The selfishness of Biden and Trump
I doubt that either Joe Biden or Donald Trump knows much about the French philosopher Albert Camus, but they’re sure acting as if they do.
Camus was a smart guy who understood the human condition. “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others,” he said. That pretty much describes Biden and Trump, both of whom have no bigger fans than themselves. One thinks he’s the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt and I wouldn’t be surprised if the other sends himself a Valentine’s Day card on February 14 every year.
Yet, as much as Trump and Biden admire themselves, most Americans don’t share the sentiment. Most Americans don’t want either of them to run for president this time around — but they’re running nonetheless. They figure that the unenlightened masses, otherwise known as the American electorate, will come around.
The 2024 presidential race will be about many things — inflation, immigration, crime, Hunter Biden, to name a few — but there’s another factor at work this time around: selfishness. Selfishness may not be all that unusual in the world of politics, but when so many people don’t want a Trump vs. Biden 2.0, these two are giving selfishness a bad name. Neither of them seems to care that so many Americans just want them to go away.
Why don’t they care? Because they’re selfish. They want what they want and they don’t care what the voters want.
Even David Ignatius of the Washington Post, a fan of Biden’s presidency, recently wrote a column under the headline, “President Biden should not run again in 2024.” Given Ignatius’s prominence and influence in Washington, the piece may give Democrats an opening to say in public what a lot of them have been saying in private: that Biden is too old and should step aside to give other Democrats a chance to take on Donald Trump (if he’s the GOP nominee).
And Ignatius, smart as he is, is simply catching up with a lot of “ordinary” Americans. According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, 73 percent of them think Biden is too old to run for president and 60 percent say he’s not mentally capable to serve four more years. As for Trump, an AP/NORC poll found that 53 percent of Americans say they wouldn’t vote for him under any circumstances — and another 11 percent say they probably wouldn’t vote for him. All this prompted Gerard Baker to write in his WSJ column that, “Whatever else this may be, it isn’t a rematch by popular acclamation. As sequels go, this is more ‘Jaws: The Revenge’ than ‘The Godfather: Part II.’”
And there’s something else that I think will influence the 2024 race, besides selfishness. It’s cowardice.
As I write this there are no high-profile, prominent Democrats with the courage to tell the president that it’s time to get out of the race before he falls down again or says something nobody can understand, or dozes off during a speech, maybe even a speech he’s delivering. Again, as I write this, it looks like the only prominent Democrat that can convince Joe Biden to leave the race … is Joe Biden. And, so far, it’s not happening.
And there are a few prominent Republicans — very few, actually — who are saying that Donald Trump lacks the character to be president. Most Republicans are hiding under their desks, afraid to offend Trump and his most passionate supporters.
Profiles in courage are rare, but in the world of politics you can find cowards all over the place.
Let’s face it: Democrats would vote for anyone with a pulse — as long as they think he can beat Donald Trump. And they figure that since Biden beat Trump once, he can do it again. But it’s only September, so let’s see if they still believe that around Christmas time.
As for Trump: Republicans want to beat Joe Biden more than almost anything else. Yet Donald Trump is way out ahead among GOP primary voters, even though they’re backing a candidate who more than half the country say they “definitely” would not support.
Donald Trump won the support of independent voters in 2016 when he was an outsider running against Hillary Clinton. They abandoned him in 2020 after four years of more drama than they could stomach. Who thinks those voters will come back in 2024 with all those indictments hanging over him? In a close race, it’s very hard to win without independents voting for you.
It’s only September 2023, as I say, and voting is a long way off. So who knows if 2024 will be a replay of 2020. But if it is, those independent swing voters will have to make a choice, one that may very well decide the election: Will they vote for a man who will be 82 on Election Day and 86 if he finishes a second term, a man who already has noticeable physical and mental acuity issues … or will they vote for a man who conceivably might be behind bars on Election Day? That may be a tad over the top — but you never know.
It’s a dilemma for Americans. Not so much for two candidates who are taking Camus to heart and not caring too much with what others think.
Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.