Greg Harton: Do the issues matter?

Presidential contest isn’t just about the personalities

The 2016 presidential campaign is as mind-boggling as one could imagine.

Only the hard-core, Kool-Aid drinking adherents to either party's candidate will feel good about the choice voters must make at the polls on Nov. 8. The rest of us will hold our nose and cast a ballot for the one who least turns our stomachs.

They both manage it, sometimes on the same day. Lies, supersized ego, an inability to acknowledge even the possibility of being or doing something wrong, absolute certainty that the other side has no moral center.

Which side am I talking about? The sad reality is those descriptions apply to both the major party candidates. And let's not kid ourselves: One of these two will be president at least for the next four years. As much as some might like to dream of a different occupant of the White House, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein don't stand a chance of victory, although 2016 may be the year one of them tops 1 percent of the votes cast. Johnson got close in 2012.

What has floored me a few times in this interminable election cycle are the people who suggest they were thinking of voting one way but who, for one reason or another, decided to flop over to the other side in the Clinton-Trump face-off.

What I mean is, this is not a year in which the two main-party candidates are rushing to find the middle ground once they locked up their base voters in the primaries. Hillary Clinton has spent the last few months trying to earn the nomination while putting her arms around socialist Bernie Sanders' supporters. Donald Trump has solidified strong support among those in the far-right base of the GOP but has done virtually nothing to become an attractive candidate for those undecided moderate voters.

Americans in some election years have complained that they didn't have much choice because the candidates seemed they were cut from the same cloth, that they sounded alike on the stump. This isn't the year for that. If voters wanted a clear distinction between their two main-party candidates, man, do they have it in 2016?

The political gulf that separates Clinton and Trump makes it difficult for me to believe anyone when they say they're fluctuating between the two choices, unless they're only basing their votes on personality, on the candidate who makes them feel good or the one who they find most entertaining. The more believable position is to say they're torn between voting for the candidate who least offends their senses and not voting at all.

But is this just about Trump vs. Clinton? No, the presidential election has implications for public policy.

The most politically explosive of these involve the appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointment to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, the ultra-conservative justice who died earlier this year, will be among the first orders of business for the new president. Four of the sitting justices tend toward liberal positions. Anthony Kennedy is often in the middle ground. Chief Justice John Roberts, Samual Alito and Clarence Thomas are generally dependable in the conservative camp.

Kennedy is 80 years old. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83. Stephen Breyer is 77. Thomas, Alito, Roberts and Sotmayor are in their 60s.

A vote for president in 2016 is a vote for how one wants the U.S. Supreme Court to lean. If liberal positions are important, there's no way one can support Trump. If conservative positions are critical, one cannot possibly cast a ballot for Clinton.

Keep this in mind, too: Some analysts -- whether they lean one way or the other, who knows? -- predict the Democrats have a chance to retake control of the U.S. Senate, the body that confirms appointments to the federal courts. A Democratic Senate will empower a Democratic president to pick judges who are more liberal than would be possible if the Senate remains Republican. Republicans hold control of the Senate by only four seats.

A colleague suggested the other day that if it weren't for the Supreme Court appointments question, Hillary Clinton would be leading Trump by 20 points. I don't know whether that's true, but the Supreme Court appointments in the next few years could influence court decisions for the next 30 years. Talk about an enduring legacy of change for the nation!

Some voters appear to drift from the pro-Clinton/anti-Trump and pro-Trump/anti-Clinton camps with each new revelation, speech or gaffe. But does policy matter? This is not "American Idol." It's not The Miss America Pageant. It's not "The Bachelorette." The choice Americans will make on Nov. 8 isn't about the person we want to be friends with or eliminating the one we want to vote off the island a la "Survivor."

Clinton and Trump represent starkly different views on funding the military; on abortion; on funding for Planned Parenthood; on the nation's response to illegal immigration and establishing a "path to citizenship" for those already in the country illegally because of the United States' failed immigration policies of the past; on the death penalty; on gun control; on climate change; on whether the nation should attempt to send people to college at no cost to them; on the nuclear agreement with Iran; on the Keystone pipeline; and so many other issues.

Beyond the personalities of the presidential candidates, do the issues matter?

Commentary on 08/08/2016

Upcoming Events