Magically Erasing the Unpleasant
Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 10, 2024
One theme we’re bound to hear at tonight’s presidential debate is that Americans seem to want unpleasant news simply to go away — as if by magic.
Whether the issue relates to migrants who need attention or homelessness running amok, the availability of housing and health access, perceived statistical crime sprees or deeply felt culture issues, the response to just remove the problem seems persistent.
In turn, that sense for immediate solution spurs candidates to promote policies that would present law enforcement answers to the border as an immediate salve instead of more layered responses to what clearly is a complicated problem. In effect, they say just eliminate the source, and there is no problem. It is the same reasoning that is pushing localities to hide the homeless or by arming teachers to believe that school shootings are deterred.
What we’re hearing: If only there were a simple answer, there would be no problem. The abortion issues so prominent in the current election ought to be lesson enough that defending a “pro-life” banner doesn’t make the myriad side issues emerging from overturning Roe v. Wade disappear. In reality, the abortion court decision has created lots of new issues far from the original question about constitutionality of individual choice.
And so, despite his constant public lies, his criminal convictions, his poor-to-very mixed record of achievement, half the country’s voters find Donald Trump a beacon in hopes that by acting in an authoritarian manner, he simply will erase concerns about economics, immigration, climate and anything else he and they would just wish away. In that sense, it’s okay by them that he would do away with democracy as we know it for the power to act.
The other half of voters seem to accept that social problems are bigger than one person, and that the lure of what Kamala Harris offers is an agenda of hard teamwork to make government responsive to addressing in practical ways whatever it can. She may be light on programmatic detail but remains heavily invested in seeing government as a force to help push our way through high prices, climate change, and the preservation of individual rights.
How Prevalent?
Another school shooting happens, and the following days are filled with argument about how to lock down safety rather than about how to avoid the next shooting.
Police and family knew this young suspect had made previous threatening statements, but, of course, police had no reason or legal authority for immediate action to remove the problem. Instead, we all depend on families or school officials or a doctor or someone to recognize a mental health problem and do something preventatively. No one did, and we have another fatal days for guns in school.
Our desire for an immediate answer to an immediate problem is not solving guns, or mental health access or familial responsibility.
A Washington Post article this week detailed the frustrated response of a Massachusetts town to state plans to house migrants in a former prison building in their area. What vocal townspeople told state officials they wanted was for the problem of sheltering migrants to go away and for the officials to worry about their needs instead — that we were spending too much time and money on others. It shows that rather than only policing the border, what is missing is any set of policies that start with the idea that migration generally is rising for a host of reasons, and there must be a system — legal, shelter, jobs, and adjudication of asylum — that is sized to handle the flow.
In the cities bringing actions in courts and legislatures about homelessness, the pitch is that while homelessness is an unfortunate outcome of our various economic, drug and social problems, the citizenry is most concerned about getting the homeless off their streets, not on where they should go. In my own New York City neighborhood, the “crimes” that people are reporting to the local police precinct are mostly about individual dealing going on around local drug treatment centers and unsocial acts of homeless people on the streets, not crimes of violence that Trump is insisting despite fact is on the rise.
By most scientific evaluation, the wildfires and powerful hurricanes we see increasing in frequency and intensity are effects of climate changes fueled by decades of human causes. Our general response is for some wand to be waved and for storms to go away; Trump tells us that the science is hoax and why Harris tells us that we need to change the focus of our oil-fuel energy addictions.
Hearing the Debate
If tonight’s overly hyped debate has any lasting meaning beyond the clash of strong personalities, the inevitable sniping and one-liners, it may be in the degree that either candidate acknowledges that they don’t do magic.
No matter what they say, neither can fulfill the desire for the unpleasant to disappear.
Debates are probably the last place to hear about practical solutions of any kind since the emphasis is on calling out the other guy.
But to a degree that there is anything to be learned here, it may be in an effort both to recognize the fact of problems that have emerged over these last years and whether there is acknowledgement about the limits of resolving all of them.
At its best, this debate is about credibility and trust to handle real problems, not fantasies.
Trump will be judged almost solely by whether he acts like a bully and the degree to which he rewrites recent history to absolve himself of responsibility for anything untoward. It is unlikely that he will own up to the idea that setting tariffs on all consumer goods will raise prices rather than lowering them. Just this week, his “weave” of ideas offered in response to a question about the importance he might place on child-care tax credits left listeners baffled about what subject he was discussing. He will have as much trouble deciding how many Project 2025 objectives — including tenets to eliminate the problem of criticism from journalists or opponents -- written by his own advisers to reject publicly.
Like Biden before her, Harris is the more likely to say that by pulling together we can at least embrace the efforts to continue work on efforts she supports to expand civil rights or restore choice for reproductive health. Her “risk-free” approach on issues to date, which has drawn consistent criticism, at least starts by recognizing that even as president, she can’t solve all problems at once.
The politics of campaign personality is far less important than how they approach the job.
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