As the nation reels from yet another week of simmering, racially-motivated violence, the New York Times points out that one of our Presidential candidates is still coyly playing games about whether he even really wants the job:
Presented in a recent interview with a scenario, floating around the political ether, in which the presumptive Republican nominee proves all the naysayers wrong, beats Hillary Clinton and wins the presidency, only to forgo the office as the ultimate walk-off winner, Mr. Trump flashed a mischievous smile.
“I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens,” he said minutes before leaving his Trump Tower office to fly to a campaign rally in New Hampshire.
Well, it isn’t going to happen. But let’s just assume for a moment that the millions of people who’ve lined up to pull the lever for this guy aren’t registering a “protest vote,” expecting nothing in return and actually hope that their vote will make a difference in their day-to-day lives. Let’s assume that the folks who are going all out to oppose him are doing so out of real concern for their futures and the futures of their families. In both cases, vast numbers of Americans are gearing up to sacrifice big chunks of their own time and lives to help fight for a cause they believe in, whether on the left or on the right.
There are actually Americans out there who passionately feel it’s their patriotic duty to vote—after all, hundreds of thousands of our people lost their lives on foreign shores just so their descendants might have an opportunity to enjoy the privileges our exceedingly rare brand of Democracy provides. Millions more immigrated here, most staring down the face of uncertain, precarious futures just to have the opportunity to eke out a better life for themselves. We fought a Revolution, a Civil War, and two World Wars to get where we are today. What does it say about a candidate who would even joke about betraying the American electorate, as if the whole process was a lark?
Told of Mr. Trump’s noncommittal comment, Stuart Stevens, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012 who has become one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal critics, said that Mr. Trump was “a con man who is shocked his con hasn’t been called” and that he was looking for an emergency exit.
“He has no sense of how to govern,” Mr. Stevens said. “He can’t even put together a campaign.”
Nervous Republicans who are now stuck with trying not to make a bad situation worse emphasize that Trump really, truly, really is “in it to win it.” But the Presidency is a grueling, all-encompassing job, one that grays the hair and speeds up the aging process of all who earn it. President Obama sleeps about five hours a night. At any given moment he can be woken up with news of an unprecedented domestic or international crisis (like what happened in Dallas last night) that demands an immediate response and the careful weighing of options, many of which range from bad to terrible, many of which mean making calls about life and death. As George W. Bush showed us all too vividly, it’s not a job well-suited to delegating big decisions. One stupid blunder—like invading Iraq, for example—can permanently and drastically alter entire parts of the world for the worse. One mishandled financial crisis can consign an entire generation of Americans to a lifetime of economic distress.
And it’s definitely not a job you can just “bail” on when things don’t go your way:
[A]s the race has turned toward the general election and a majority of polls have shown Mr. Trump trailing Mrs. Clinton, speculation has again crept into political conversations in Washington, New York and elsewhere that Mr. Trump will seek an exit strategy before the election to avoid a humiliating loss.
Now he is refusing to rule out an even more dramatic departure, one that would let him avoid the grueling job of governing, return to his business and enjoy his now-permanent status as a news media celebrity.
The Times article examines the real-life implications of what would happen if a candidate, once elected, inexplicably “bowed out" before taking the oath of office. It's an interesting hypothetical exercise. But the fact is that the New York Times—or any paper, for that matter-- shouldn’t have to write stories like this. Not with the vast disparities of wealth cleaving the world into a tiny group of uber-wealthy haves dictating the futures of billions of have-nots. Not with the disastrous effects of climate change creeping under our door. Not with racism and blind, flag-waving nationalism making a distressing comeback in most of the Western democracies, and our own country increasingly divided yet again along racial lines.
This isn’t some golf game at some Scottish resort. Americans have a right to a candidate that takes their concerns and problems with the seriousness that they deserve. And any candidate for a job that carries with it the immense responsibilities of the American President should have the decency and respect not to treat the process like some kind of joke.