In the everyday routine, national politics is the last thing we desire to write about. The players are so fixed, their statements so predictable: this camp, that camp, this insult, that insult. It’s not productive.
Developments since the Biden-Trump debate of June 27 have turned a predictable race on its head. Biden has a rotten debate. Trump escapes an assassination attempt. The GOP emerges energized and ecstatic from its convention in Milwaukee. Biden steps away from the race. Kamala Harris is the heir apparent as the Democrat running for president. Democrats are now energized and ecstatic.
Whether the race eventually settles down into the usual, predictable grooves, much has changed. We hope the best result from all these earthquakes will be a lasting change to politics as usual.
That being said, we wish to put in a word here for Virginia State University.
As the 2024 political season got underway, VSU was selected as a debate site by the Presidential Debate Commission. Biden and Trump did an end run around that commission, set their own debate format, and carried one out.
Anyone who thinks debates don’t matter must not have been awake during July.
At this writing, just one additional debate in the revised schedule is planned. We would like to hear more from Trump and Harris. We would like to judge them side-by-side and hear their views. In short, we would like the original debate schedule to be resumed, and in so doing, give VSU its spot in the limelight that it worked so hard to prepare for.
That would bring the campaign almost to our doorstep.
Footnote
Secret Service director Kimberly Cheadle was working on borrowed time, probably sensing that her exit was inevitable even as she said she was not going anywhere.
Someone had to answer for a security failure as massive as the one that brought a bullet within a hairsbreadth of Trump’s brain. Egregious failures in preparation and coverage led to the attack.
In a free nation, our leaders have to be able to press the flesh and make their case. They should be able to do and to feel confident that every possible precaution has been taken to protect them.