The November 5 election is fast approaching, and this column is addressed to anyone who isn’t absolutely sure how they’ll vote, especially to any who are seriously considering voting for Donald Trump as President.
I have no right to tell anyone else how to vote. Each person’s vote is sacred, and I respect that decision even when the voter’s choice is opposite to what I would choose.
But I do want to mention some facts that I hope each Trump-leaning voter will consider.
Character matters in anyone who asks to lead this country. For instance, the charges against Bill Clinton when he was running for President, over allegations of his dalliances with women not his wife, were a major argument against electing him.
Compared to Trump, however, Clinton now looks like a choir boy.
Consider Trump’s many legal entanglements. The former President is a convicted felon, after a jury of average Americans judged him guilty on 34 fraud charges. Those charges involved his falsifying of business records as part of a scheme to pay hush money to women who claimed sexual relationships with him and to thereby influence the 2016 election (David A. Graham, “The Cases Against Trump: A Guide,” The Atlantic, September 13, 2024).
He also has a civil judgment against him of half a billion dollars for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a department- store dressing room in the 1990s, and for subsequently defaming her.
In addition, Trump faces several other serious legal cases, some of which he could make go away if he should win the coming election.
But whether he gets the Federal cases against him dismissed or not, the questions about his character remain. From all appearances, this is not a man whom parents can hold up for their children to respect and imitate.
One serious, and seriously wrong, action by Trump is that he unlawfully held onto classified documents when he left the White House, actually storing some of these in bathrooms and unsecured closets at his Mar-Lago home. He doesn’t even deny having done so, declaring without any basis in law that he had a right to do so.
Then, there is his coziness with dictators around the world: Vladimir Putin of Russia, Kim-Jung-Un of North Korea, and Viktor Orban of Hungary, to mention a few prominent examples.
Putin illegally invaded Russia’s smaller neighbor, Ukraine, and Trump has said the Russian leader should do “whatever the hell he wants” in that country that’s fighting valiantly simply to maintain its freedom. It’s clear that Trump wants the approval of fascist leaders more than he wants to support our brave allies. Trump claims to care about the people who follow him. But all the evidence suggests that isn’t true. He cares only about himself.
And that makes him dangerous if he should be elected President in November. Because it’s very easy to manipulate such a person. All that Putin or other dictators have to do to get Trump’s support is to is tell him what a great man he is. The former President is very susceptible to flattery.
In many ways, Trump seems more like a toddler than an adult. Give a toddler candy or ice cream and you’re the kid’s buddy. Flatter Trump and you can do no wrong in his eyes.
With the many challenges this country has around the world, we desperately need to elect an adult as President.
That’s not Trump.
On the other hand, Vice-President Kamala Harris is an adult. She has deep experience at several levels of government, as a district attorney, then attorney general of our largest state, then a U.S. Senator from California, then Vice-President under President Joe Biden.
In her current role, Harris has sat in on strategy sessions with Biden and other world leaders. Biden, arguably one of the most consequential foreign-affairs Presidents in modern history, has sometimes sent her in his stead to negotiate terms of important agreements with other countries. She knows the job of being President as few other people in this country know it.
“As vice president,” an article by the independent London think tank Chatham House notes, “Harris made 17 foreign trips in three-and-a-half years, reflecting both President Biden’s view of her role and his own limited travel. Some of those assignments were the highest profile. Harris attended the Munich Security Conference, after Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in 2022, as well as the APEC and ASEAN Summits and the 2023 COP climate summit in Dubai….
“Other than Biden, Americans must go all the way back to George H. W. Bush in 1989 to find a president who would take office with more foreign affairs experience than Harris” (www. chathamhouse.org/2024/07/kamala- harris-would-bring-greater- foreign-policy-experiencemost- new-us-presidents).
Unlike Trump, Harris has no legal cases pending against her, nor allegations of improper behavior.
Also unlike Trump, Harris cares about people other than herself. She relates well to others, including children, whom she often stood up for as a district attorney.
Too, many of the people who know Trump best, including numerous members of his administration, say he isn’t worthy of again occupying the Oval Office— in fact, that he is dangerous.
Think about that. When his own vice-president won’t endorse him for a second term, that should give any voter pause when considering supporting him.
Finally, Trump has advocated terminating the U.S. Constitution. That document isn’t perfect— it has had to be amended several times—but it has served us well as a governing document for the 235 years it has been in effect.
The choice for U. S. President in the coming election is vitally important, perhaps the most important that choice has ever been. As we vote this election, let’s carefully consider the characters and the records of both candidates.
Let’s not again make the mistake of electing Donald Trump.