I just finished listening to Chelsea and Hillary’s speeches, and didn’t think them all that noteworthy. However, one thought finally did smack me right in the forehead:
This is the very first Presidential contest in my memory in which the central point of contention isn’t issues, but instead qualifications. I cannot remember, going back to Nixon, any such contest where the fight isn’t going to be so much over positions as whether the Donald Trump possesses the qualities for the office of President1. Does he have the temperament, the stability to be handed the codes? Does he have the experience to run one of the largest government bureaucracies in the world?
What will he do when the leader of North Korea taunts him?
This will be fundamentally different in that rather than evaluating issues, we’ll be evaluating the candidate as the primary criterion – whether he’s too volatile, too hands off, too interested in himself – or not. And this will certainly make it a different election than those to which we’ve become accustomed.
[This post has been updated with the proper title.]
