Opinion: Biden wants to make America decent again. Will that be enough for voters?
By Michael Gerson Michael Gerson Columnist Email Bio Follow Columnist May 16 at 5:48 PM Every so often, America’s party of the left is seized by the fear that its platform of anti-militarism, sweet reason and communal progress just can’t compete with the right’s more emotional appeal to national pride, tradition and identity.
This, in James’s view, presents liberals with a challenge. Denying this human reality is irrational. But the normal liberal agenda of anti-militarism and of “high wages and short hours” has limited primal appeal. The problem runs deeper than matters of war and peace. “All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs him . . .
If James is right, what light is thrown on our politics? There is little doubt that President Trump has tapped into deep rivers of pugnacity and aggression. He is not, by ideology, a militarist . Yet he has organized and weaponized resentments against outsiders in the manner of a militarist. He has conjured images of America being invaded by dark-skinned rapists and murderers. He has deployed the military to the southern border as a political stunt.
His announcement speech sent a mixed message. On one hand, Biden presented the highest of stakes for the country. He associated Trump’s appeal with “crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging and bearing the fangs of racism.” He made a comparison between current events and 1930s Germany. He talked of a threat to the United States “unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.” He set out a “battle for the soul of this nation.
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