This is one takeaway from the election: Whatever his flaws, the authentic defeated the inauthentic
Overlooked in the punditocracy’s analytic frenzy is one crucial element: The majority voted for one candidate and rejected the other candidate not so much because of the issues — not merely because of immigration, or inflation, or left-liberal gender issues — but because they knew who one candidate was, and did not know who the other one was.
One candidate had obvious flaws of character and behavior: coarse and abrasive, twice impeached as president, indicted four times, credibly accused of being a misogynist and possibly a racist, a person whose relationship to truth was at best tenuous.
What overcame all these flaws was that there was no artifice about him: What you saw was what you got. He was not packaged to please. He spoke his mind, often crudely, but one sensed that it was not phony.
The other candidate was, by contrast, refined, ladylike, appearing to be sincere. She fought hard and matched blow for blow, but somehow people never felt that they knew who she really was behind all the makeup. And so the majority voted for the person they felt they knew, with all of his failings, and rejected the person who was hidden behind the facade of posings and maneuverings and evasions.
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