By Bruce La Rue

“How bizarre, how bizarre” — OMC.

Assuming we are not enveloped in some sort of mass nightmare from which we are unable to awaken, barring a miraculous, national-face-saving write-in victory by suitable personnel, we will go to the polls in November and vote for one of two candidates, neither of whom deserves to be president.

If Donald Trump were able to rein in his sophomoric, low-brow rhetoric, he would likely win in an electoral landslide. It’s not about mean tweets; it’s about the impulsivity and poor judgement they embody. While we no longer have the affable octogenarian with diminished faculties, the detestable reprobate with diminished civility remains. That being said, Trump has endured an unprecedented barrage of attacks from political adversaries and a mentally disturbed young man.

In the other corner, Vice-President Kamala Harris, a candidate whose entire career has been in the public sector. From the time she graduated law school and was admitted to the California bar, she has never worked in the private sector. Fine. Just as the world needs tradespeople, the world also needs prosecutors, but is that a useful or appropriate background for the leader of the free world? Probably not. Her experience may be more suitable for a position as U.S. Attorney General, but not helpful in the executive branch. One would think that a lifelong public employee is going to have a friendlier view of taxation than a lifelong private-sector taxpayer. 

She has rarely been forced to defend herself on a big stage, but when she has it has not gone well for her. Her demeanor ranges from ditziness to snarky condescension. Her interview with Lester Holt of NBC News went south (mainly because she never did), and her exchanges with Tulsi Gabbard during the 2019 primaries likely led to then-candidate Harris’s early departure, as well as a trip to the DNC principal’s office for Ms. Gabbard.

Political junkies already know a lot about Vice-President Harris. Regular folks, busy working, raising children, paying taxes, helping others, will soon learn more, and some of it will raise concerns. Trump, on the other hand, has no secrets. His faults, flaws and foibles are widely known and oft recounted. He is quite accustomed to fending off attacks, albeit, typically, rather ungraciously. He dealt with a much more seasoned and politically adroit screeching harpy during the 2016 campaign, and won. Earlier, during the primary debates, Trump boorishly and tastelessly gouged every decent person’s sensibilities, and won.

While Trump’s performance at the National Association of Black Journalists event was hardly a tour-de-force, he did show up. If a debate takes place, it will almost certainly not end well for Madame Vice-President. She loses patience with heckling protestors at her rallies; someone so easily rattled should not debate Trump.

Remember when then-Senator Harris, as a member of the Senate judiciary committee, grilled Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings? She was aggressive and relentless. The point is, as a career prosecutor, her job has been to dish it out, at which she is inarguably adept. During a debate, she will have to take it, which seems to create a chasm in her armor wide enough to drive a trolley through.

Beyond all of that, one question lingers above our political landscape like a dark cloud with no rainbow in sight: How are we even engaging in a serious discussion about these two political caricatures in this parody of an election? In what dystopian parallel universe are these two hapless souls, out of millions of constitutionally viable citizens, ostensibly the best we can do? 

We walk around as though everything is all right, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates as though it were normal election-year politics instead of a surreal episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Lest we all end up in a hyperbolic chamber, decompressing from the exaggerated assessments of the dangers posed by each party, we would do well to avoid terms such as “threat to democracy” and “existential threat.” 

For now, we are stuck with ludicrously poor options, but we will survive four years of either candidate. Going forward, let’s see if we can do better, or, better yet, awaken from this “weird” nightmare.

Bruce La Rue lives in Mt. Ulla.