Is last week’s Biden-Trump debate a game-changing moment or not?
Joe Biden at his February 2024 press conference
after Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur
revealed he could not indict Biden of criminal misuse
of classified materials because Biden was “an elder
man with poor memory.”
In my life I have seen three moments in politics that appeared to change everything. In two of those cases, the appearance turned out to be true. In the third, in the end nothing changed, to the sad detriment of our country.
Last week’s debate between president Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump appears to be another such potential game-changing event. The change however will not be whether Joe Biden will be the candidate when the election finally rolls around in November, or whether even if he will win or lose the election.
The change, should it happen, will be much more funadmental. I come at this from the point of view of a historian, so bear with me as I attempt to explain.
Of the previous three game-changing moments, the first was the Watergate hearings in 1973. For months prior to those hearings, Republican politicians from all levels of government fought aggressively and with some success the accusations that president Richard Nixon had been involved in the Watergate break-in and the planning of the “dirty tricks” campaign against George McGovern leading up to the 1972 election.
The Watergate hearings however were a game-changer. It forced the entire Republican party to end its unqualified support of Nixon. The hearings, which were televised live each day and covered extensively by the press, were seen by everyone, and showed without doubt the extensive nature of Nixon’s dirty trick activity. It also illustrated bluntly the amount of duplicity and lying that Nixon and his cohorts were willing to do to defend themselves.
Unlike today, in the 1970s the American public did not tolerate lying by their politicians. Though the hearings ended in late June 1973, and Nixon held on until August 1974 before resigning, it was those hearings that ended his popularity and creditability. It was also those hearings that destroyed the creditability of the Republican Party at that time. Too many of them had backed Nixon blindly before the hearings, and were exposed themselves by those hearings as sycophants and toadies. The result: The Republican Party was wiped-out in the 1974 elections, with the Democrats gaining 53 seats in the House, 4 seats in the Senate, and 4 additional governorships.
The second game-changer occurred during the Iran-Contra affair in 1987 against Ronald Reagan. » Read more
