On
November 8th, barring some astonishment, the people of the United
States will, after two hundred and forty years, send a woman to the
White House. The election of Hillary Clinton is an event that we will
welcome for its immense historical importance, and greet with
indescribable relief. It will be especially gratifying to have a woman
as commander-in-chief after such a sickeningly sexist and racist
campaign, one that exposed so starkly how far our society has to go. The
vileness of her opponent’s rhetoric and his record has been so widely
aired that we can only hope she will be able to use her office and her
impressive resolve to battle prejudice wherever it may be found.
On
every issue of consequence, including economic policy, the environment,
and foreign affairs, Hillary Clinton is a distinctly capable candidate:
experienced, serious, schooled, resilient. When the race began,
Clinton, who has always been a better office-holder than a campaigner,
might have anticipated a clash of ideas and personalities on the
conventional scale, against, say, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. Instead, the
Democratic nominee has ended up playing a sometimes secondary role in a
squalid American epic. If she is elected, she will have weathered a
prolonged battle against a trash-talking, burn-it-to-the-ground
demagogue. Unfortunately, the drama is not likely to end soon. The
aftereffects of this campaign may befoul our civic life for some time to
come.
If the prospect of a female President represents a
departure in the history of American politics, the candidacy of Donald
J. Trump, the real-estate mogul and Republican nominee, does, too—a
chilling one. He is manifestly unqualified and unfit for office. Trained
in the arts of real-estate promotion and reality television, he
exhibi
ts scant interest in or familiarity with policy. He favors
conspiracy theory and fantasy, deriving his knowledge from the darker
recesses of the Internet and “the shows.” He has never held office or
otherwise served his country, never acceded to the authority of
competing visions and democratic resolutions.
