For Whom a Marylander Should Vote: Harris is politically repellent, and Trump is personally offensive; Tim Walz is not ready for Primetime, and J.D. Vance is Great on a Mic (Apologies to Irving Berlin)

It is presumptuous for anyone to tell others how to vote, but herein I am just suggesting that the readers follow their values, just as I have in the last several days in changing my opinion.

For years, my opinion of Donald Trump and his presidential opponents has led me to not vote for any of them. Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden were too far left with consistent policy failures, and Donald Trump was so offensive personally that since my vote in blue-blue Maryland would not be decisive, I could vote for former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, who I thought would make a great president.

The decision about whether to vote again outside of the major candidates for president in 2024 was a close call, but the last few days have changed all of that.

All of my previous opinions of Kamala Harris and Biden have been reinforced, and my opinions of Trump, a good policy person, are unchanged, although my opinions of Tim Walz and J.D. Vance, negative and positive, have also been strengthened.

Yes, after all of the interview-aversive days of Kamala Harris and her recent lovefest interviews on The View and with Howard Stern, and significantly with the one serious interview with Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes – wherein Kamala’s tendency to answer with vague, rambling generalities manifested itself again – things have changed, as have my voting intentions.

On The View when asked if she would have done anything differently from Biden, she said “There is not a thing that comes to mind – and I’ve been part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”

In her debate with Trump, Kamala said resolutely, “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden.”

On the border, she wouldn’t answer why she had let the flood of illegal immigrants in, except to say that the number had been halved in the last year.

I have reached a decision:

I shall vote for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.  I have been scared straight.

Let’s start with the Vice Presidential race, its recent debate, and then on to the Presidential contest.

The weak performance of Tim Walz, the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, in his Vice Presidential debate was sobering.  He was manifestly nervous to the point of distraction, albeit a sympathetic figure, and his lack of mastery of the issues as contrasted with Vance’s was sobering.

His gaffe – or was it simply a true bizarre statement (No, Tim Walz Is Not Friends With School Shooters | WIRED)  – that he was “friends with school shooters” — was simply macabre.  His inability to explain away his multiple half-truths with a smile was simply inadequate.

People don’t – or shouldn’t – want someone who freezes during a debate ever heading negotiations with Putin, Xi or Kim Jong Un, who, parenthetically, has threatened South Korea anew with a nuclear attack.

On to the presidential vote:

The use of the phrase “the personal is political” has its origin in far left-wing politics, but it is actually most applicable to left-of-center voting in the presidential election year of 2024.  It is a phrase mostly applicable to arguments averse to Donald Trump’s candidacy.

The use of the phrase “public policy,” inclusive of foreign policy, the economy and the border, refers to what political scientist Angus Campbell 60 years ago described as matters that “have been or are a matter of controversy and are sources of disagreement between political parties.”

I would just add, from over a half-century in my field of political rhetoric, matters that persuasively have been made salient by partisan persuaders in an election.  It is a phrase mostly applicable to arguments averse to Kamala Harris’ candidacy.

These include all of her reversals of policy, rarely discussed by her, and ancillary matters of little or no significance, such as political naif Taylor Swift’s raising as dispositive the “issue” of J.D. Vance’s sarcastic complaint about the country’s being run by a “bunch of childless cat ladies.”  These also include Harris’ inappropriate affect in her allegedly irritating laugh.

These minor arguments are sufficiently inconsequential to now ignore.

On leadership, Harris’s response to Hurricane Helena and Hurricane Milton has been dispiriting, to say the least.

She angrily claims without evidence that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis refused to take her call regarding the hurricanes, a call that even if made would have been her first foray into hurricane matters.  In addition DeSantis had communicated well already with Biden, eventually to both men’s apparent satisfaction.

As The Daily Signal describes the Administration’s reaction to Helena, “Despite the storm making landfall on Thursday evening and devastating inland North Carolina by Saturday, Harris chose to attend political fundraisers, while Biden remained at his beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. “

The televised reports of Elon Musk trying to compensate for the absence of the administration and FEMA have been heartbreaking.

Is there anyone who thinks the Administration was on top of these situations?

Let me in full disclosure point out that I have been a Howard Baker (for younger readers, I would substitute Paul Ryan) conservative virtually all my adult life, preceded by years of being mostly in abject horror at crazy-right wing politics personified by anti-civil rights and anti-Martin Luther King extremists in both parties, such as George Wallace, John Stennis, Lester Maddox, Strom Thurmond (a Democrat and then a Republican for many years) and others.

I am old enough to say that the country in the last 75 years has never been as polarized as it is currently.  I lived through the Vietnam era, and things were tense — very tense because life and death issues were salient — but never as clearly and perhaps equally divided as they are now.

The choice of whether to vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or neither rests on one’s criteria for choosing the Chief Executive.

Regarding personal antipathy toward Trump: Dick Cheney has announced for Democrat Kamala Harris.  The considerable respect that I have for the elder Cheney notwithstanding, there is no evidence that his opposition to Trump is due to policy differences but is reflective of interpersonal animosity.

Donald Trump is so offensive personally to the Cheneys and some others, including some Republicans, due to his (Trump’s) utter tone-deaf personality, including gratuitously offensive attacks on George W. Bush’s administration,  that they are willing to overlook all of the rest of the substantively disqualifying positions Harris has taken (see below).  Representatively, Trump said astonishingly of John McCain that “He’s not a war hero; He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

However, the substantive aversion to Harris is just overwhelming.

The issues on which Harris has reversed herself or contradicted herself without public explanation, comprising material domestic and foreign policy, are not exhaustive here: protecting the U.S. borders and prosecuting illegal immigration, opposition to ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). support for the Green New Deal, prosecuting violence in America, lack of support for police, undecided and wishy-washy support for Israel, Education Failures in the U.S., the economy and Harris’ price control policy, and both presidential candidates’ promising to eliminate taxes on tips, first suggested by Trump and only then by Harris.

Trump’s ad hoc tax relief proposals are piling up, most recently including eliminating taxes on overtime in addition to his earlier suggestions of no tax on Social Security or tips.

For those of us who are put off and frankly afraid for the country by Harris’ inconsistent and uninformed positions and pandering and simply embarrassed by Trump’s ugly personal vendettas and pandering, the choice could be between not voting and a reluctant vote for Trump.

But Harris’ negatives on policy, leadership and personal peccadillos, I have come to realize, do not cancel out.

As a Marylander, whether my vote will mean anything or not, I have decided to vote for Trump and Vance.

It’s Trump and Vance for the good of the country.

Richard E. Vatz, Ph.D

Richard E. Vatz  https://wp.towson.edu/vatz/  is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of political rhetoric at Towson University and author of The Only Authentic of Persuasion: the Agenda-Spin Model  (Bookwrights House, 2024) and over 200 other works, essays, lectures, and op-eds.  He is the benefactor of the Richard E. Vatz Best Debater Award at Towson.  The Van Bokkelen Auditorium at Towson University has been named after him.