America's collective memory serves the country poorly | Guestview

With the 2024 election looming, Special Prosecutor Hur, responsible for the Biden classified documents case, has put the national spotlight on President Biden’s memory and by extension those of former President Trump, other politicians, and, most importantly, ourselves.

Hur’s gratuitous swipe at the president’s memory opens the door to a more serious look at the memory of the U.S. electorate.

Where to start, recognizing the list of events and issues could be long?

Who remembers that, less than a decade ago, U.S. elections were trusted, results of close presidential elections accepted, and political defeat painfully but gracefully acknowledged? Who remembers that the Republican presidential candidate has won the national popular vote only once (2004) in the past eight elections?

Who remembers that candidate Trump, at the Oct. 19, 2016 debate with candidate Clinton incredibly refused to accept the results of the upcoming election and has since continually attacked the U.S. election system as part of his deliberate political strategy? Who recalls that the only confirmed notable election fraud was in 2018 in North Carolina’s 9^th Congressional District, when Republican ballot harvesting forced a new election?

Who today can say that the November 2024 election, if candidate Trump should lose again, won’t be followed by even worse violence than on Jan. 6, 2021?

On inflation, who remembers that Republican and Democratic political leaders share responsibility by supporting decades of federal deficits, which surged particularly under George W. Bush due to the Iraq war and 2008 financial crisis and under Trump due to tax cuts and COVID, and by welcoming long-running Fed easy money policies in the wake of the 2008 crisis?

Who remembers when people did not fear gathering in public places, a time before recurrent mass murders with military grade assault weapons and when national, state, community and law enforcement leaders all showed serious concern for gun violence and public safety?

Internationally, who remembers that Trump’s support for Russian instead of U.S. strategic interests dates from at least mid-1987, when he paid for three full-page broadsides in the Sept. 2, 1987  New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe that mirrored Soviet anti-West propaganda as he attacked President Reagan’s foreign policy and other U.S. allies, curiously published six short weeks after his July 1987 visit to Moscow as a guest of the Soviet government? Who remembers his lengthy solo summit meeting with Putin – astonishingly without aides − on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, a meeting with no official record?

Who remembers the invaluable role played over 75 years by U.S.-led NATO in ensuring global stability and peace in the face of Soviet/Russian threats and in supporting the U.S. post-9/11 in Afghanistan over two decades?  Who understands why Trump is so intent on undermining this critical foundation of U.S. security in such perilous times?

For sure, politicians, like all of us, have memory issues. One unfortunate example: Republican leaders who vocally condemned then-President Trump’s incitement of the assault on the Capitol and his effort to thwart the electoral vote count on Jan. 6, 2021.  In their subsequent efforts to achieve political advantage within MAGA, they now “forget” their strong condemnation of the assault and Trump’s efforts to disrupt the 2020 election’s certification.

Certainly, Democratic politicians exhibit selective memory, but their lapses have not supported direct efforts to undermine U.S. democratic processes and institutions.

We should also question Mr. Hur’s standard. U.S. presidents operate in a highly charged and demanding environment, requiring them to deal simultaneously with many multi-dimensional domestic and international chess games, ranging across complex political, economic, social, public safety, legal, and environmental issues, and the list goes on. Presidents face a daily revolving door of intense, substantive and detailed meetings with advisors, political, economic and societal leaders with constant travel intermixed.

Who among us can have accurate recall over the years in our more mundane lives? Not many is my experience. We should recognize that U.S. presidents must constantly focus their energies on addressing the very pressing issues of the day or week, constantly moving on to the next crisis or significant issue and relying on extensive domestic and international experience and sound thoughtful judgment.

Let’s hope that every American voter, in going to the polls this year, makes a sincere effort to remember events as they actually occurred and have been accurately and publicly documented. Voters should weigh the character of all candidates, the veracity of their public statements, their commitment to the values and principles of the U.S. Constitution, and their interest in serving the concerns of all Americans, regardless of political leaning or party allegiance.

It is also important that the younger generation of political leaders steps forward with credible demonstrations of honesty, a firm grasp of history, and with commitment to a better America rather than simply maneuvering to achieve some narrow short-term political advantage.

At the polls, we voters need to remember and understand real events and not simply vote on the basis of meaningless election campaign slogans.

Mike Mozur is a retired U.S. State Department Senior Foreign Service officer and environmental executive who now lives in the Pensacola area.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: America's collective memory serves the country poorly | Guestview