DUELING BULLY PULPITS: Which will win….
Marcia Singer, MSW
It’s The Morning After the so-called first “debate” between a frail-appearing, stuttering President Biden and a railing, ranting former President Trump. I shudder to think that the oft-cited “American people” might decide the future of our actual democracy on theater and showmanship?! How can a respectable, dedicated, trustworthy public servant of the U.S. –hailed internationally for his decency and character─ come to be pitted against a corrupted, heartless, self-aggrandizing, truth-evading, delusional demagogue and convicted criminal in the first place? How is American mainstream media buying into, promoting, dignifying and normalizing a false equivalency between two fundamentally different candidates? And talk about bully pulpits: Trump uses his pulpit literally to bully, harass, divide, to lie and cheat with impunity. Biden uses his pulpit to promote a vision and policies aimed at protecting and evolving our democracy. In the absence of real time fact-checking (disastrous), of Biden having mic control, and short times to address complex questions, CNN helped elevate the bully’s pulpit.
Besides enabling false equivalencies, ageism reigns: daily gossip and conjecture about age as essentially detrimental. Little illumination is given to its gifts of experience, competence, resilience, wisdom. Yes, 81year-old Biden showed up apparently taxed to the max: sick, unrested — cold meds? He seemed to be grappling to retrieve details and arguments he’d rehearsed: his administration’s policy achievements and goals, facts, accurate numbers. He was not grounded. He was in his foggy head. It took him a while to settle in, to respond instead of react. Meanwhile DJT was ‘simply’ in his 24/7 singular reality tunnel, spewing his toxic mix of exaggeration, fabrication, angry epithets, denials, delusions and fascistic aspirations. No antidote to that poison came into play while America watched. Sadly, Biden, champion of democracy wasn’t up to countering the sheer audacity and insanity of Mr. Trump.
Millions of ‘fellow’ Americans think a louder, bombastic, bullying, ‘confident’ Trump won a debate. Joe Biden was physically down, softer spoken, stumbling to establish a foothold in the swamp. But a debate is meant to be a respectful, civil presenting of divergent ideas and factual information. What we witnessed was an altercation between a legitimate debater and a schoolyard bully.
Will we, “The American People,” reduce the seriousness of what these two men represent for our nation’s future, to a performance contest? Which bully pulpit will win?
