On one my favorite podcasts, “The Ezra Klein Show,” Ezra’s guest on podcast #352 was Stuart Stephens, a former high-level Republican consultant, who said that what the upcoming election boiled down to was “a referendum on decency.”
While I watched the Democratic convention, the one word that I heard more than any other (with the obvious exception of “Joe”) was “decent.” In a “Five Thirty Eight” podcast that discussed the convention, one analyst said that the Democrats had nominated “a decent guy who everyone can relate to.”
In previous blog posts I have emphasized the concept of decency. In a post titled “The Cancel Culture Is Illiberal” I wrote “Instead of a list of ideas that should be excluded from a free-expression dialogue, I believe a broad concept should be applied — decency.” In a blog post titled “What Is The Future of the Republican Party?” I ended the post with “Will the future of the Republican party be driven by hate speech or decency?”
I’m convinced that the presidential election is absolutely a referendum on decency, and my point of view was reinforced by the title of Maureen Dowd’s most recent column titled “Joe’s Fearsome Weapon Against Trump: Simple Decency.”
So be it.
