The Current Thing

Three ideas to discuss, post-debate

I did not see the debate, so I missed all of the optics. I only listened for a few minutes on the car radio. What I heard was a man who said things that made no sense. He came across as not having the minimal mental capacity required to be President of the United States. That man was Donald Trump.

I could not bear to listen any more. When I got home I went to sleep.

So I was surprised to wake up the next morning and find that the Current Thing is President Biden’s bad performance. Against what is usually my better judgment, I am going to comment on the Current Thing. My takes are:

1. Leading Democrats and media figures only seem to care about how Mr. Biden’s infirmity will affect the election. I do not hear them care about the danger that it poses to the country right now.

2. The Democrats are particularly in trouble due to their use of affirmative action in choosing a Vice President.

3. The best outcome would be for Republicans to choose a qualified nominee for Vice-President (regardless of whether Mr. Trump recommends one), win the election, and then impeach Mr. Trump on day one.

Biden should step aside as President

There is a lot of talk on the Democratic side concerning whether Mr. Biden should step aside and allow the Democratic convention to choose another nominee.¹ Yet none of the newspaper editorial boards or Democratic operatives are calling for him to resign as President.

But he is clearly unqualified to be chief executive right now. His incapacity is an urgent problem that should not wait until next January. But the Democrats don’t care. To them, the election is everything that matters. The damage being done to the country in the meantime does not concern them. Priorities.

Of course, if Biden resigns, then Vice-President Kamala Harris takes over. And that brings me to my second take.

Affirmative action hardest hit

Yascha Mounk writes,

with Biden’s age already at issue in the 2020 campaign, his pick of running mate was always going to be especially consequential. But instead of assessing all possible contenders for their aptitude in the job and their appeal to voters, he successively narrowed down the field to favored demographic categories. First, he pledged that he would pick a woman. Rather than giving him greater freedom to pick within that group, this only intensified pressure on him to pick a woman “of color.” By the time his team was seriously vetting candidates, it was widely understood that he had ruled out anyone who wasn’t black.

This year, affirmative action has resulted in severe damage to two major institutions: Harvard University, and the Democratic Party. I am absolutely not saying that a black woman is inherently unqualified to be President of Harvard or the Democratic nominee for Vice President. But the only way someone as unqualified as Claudine Gay or Kamala Harris could have gotten to where they are is by being black women chosen for affirmative action reasons.

Harvard has suffered. The Democratic Party has suffered. And every competent black woman who did not need affirmative action to achieve high status has suffered.

The Case for a Day One Impeachment

The odds now strongly favor Mr. Trump winning in November. That makes it really important for the country that he choose a qualified individual as his running-mate. After all, he himself is soon going to turn 80.

If we are lucky, Mr. Trump will select a capable running-mate. But if he selects someone who is inexperienced and temperamentally unsuited to leading the country (J.D. Vance comes to mind), then my outlandish hope is that Republican leaders would try to persuade the convention to override his choice.

If the Vice President were, say, Pompeo or Youngkin, then the country would be in good hands should Mr. Trump be unable to continue in office. And in my opinion it would be optimal to impeach and remove Mr. Trump as soon as he takes office in January.

What about democracy? I say: don’t confuse the results of the primaries with the will of the people. Polls show that a majority of people do not like the choices being offered this November. A Day One Impeachment might be popular and in that sense democratic.

So those are my takes. The Democrats should care about the country and call for Mr. Biden to resign as President. Affirmative action should be tossed into the dustbin of history. And Republicans should care about the country and follow the Day One Impeachment path.

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How America Got Into This Omnishambles

1. Mr. Biden is being discussed by his colleagues the way that Neville Chamberlain was being discussed in Parliament in May of 1940. But in Mr. Biden’s case, there is no Winston Churchill waiting to step in.