Last week, my son completed his college application essay. He chose to write about what he learned about himself and about leadership by serving on two hiring committees at his school. He goes to a “democratic school fostering choice, voice, and diversity of thought to develop engaged citizens and inspired leaders.”1 The particulars of his essay aside, the exercise got me thinking again about the qualities and practices of good leaders and what they show our kids. During this election season, my mind naturally turned to our Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
This past week, Vice President Harris and former President Trump held rallies that put them in stark relief. Each of them stood in places of historical significance, arranged the scene to evoke particular feelings, and surrogates and witnesses have been speaking on their behalf, each of them tapping into the American imagination. Harris and Trump are the headlines, embodying the America they aspire to create. They could not be more different in substance, style, and character.
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Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden put (white Christian nationalist) America first. Individual speakers delivered a torrent of racism, nativism, and misogyny to a crowd of 20,000 people. Each of their words fall under Neo-fascist banner statement by Stephen Miller created to refer to the American Nazi Party’s 1939 rally in the same place. All of it was capped off by Donald Trump’s call to attack “the enemy within.”
Hulk Hogan said, “When I hear Kamala speak… it sounds like a script from Hollywood with a really, really [spitting sound] bad actress!” Trump says he will protect women, but his lineup attacks one. Later, Tucker Carlson, falsely referred to Harris as a “Samoan-Malaysian” with a “low IQ.” Harris’s father was Jamaican and her mother Indian. She attended Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. She served as president of its chapter of the Black Law Students Association. Grant Cardone, falsely suggested Harris is a sex worker and her advisers are “pimp handlers.” Rudy Giuliani claimed that “Palestinians are taught to kill us at two-years old.” I guess he hasn’t watched Jesus Camp.
Tony Hinchcliffe said the most widely broadcast hatred. The shock jock called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” The quick line evokes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and puts it together with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, especially those from Latin American countries. The “joke” was so obviously racist and repulsive, even J.D. Vance had trouble lying to sanitize it.
White nationalist and Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, provided the overarching theme. He said that “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Knowing who Miller is, this was done to reference a 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, when a speaker promised to “restore America to the true Americans.” Read: white Christian Americans and those who will pay fealty.
Trump closed out the rally by renewing a promise. “I know many of them. It’s just this amorphous group of people, but they’re smart and they’re vicious, and we have to defeat them. And when I say the ‘enemy from within,’ the other side goes crazy…They’ve done every bad things to this country. They are indeed the enemy from within.” Defeat them. How? The week before, Trump suggested to Fox News that he would use the military to handle the “enemy from within” on Election Day. He has said that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff are the “enemy from within.”
What is Trump’s argument for being president and what would he do? America is male, white, and native-born. Those who support that vision are free from his threats so long as they are loyal. Women and non-males, non-white Americans, and immigrants have no place in America (unless they are loyal to him). Those who oppose him deserve to be and will be attacked by the military.
That’s fascist.
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On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the Ellipse in Washington, DC. The White House shone in the background. Nine American flags stood behind her. Standing behind the seal of the Vice President of the United States, she called on Americans to focus on our love of freedom, commitment to dignity, and the necessity of unity to a crowd of 75,000 people. The crowd overflowed onto the National Mall all the way down to the Jefferson Memorial.
Almost four years ago, Donald Trump stood in the same spot and told the crowd to “fight like hell.” As Liz Cheney said, Trump “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.” He was incapable of admitting his electoral defeat even though he knew he’d lost. He couldn’t abide his team’s loss of over 60 court cases to interfere with the election, the failure of his fake electors scheme, that people of integrity from the Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania governments would not overturn the results. Nonetheless, he’d set up “the Big Lie” and sent his supporters—who he knew were armed—to stop the certification of the election. The mob injured 140 police officers. They defecated in the Capitol. They chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” Trump said, “So what.”
Standing there, Harris said, “We know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election, an election that he knew he lost.” Firm, serious, poised, and focused on the needs of the American people, she drew the ultimate contrast onstage and highlighted how it’s true in her campaign and will be in her White House.
“I pledge to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make and to people who disagree with me. Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table,” she said. This is obviously true. Hundreds of conservatives and Republicans have endorsed her, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, retired Judge Michael Luttig, Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol, Bulwark founder and editor Sarah Longwell, former RNC Chair Michael Steel, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, Vice President Dick Cheney, Mesa, Arizona Mayor John Giles, and of course former Wyoming and Illinois Representatives and January 6th Commissioners Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. They are some of the 300 former Republican staffers supporting Harris.
Trump’s former staff and agency heads have called Trump dangerous and unfit for office. Retired William McRaven and Navy SEAL who oversaw the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, wrote, “Mr. Trump has no self-control. He lashes out at immigrants, religious groups and military heroes. He lies with reckless abandon.” He continues, “These are things a disturbed 15-year-old boy would do, not the commander in chief, not the man who holds the nuclear codes, not the leader of the free world.” He joins other generals and admirals and hundreds of other military and national security professionals (some, like Olivia Troye, from Trump’s administration) who recognize that Trump is a danger. Finally, retired Brigadier General and Trump’s former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, has said, “[Trump’s] certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government.”
Harris said something simple. She pledged to make Americans’ lives better. We need “common sense solutions” and to “seek common ground.” Her agenda aims squarely at supporting common Americans—no matter their background—to buy homes, be securely and gainfully employed, go to safe schools with well-paid teachers, and access affordable childcare and healthcare. She will maintain America’s preeminence as the world’s energy generator and home of innovation. She will maintain our alliances but not without conditions that balance America’s interests, human rights, and the stability of our climate. Most importantly in this election, she will unequivocally stand up our Constitution, the rule of law, and your right to a fair, free, and secure election.
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What if Harris’s and Trump’s last week was a college application essays? Who would want them to come to their schools? If we read their surrogates and critics statements like letters of recommendation (or not), what do they say about the content of our candidates’ characters?
Donald Trump would never get into a good college. He and his closest supporters are violent, demeaning, perverted, and unstable. He would threaten our faculty, disparage his fellow students, and would probably try to incite hatred on the campus. As a convicted criminal and adjudicated sexual offender, I would have serious concerns about his activities both on and off campus. Though I didn’t address it, Trump’s inability to be honest and speak coherently would give me great pause about his ability to succeed academically.
Harris’s performance shows a proclivity for building broad coalitions among people with diverse thoughts, different backgrounds and experiences. Her actions prove she is committed to ethical conduct on behalf of others. While kind, she is also incredibly firm and laser-focused on the challenge. She is does not allow them to become center stage in her campaigns or coalitions. She would no doubt get into an excellent college and succeed.
Kamala Harris should be the next President of the United States.
- I serve on his school district’s school board. ↩︎
Peter Walks for Democracy 