

Yes, people are scared, frustrated and weary of restrictions. Everyone hates hardship, massive unemployment and economic ruin.

And yet, The health of Americans must be our top priority. It would be far more damaging to pretend it’s OK for some parts of the country to resume business as usual while others remain closed.

Experts warn a resurgence of the virus could lead to future lockdowns which would devastate the economy and our health care system.

Los Angeles and New Orleans already have indicated they may put on hold any large gatherings, including concerts, music festivals and sports events, until 2021.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a physician, wisely extended his order closing non-essential businesses until May 8. It had been set to expire April 23. That means in-restaurant dining and many entertainment venues will remain closed, and no gatherings of more than 10 people are permitted. Northam’s stay-at-home order is set to run through June 10.

“When people say it’s time to stop what we’re doing and get back to normal, they’re wrong,” Northam said Wednesday.

Earlier that day, while I was out walking, a woman on the sidewalk across the street wrangling a huge package of Charmin caught my attention. She had toilet paper!

In our era of hunting and gathering, she’d bagged a major prize. On a Wednesday morning! The closest supermarket gets its deliveries on Wednesday nights, I’d learned recently.

Pleased, and envious of her catch, I smiled (though I doubt she could tell as three-quarters of my face was covered by my makeshift bandana mask).

She took a couple of steps toward me, lowered her own mask and shouted from her safe distance: “Go quickly! They have sanitizer in the pharmacy area!”

I gave her a thumbs-up and made a beeline for the store. Sure enough, at the back of a bottom shelf were bottles of hand sanitizer. I reached for two, wishing I’d worn gloves.

Never before have I had such an encounter with a stranger, and it gave me hope.

The 9/11 attacks permanently transformed how Americans, live, work and travel. The coronavirus likely will change our lives at least until a vaccine against COVID-19 has been developed, tested and is readily available. That could take a year or more.

We need a new normal in blue and red cities and states alike in which we show kindness and look out for each other. Even if it’s just with hand sanitizer.

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Make character a factor in 2020 vote -- Jan. 16, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

On the holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, you’ll likely hear people quote from King’s inspiring “I Have a Dream” speech.

“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character,” King declared at the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. We aren’t there yet.

Today, King, who won the Nobel peace prize a year later and was assassinated in 1968, is revered for his leadership of the civil rights movement and his advocacy of nonviolence. He is an unalloyed American hero and a role model for children.

Role models are rare in public life, and, during the run-up to elections, character can become weaponized. In 2016, Hillary Clinton charged Donald Trump was morally unfit to be president, and he attacked her as “crooked Hillary.”

In 2020, “character is on the ballot,” Joe Biden said Tuesday at the Democratic presidential debate.

We may despair about the country’s direction, but character still counts. President Trump was impeached and faces a trial in the Senate starting Tuesday because integrity still matters.

The House voted last month along party lines to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, accusing him of attempting to force a foreign power to do his political dirty work, to investigate Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump used the powers of the presidency to benefit his own political campaign. He tried to pressure the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Bidens by withholding nearly $400 million in military aid and denying him a White House meeting. Trump released the aid only after news outlets reported on the scheme.

Trump and his Republican supporters claim he did nothing wrong and have repeatedly slammed impeachment as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.”

Where people stand politically colors their view of impeachment, but nearly three in four Americans think Trump is not a good role model for children, a Quinnipiac University poll also reported last March. Almost all Democrats – 97% -- said he isn’t a good role model, and nearly 40% of Republicans agreed.

Telling the truth is a sign of character, but this is the president of “alternative facts.” As of Dec. 10, Trump had made more than 15,413 false or misleading claims since he took office, according to fact checkers at The Washington Post.

Democratic presidential candidates have generally avoided getting into the liar-calling business, until now. Elizabeth Warren claimed Bernie Sanders told her in a 2018 conversation a woman could not beat Trump. Asked about it in the last debate, Sanders denied he’d ever said such a thing. After the debate, a live mic onstage caught Warren telling Sanders twice, “I think you called me a liar on national TV.” She refused to shake his hand.

He replied, “You know, let’s not do it right now,” adding, “You called me a liar.”

What’s sad and mystifying is how Trump has normalized abnormal behavior. Many people no longer care if he tells the truth as long as he appoints conservative judges, cuts their taxes and unleashes business from regulations. If, as expected, the Republican-controlled Senate acquits Trump and leaves him in office, he will falsely claim he’s been exonerated, firing up his base for November.

But not all Republicans are sanguine. Sen. James Lankford, a conservative Republican of Oklahoma who directed the large Baptist youth camp there, looked for a role model candidate during the 2016 GOP presidential primaries – and Trump wasn’t, he said on “Face the Nation” last month. He wishes Trump “was more of a role model,” he said, explaining, “I don’t like the way he tweets, some of the things he says.”

But voters, not he, choose who he works with in Washington, Lankford said.

No candidate is perfect, of course, but we can make character decisive when we vote.

As Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1900 when he was running for vice president on the Republican ticket: “Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character.”

©2020 All rights reserved.

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