Reflections on the End of an Election Cycle

Since spring, I have been sending regular dispatches to a small French review, Histoire et Liberté, on the progress of our political year. I have tried to explain with bland and nonjudgmental accuracy the positions taken by the candidates and how well they have defended them. I did not much enjoy the chore, I admit quite frankly, and why should I have? The last time I commented on American politics was in January 2021, in response to the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election. (READ MORE: Weathering the Storm of the Presidential Transition)

Anyone can look up what I wrote, which followed a column by The American Spectator’s editor-in-chief in which he dissociated himself from the incumbent, whose cause and administration he had long supported.

The attempt to simply subvert the Constitution by disrupting the mandated certification of the duly elected president was too much for Mr. Tyrrell. Like him, without neglecting to deplore the grotesque and subversive — that word again — assaults on Mr. Trump throughout his administration, I stated plainly this was a line that could not be crossed without foul consequences for our liberty-preserving system of government. Two wrongs do not make a right and all that sort of thing.

If we wanted to keep a republic and preserve the Union — not the vacuous and sentimental “unity” that is the catchword of parties and candidates trying their best to fool all the people, all the time — we had best turn the page, not try to edit it.

I did not write about American politics after this, and not because they are shabby. Most politics in most countries are — this does not matter too much so long as constitutional rules are honored in the end (if only in the breach) — and the politicians still respect the people.

But to write about politics, shabby or not, you have to take the reporting job seriously, which means that, whatever your tone — sarcastic or amused or sober or somber or simply flat — you have to get to the facts of the matter at hand, listen to and report all sides, and constantly follow up and revise and rewrite because politics is a running story, obviously.

How many actually do this?

Editors who should know better forget the admonitions of Lionel Trilling and William Buckley Jr. The former said that, for editors, intelligence is a moral responsibility. The latter explained it was time to stand athwart history and shout: “Stop!” Intelligence and pondering the past to better understand the present count for little in American political reporting; that is why it is falling down on the job.

In explaining this to my French readers, I did allow that they should take my own discouragement with a grain of historical and editorial salt. Historical, for after all we have wallowed in this sort of mediocrity before; editorial, because most people are smart enough to know, when reading about politics in the papers, it is a waste of time.

Anyway, there are always exceptions to the rule (or the trend). The Wall Street Journal has remained throughout these low, dishonest years a steadfast upholder of correct journalism and remembered the Trilling rule about the moral imperative to be intelligent. There are others. Honest men working independently in improvised outlets and new publications springing up — for example Tablet, the Free Press, the investigative writers at RealClearPolitics, and the deep research men at City Journal, to name only a few.

The French understand this since their situation is comparable — a mainstream “media” that is cribbing the U.S. corporate media instead of doing their own work, and small outlets making what they would call a baroud d’honneur (last stand) for their profession, however small their readerships. We at The American Spectator should know. I dare believe the upstarts will save the day and replace the worn-out flacks, on both sides of the ocean.

And there is cause to believe this, even if the signs of its passing are still faint. Anyway, what I explained to my French readers is that when you get down to it, right now, election time, bygones must be bygones, and it is better to let the voters decide on the fitness or unfitness of candidates. Better at any rate than corrupting the judiciary, the security agencies, and the media to stay in power. We are not a banana republic nor a single party policy state.

However, in my French language correspondence, I found that my readers were accusing me of malpractice, committing the pox-on-both-houses cop-out. And, though these are mainly anti-communist old-school liberals who learned to think from the likes of Raymond Aron and Jean-François Revel, they are terrified of the one the media in Europe has been calling dirty names, like “fascist.” (RELATED: Fascism Is a Progressive Tendency — Not a Trump One)

“Not guilty!” pled I. Crude vote-fixing attempts following an election and in defiance of American constitutional tradition are pretty bad, but the wholesale subversion of entire sections of our government with the cooperation of a servile press is worse.

America may have a bad cold, but, like Sinatra, it is far from finished. I believe my (and our) friends far away — not only in France but beyond, even Africa — know this and can be reassured.

These are cultured people who love what America stands for and know their American classics. They can see it is right that Robert Frost, who chooses his road and accepts the consequence, should be our great national poet. Of course there is plenty of competition for that honor, and that is fine, but we, and others, can also agree that, for all of his genius, out of the running is the pessimistic T. S. Eliot with his sour view of April, the time of young love and baseball.

That is a very un-American — mind, not anti-American, Eliot was a conservative — attitude. Also, we are a country of endless summer — when the “fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high” — and we are always building, inventing, performing great feats of valor and goodness, in cheerful defiance of the grifters in Washington, D.C.

So go and vote, as I plan to. I do not really deeply care who wins. Even if, objectively, there are reasons to believe one side will make it easier for our enemies to do us harm both at home and abroad, while the other side will likely bumble and fumble but maybe get a few things right that give us elbow room to get our act together — an essential and permanent task, as Daniel Webster was in the habit of asking: “How fares the Union?”

Americans learn that nothing is impossible, even if they came to America in rags and in the dark of night on dangerous journeys or leaking boats, and they, or their children, will soon spread their wings and reach for the sky.

READ MORE:

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Whoever Yells ‘Fascist’ First Loses

Roll the Dice With Trump or Go Down the Tubes With Harris

The Final Choice: Civilizational Arson Versus Civilizational Sanity

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