Robert Reich: May I Have A Word With You? – OpEd
I want to try to reassure you about this country.
I know that you’re worried and upset. You have every reason to be. Donald Trump is a vile human being, and he got away with a tsunami of lies Thursday night. Joe Biden didn’t come across with the vitality he needed to show.
I have no idea whether Biden will get his mojo back or the Democrats will find someone else to take on Trump. But I have an abiding faith in the common sense and good-heartedness of most Americans.
Although we’re horribly divided right now, the fact is, again and again, we’ve rejected vicious haters and demagogues — Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, and George Wallace, to name a few.
We’ve made a few bad mistakes in our choices of president, to be sure, but we’ve corrected them as soon as we could. We elected James Buchanan in 1856, but he was out in four years. We allowed Andrew Johnson to become president following Lincoln’s assassination, but we impeached him. We elected Richard Nixon in 1968 but sent him packing in 1974. We elected Trump in 2016 (although more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton), and we didn’t reelect him in 2020.
There have been times when I doubted America. I think the worst was 1968, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and then Bobby Kennedy, the riots and fires that consumed our cities, the horrific Democratic convention in Chicago along with protests and violent police response, the election of the dreadful Nixon, and the escalating carnage of Vietnam.
It seemed to me then that we had utterly lost our moral compass and purpose.
But the Watergate hearings demonstrated to me that we had not lost it. Democrats and Republicans worked together to discover what Nixon had done. I had much the same feeling about the brilliant work done by the House’s special committee to investigate January 6, 2021.
Washington, D.C., is not the Gomorrah portrayed in the media, and I think it important not to become so consumed with its failings or its Republican crazies that we overlook the many good things happening there, particularly under Biden — the most aggressive use of antitrust and most pro-union labor board I remember, and Biden’s extraordinary legislative accomplishments.
When I think about what’s good about America, I also think about the jurors and prosecutors and the judge in Trump’s recent trial in Manhattan, who took extraordinary abuse. Their lives and the lives of their families were threatened. But they didn’t flinch. They did their duty.
I think about our armed services men and women. I think about our firefighters and police officers. I think about our teachers and social workers, and our nurses who acted with such courage and dedication during the pandemic. I think about all the other people who are putting in countless hours in our cities and towns and states to make our lives better.
And all the people who are working their hearts out right now to make sure Donald Trump stays out of the White House. (I assure you, I’m doing the same, and I hope you are as well.)
A few nights ago, I had dinner with an old friend whom I haven’t seen in many years. He’s now a United States senator. He works extraordinarily hard. He cares deeply about the country. He shares many of our values.
He told me that he seriously doubts Americans will elect Donald Trump.
I agree with him. We are so much better than Trump.
- This article was published at Robert Reich's Substack