The crisis cascading through American cities has allowed voters to make real-time comparisons of two presidential candidates’ leadership styles. It’s been instructive on several key presidential categories: crisis management, justice policy, and use of the bully pulpit.
The crisis cascading through American cities has allowed voters to make real-time comparisons of two presidential candidates’ leadership styles.
It’s been instructive.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have responded to civil unrest by revealing different behaviours, priorities and ideas about government itself.
The current president called for the military. Biden called for social change.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee forecast a years-long battle ahead against racial disparities in health care, economics and policing.
“A wake-up call for our nation. For all of us,” is how Biden described the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., which triggered a wave of protests across the country, as well as a third-degree murder charge against the police officer who kept his knee pressed on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.
“It is the work of a generation,” Biden said of the task facing the country.
Trump demanded a swift restoration of stability.
He has prefaced his public remarks by expressing sympathy for Floyd, and for peaceful protesters.
He has also referred to his administration as the best for black Americans since Abraham Lincoln ended slavery (he tweeted about low unemployment, reduced criminal sentences, and new tax incentives for businesses).
My Admin has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln. Passed Opportunity Zones with @SenatorTimScott, guaranteed funding for HBCU’s, School Choice, passed Criminal Justice Reform, lowest Black unemployment, poverty, and crime rates in history…
But that’s not his main message on the current crisis.
The message that dominated Trump’s public speeches and social media feeds was to threaten military action against “thugs … violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa.”
A revealing word count
One way to gauge their contrasting priorities is simply by counting the sentences in their speeches — the number devoted to quelling violent protests versus the number expressing sympathy for protesters’ concerns.
Trump’s last two significant public statements, over the weekend and on Monday, included twice as many, then about 20 times as many, sentences about restoring order.
WATCH | Trump threatens to use the military against violent protesters:
U.S. President Donald Trump told state governors Monday that he will “quickly solve the problem” of protests if they don’t. He’s threatening to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy the military without the governors’ permission. 1:15
A Biden speech Tuesday in Philadelphia featured the opposite: he briefly condemned looting, then spoke about 30 times more about protesters’ concerns.
It’s a relatively rare natural experiment for voters to observe candidates in