President Biden recently went to New York to appear on “Late Night With Seth Myers.” On the show he was the same guy whom those of us who’ve spoken with him have seen: not a spring chicken, obviously, but lucid, well informed and moderately funny. The contrast couldn’t be greater with Donald Trump, whose ranting has become increasingly incoherent; after mixing up Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi a few weeks back, he has now once again appeared to confuse Biden with Barack Obama.
But not to worry: Trump recently assured an audience, “There’s no cognitive problem. If there was, I’d know about it.”
Oh.
Republicans aren’t going to acknowledge either Biden’s lucidity or Trump’s increasingly more noticeable lack thereof. But the reaction to the “Late Night” appearance that I found most revealing wasn’t about presidential age; it was about what happened next. Biden and Myers went for ice cream after the show, and Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama fired off a post on social media hoping Biden enjoyed his ice cream “while the rest of the city is afraid of crime and migrants.”
Reporters and readers were quick to point out that according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021 Alabama had a homicide rate more than three times as high as that of New York State, and, as Bloomberg’s Justin Fox notes, New York City is among the safest big cities in America. Tuberville has become known for getting crossed up on the issues, but his comment illustrated two larger aspects of our politics.
First, there’s a striking double standard in the ways politicians are allowed to talk about different regions of America. Voters from rural states often complain about not getting enough respect, but can you imagine the reaction if, say, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, were to describe Alabama — which in 2021 had an extraordinarily high rate of firearm mortality — as a place where everyone runs around shooting one another and themselves?
Second, and more important, I’m always struck by the extent to which today’s right-wing politics is driven by a grim, dystopian image of America, especially American cities, that just isn’t grounded in reality.
Share
Print
