Biden's debate fiasco — and the hazards of a two-party duopoly

The time has come for citizens of all political stripes to candidly consider what America’s duopolistic and polarized party “system” has served up for 2024.

The Republican Party answers to a national boss whose felony conviction, authoritarian style, and clear dishonesty tell millions he should not return the White House. Democrats cling for now to a visibly aging incumbent whose performance from the start of Thursday’s live debate was widely perceived as ghastly. For many, it deepened doubts about his capabilities over the next four months, let alone another four years.

In a wider way, it brings to the fore how poorly our interparty competitions have evolved. The unique fact that the 45th and 46th presidents seek a second term to which both act entitled means that bringing new blood to the pinnacle of federal power might have to wait until 2029 at the earliest. That’s a long time away.

Can the people’s government until then reflect fresh visions of how to shape and respond to the ever-more-rapidly changing future? Can it react well in real time to crises?

BIDEN STRUGGLES

It broke some hearts — and buoyed others — to see President Joe Biden rasp and struggle to be audible and verbally lucid during the first 90-minute “rematch” debate against the man he defeated in 2020, Donald Trump. It’s extremely hard to believe that all that afflicted Biden was a cold and a sore throat, which at least the campaign did not claim to be an excuse.

The fact that Biden was able to vigorously deliver a stump speech the next day in the swing state of North Carolina, and admit that “I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to” to a roaring crowd, may have relieved supporters for the moment. But the video clips and memes from his sputters on Thursday night will remain viral and will not be erased. Nor will images of first lady Jill Biden helping him slowly descend steps offstage.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s debate performance was chock full of his characteristically toxic mix of made-up “facts,” phony anecdotes, violent imaginings, and his refusal to accept in advance the real results of the election if he loses again. But he was loud and he looked into the camera.

Voter anxiety under the circumstances is rational. Campaigns on both sides are more and more about smashing the threat of the “enemy” than about reinforcing ideas and principles on matters of governance to reach practical agreements. Attacks naturally inspire defensive reactions.

Another part of the polarization problem: Internet appeals for donations are chock full of apocalyptic pitches. Collecting money via digital appeals seems to require a dose of sensationalism. “Fascism is coming!” “Socialism is coming!” “Your liberty is at risk!”

Reason has a better chance to prevail when ordinary and sensible people are not bombarded with overwrought, simplistic messaging — which will only stop when it starts to be ignored. Too bad campaigns are such money guzzlers.

CONVENTION CHANGE

The timing of Thursday’s debate — months before it would ordinarily have occurred — preceded the nominating conventions which for decades have been just post-primary coronations. Would it be so unhealthy for the major parties to change the process to one where groups of delegates make some decisions in real time? We don’t think so.

Another unfortunate feature of the status quo is that alternative parties and independent candidates get dismissed as “spoilers” or even “novelty acts.” That’s been the fixed idea for so long, it’s easy to forget that parties are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. European countries that also built democracies in our wake have legislatures that depend on multiparty coalition agreements.

How can the chronically binary menu of options change? Professor Cornel West, the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Marianne Williamson, and former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched candidacies that have had little impact. None are of the order of Ross Perot’s impressive independent bid in 1992. But if you have enough money or enough conspiracy-driven supporters, you can run.

People across this diverse, sprawling country seem to want more choices — and some real hashing-out of fresh ideas.

Some of the nation’s founders fretted about days like these. John Adams, the second president, wrote: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

Maybe once the current storm passes, and the electoral chaos hopefully subsides, those old warnings against factions will be widely heeded anew. We can only hope — and examine the state of our electoral institutions for ways to expand democracy rather than weaken it with top-down control of the major parties.