Presidential trails and tales

It fits right in with all the rest we’ve seen so far in this theater of the bizarre that is Campaign 2024: The Democratic National Convention week has begun with the famously titled presidential nominees of both parties working at top speed on the same task.

Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump find themselves suddenly racing to fill in the blanks and tell America the most believable story about just who the Democrats’ sudden new presidential nominee really is. What Harris has accomplished in her career so far. And mainly, what she will do for — or to — you and your family, by fixing the problems that worry you most.

So it was that in the run-up to the Democratic convention in Chicago, the top strategists of both Harris and Trump had carefully planned events that would focus your attention on what all polls tell us is the issue that troubles most of you most of all: the inflation-beset economy.

But then, last Wednesday, Trump got some bad news. As he saw it, the timing couldn’t have been worse. He was heading to Asheville, North Carolina, where his staff had planned for him to blast the Biden-Harris administration’s failure to fix America’s inflation crisis, when the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics released data reporting a stunning success.

"Inflation hits three-year-low," is how the next morning’s Washington Post’s front-page headline would inform the capital city’s cognoscenti. July’s numbers showed the annual inflation rate had fallen below 3% for the first time since 2021.

Trump seemed to take the news as a personal affront. He careened off script, yet again, in Asheville, pinballing from one angry, name-calling personal attack to another. He called Harris "crazy," a socialist and worse. He went all through his lingo and libretto about masses of criminal Latino illegal migrants imperiling America.

At one point, Trump questioned whether the economy was even your major concern, but at another, he said: "Our country has become a third world country … We’re a banana republic." But the Federal Reserve and other global analysts have reported that during the Biden-Harris administration the United States’ Gross Domestic Product returned to its pre-pandemic levels much more rapidly than the GDPs of all other advanced economic nations.

Meanwhile, Harris wisely did not try to recite statistics or quote a pride of elite economic lions in the hopes of convincing middle-class Americans they are doing quite well — never mind that they’re distressed by the still horribly high prices at the grocery stores and can’t afford the soaring prices of prescription drugs, where we still pay more than folks in any other industrialized nation.

Harris took what she hoped would turn out to be a populist but politically passable high road to protect consumers from excessive corporate profiteers. In Raleigh, North Carolina, on the Friday before her convention, the Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting found a way to tell important bits of her California crusader story as she announced what she intends to do for consumers as president:

"As attorney general in California, I went after companies that illegally increased prices, including wholesalers that inflated the price of prescription medication and companies that conspired with competitors to keep prices of electronics high. I won more than $1 billion for consumers. So, believe me, as president, I will go after the bad actors. And I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food."

(Time out: To be absolutely accurate here, as the official White House transcript dutifully noted, the vice president mispronounced her key word at the end — calling it price "gauging," as would rhyme with "aging.")

Of course, Trump was quick to fire off a social media post blasting Harris' plan as "SOVIET Style Price Controls." Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called Harris "the most liberal person" ever nominated for president. Republicans touched all the familiar bases: socialist, leftist and, yes, communist. Still, Harris hasn’t detailed how her plan will impose what critics interpret as "price controls." Indeed, price controls were proposed and imposed in a former White House that I covered.

Question: The president who previously imposed price controls was: (A) Jimmy Carter; (B) Barack Obama; (C) Richard Nixon?

Answer: C. Yes, really. From 1971-1974.

Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Readers may send him email at martin.schram@gmail.com.