Even if this ends well, it will not end well.
Mind you, if it ends badly — that is to say, if Donald Trump is returned to the White House in November — America’s likely future will be, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish and short.” But the paradox of our predicament is that even if it ends well — Joe Biden becomes the 46th president — our likely future will, at least in the short term, be only marginally better.
That’s not an indictment of the state of our economic, foreign policy, environmental, judicial or social affairs, though those, too, will be dicey. No, that’s an indictment of the brokenness, the newly revealed fragility, of our society, of the rituals, traditions and unspoken agreements that make America.
As illustration, try a thought experiment. On Inauguration Day, by longstanding tradition, the incoming president meets the outgoing president at the White House. They exchange pleasantries and then ride over to the Capitol together. One imagines it can be awkward, especially if the new president defeated the old one at the polls. Yet Bush did it with Clinton, Carter with Reagan, Ford with Carter, Hoover with Roosevelt — a grand symbol of the continuity of government and the peaceful transfer of power.
Now, try to imagine Trump doing that with Biden. Try to imagine Trump as a “loser” — there’s no description more damning in his vocabulary — not behaving badly, not pouting, not stomping tradition like a bully stomps a sandcastle. Try to imagine his gracious concession speech, his congratulatory tweets, the smooth transition period. You can’t, not even if you had the combined imaginative horsepower of Jack Kirby, Walt Disney and Stephen King.
