Terry Bracy: Trump, Biden 2nd terms would be study in contrast | Local Editorials and Opinion

Since many of us have voting on our minds right now, let’s look forward for a few minutes to 2024 and assume a rerun of the last presidential election. Who would you vote for?

Let’s start with Joe Biden.

If there is a universal opinion about the president, it’s that he is too old for the job. Against this claim are a list of accomplishments that leave all modern executives in their tracks, with the exception of Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan. And his achievements have come quickly — in 20 months — all with a single-vote majority in the Senate and amidst a diabolically divisive political environment. The highlights of the first half of Biden’s term demonstrate that he has overdelivered on his campaign promise to restore America through a series of rational, center-left measures. He has struck bipartisan deals to pass major, badly needed infrastructure improvements, enact common sense gun reforms and invest in American business and innovation through the CHIPS Act. Most recently, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act will raise $700 billion by closing tax loopholes exploited by the wealthy and reinvest that revenue in measures which will lower energy and health- care costs for working Americans and combat climate change before it becomes an irreversible crisis.

Add to this his role in standing up to Vladmir Putin and helping to restore the NATO alliance heedlessly shredded by Donald Trump, the bringing to justice of al-Qaida leader and 9/11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the appointment of the first African American woman, Ketanji Jackson Brown, to the Supreme Court and you are talking about rarified historical air.

It has not been easy, but then the presidency is never an easy job. Biden has been forced to navigate treacherous waters, populated by a Republican Party increasingly dominated by anti-democratic and delusional election deniers and the far left-wing of his own party, who seemingly cannot conceive of a level of government spending sufficient for their aims, even as inflation nags at consumers. He’s managed this by bringing to bear decades of hard-earned experience in both the legislative and executive branches, which has imbued him with the wisdom to know when to push hard and when to be patient.

Flashy he is not. Biden won’t keep cable news outlets lighting up day-and-night like an Atlantic City casino with his latest rash outburst or scandal. He won’t elevate and inspire with soaring rhetoric. What he has done, and what he will do in a second term, is roll up his sleeves and get to work, demonstrating that the grinding, often tedious, sometimes infuriating American political system can still work for the American people.

Now let’s consider Donald Trump’s track record and what his second term would look like.

While second-banana politicians swarm like mosquitoes around the next great MAGA hope, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, Trump has abandoned Mar-a-Lago for a speaking tour to reel his true believers back in. All signs are the former president is running again, even as the FBI is likely finding purloined top secret documents in his safe that would put lesser politicians in a cold cell.

One of the speeches found him back in D.C. for the first time since the election, and he gave us a preview of his next term. You can call it a planned coup. Trump began by describing America as a dystopian society in decline, requiring him first to reestablish his personal vision of the “rule of law.”

The truth about Trump is that he hates the government. While politicians get the attention, civil servants run all functions of the government including the military, the treasury and intelligence services. Since 1871 these nonpartisan experts, hired on merit, only support the policies of the presidents under which they serve, unless those directives are beyond the scope of the law. Trump’s plan to get around this system is to create a new class of public employees chosen by partisan political actors.

Trump would nationalize law enforcement by turning the National Guard into a police force he could immediately send to cities where he believes crime is out of control. He would sponsor harsh new laws, including the death penalty for drug dealers. He would reestablish “stop and frisk” policing which has been proven to be disproportionately biased against racial minorities and the poor. For Trump, that’s not the problem with such enforcement tactics — it’s the main selling point.

With the possible help of a Republican Congress, Trump’s top priority is to repeal the Affordable Care Act. As president the first time, he employed executive orders to sabotage it by reducing opportunities to enroll, reducing subsidies to those least able to afford insurance, and penalize use by legal immigrants. In a second term, he will look to finish the job.

So there you have it: two potential future second terms, a study in contrast. One potential path for our nation is the quiet, patient and highly effective competence which for the first part of the Biden administration has put America back on track. The second is the chaos, scandal and division of a restored Trump eager to roll back gains for working people and turn our civilian military into his personal junta.

Speaking for myself, slow and steady never sounded so good.