Washington Post (Editorial)
February 10, 2016
THE
STUNNINGLY handy wins by two anti-establishment candidates in the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday are prompting conversation about similarities
between New York businessman
Donald Trump, the Republican victor, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders,
the socialist victor on the Democratic side. The similarities are
important — but the differences are more so.
Both
have positioned themselves as outsiders appealing to voters who believe
the system, and the leaders of the two major parties, have failed them.
The grievances they
speak to are real: a sense that the economy has left too many people
behind, that globalization and technological change are helping the few
while stranding the many.
Both
Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders offer convenient scapegoats and
simple-sounding solutions. For Mr. Sanders, the “greed” of the
“billionaire class” has rigged the system
against working people. Tax the 1 percent, and everyone else can have
free college and free health care. Political obstacles can be swept away
by a “political revolution.” America’s enemies will be fought by a
mythical Sunni Muslim coalition. The villains
for Mr. Trump are “stupid” people running the government who allow
foreigners to take advantage of the United States. The solution — well,
his solution — is to elect Mr. Trump.
We
think both men are dangerously if seductively wrong in their facile
diagnoses and prescriptions. But Mr. Sanders’s platform is at least
well-meaning. We think forcing
working people to subsidize, through their taxes, the college tuition
of wealthier Americans is not a progressive policy; we believe Mr.
Sanders has not leveled with Americans about the true costs of
single-payer health care. But few would object in theory
to more widely available education and health care.
By
contrast, Mr. Trump’s proposals are pernicious as well as preposterous.
There is no way to round up 11 million illegal immigrants and deport
them — but no one should
want to live in a nation that would attempt such a thing. Nor would
most Americans want a government that deliberately kills the innocent
relatives of terrorists.
Mr.
Trump is mocking the democratic process, not engaging in it. He feels
no obligation to explain how he would implement his ideas, and he does
not care whether his statements
are true. Thousands of Muslims in New Jersey did not publicly celebrate
the downing of the World Trade Center towers in 2001, but Mr. Trump is
content simply to repeat the lie. And lies come easily to Mr. Trump
because, unlike Mr. Sanders, he does not believe
in anything other than his own brilliance. Mr. Trump is a hard-liner on
immigration today because, when he called Mexicans rapists , he struck a
chord.
Some
may take comfort in his malleability. Once he is in office, they say,
Mr. Trump will become a dealmaker, susceptible to establishment
whisperings and blandishments.
In
this they deceive themselves, and the evidence lies in the most
essential difference between these two outsider campaigns: the utter
ugliness of Mr. Trump’s. To further
his ambition, he has gleefully demeaned Hispanics, Muslims, Jews,
people with disabilities, blacks and anyone else he can present as the
“other” as he proceeds to exploit the nation’s divisions. As president
he would not be able to deliver on his promises,
and it is fearful to contemplate the scapegoats he might find to
distract from his failures.
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