When Ben Bradlee was editor of The Washington Post, he went out of his way to encourage young journalists. I was fortunate to be one of them.
Early in my career living in Washington, I benefitted from listening to this great hero – during whose tenure the newspaper exposed the Watergate scandal. He would make suggestions and offer guidance and advice. Today, I can only imagine what Bradlee would think of the decision by the current editorial board of The Washington Post to not recommend either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris to readers and voters in the US presidential election.
The result has been a row within the tight circle of American political journalism – but it’s just another twist in this extraordinary election campaign, one of the longest and strangest ever.
The 2024 campaign actually began the moment Mr Trump lost his re-election bid in 2020. He immediately wanted a rematch. Then, President Joe Biden – the man who defeated him four years ago – dropped out of the race. It became just another one of this year’s astonishing news-making moments.
The highlights and lowlights include the attempted assassination of Mr Trump, followed by the conspiracy theories that the shooting was somehow “staged”. Then there were the endorsements for Ms Harris from Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and a number of Hollywood stars. We’ve met JD Vance and Tim Walz, two extraordinary and very different men.
We’ve had an incumbent president, Mr Biden, too infirm for the fight and claims that Mr Trump is a fascist, plus lurid stories about plots and foreign interference. Several others, ranging from the Russian leadership to Elon Musk, are all allegedly pulling the strings and turning the election into variations of Dante’s Inferno.
And so, in the spirit, I hope, of my journalistic hero Bradlee, can we all calm down? Can we focus on where the US should be headed, why, and what it means for the rest of us? Could we begin by agreeing that the best for America, and the world, would be an election that produces a clear, incontrovertible victory for one of the candidates?
A thumping win for Ms Harris or Mr Trump might end the more lurid conspiracy theories about another supposedly “stolen” election. But unfortunately, such a clear result may not be likely. Under the American system, it is possible that the candidate who wins the presidency may not be the one to win most votes across the country. That’s just the way the US electoral college system works.
The Republican pollster Frank Luntz, examining recent polls, suggested that “if Trump wins the national popular vote, he’ll be only the second Republican to do so in 20 years and the third in 36 years”. And if Ms Harris wins the national popular vote, she still might not win the presidency, depending on how half a dozen or so “swing” states finally tally up.
The concern would be – as in the 2000 electoral contest between Al Gore and George W Bush – if one key state is locked in arguments about the validity of the results. This happened in Florida.
That controversy was eventually settled in favour of Mr Bush by the US Supreme Court. Mr Gore, who was vice president at the time, generously conceded. Such generosity and statesmanship may be lacking this time.
In the 2020 contest, there were bitter arguments over the Georgia vote that continue to this day. They have resulted in the indictment and ultimately the possible conviction of Mr Trump and his allies. That’s why a clear 2024 result, for Ms Harris or Mr Trump, would be the best for political tranquillity. The catch is that the polls suggest such clarity is the least likely outcome of all. A poll for The National has found that while Ms Harris leads Mr Trump slightly nationally, the former president has the slimmest of edges in key swing states.
Bluntly, the state of the union is not as strong as those of us who admire America would hope it to be. Beyond deep divisions between the candidates, the divisions between some of their supporters and voters form an enormous gulf. There are two disparate visions of politics, morality and life.
That gulf in society tells us that the winner next week needs to be the healer-in-chief, yet we also know – and here I hope I am wrong – that next month’s election winner may prefer to deepen wounds rather than heal them. The gulf between Ms Harris and Mr Trump and the animosity between some of their supporters are so pronounced that it may be optimistic to expect either candidate to be capable of bringing this divided country together.
On CNN, Ms Harris suggested that Mr Trump would be “a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist”. Mr Trump wrote that those who “cheated” in the election would face “long-term prison sentences” and would “be sought out, caught and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our country”. He also threatened to use military force against “liberal” politicians and activists he called “the enemy within”.
What would the estimable Bradlee make of all this? He was a journalist, yes, and a brilliant editor but most importantly he was also a great American patriot. If he were alive today, he might see the current election as an extraordinary newspaper story and a great moment in history.
But as a scholar of American history, he would also remind readers of Abraham Lincoln’s observation that “a house divided against itself, cannot stand”.
