THE LAMENT OF A LIBERTARIAN TORY.

National Review's Charles Cooke contemplates the two major contenders for the presidency and weighs the tradeoffs.

I know what I think of Donald Trump. It’s just that I also know what I think of Joe Biden, and I know what I think of the contemporary Democratic Party, and it is by no means the case that the Democrats as presently constituted represent a better option.

I have often heard it asked, “How can anyone who follows politics be undecided at this stage?” But this, I think, is an entirely mistaken question. Indeed, I would expect more people who follow politics to be undecided at this stage than is typically the case. When one admires a politician’s character and judgment and his policy prescriptions, it is easy to cast one’s vote for him. By contrast, when one admires a politician’s policy prescriptions but believes that his character and judgment represent a threat, the choice becomes considerably more difficult. From what I understand, millions of people now find themselves in the latter camp. Why? Because it’s genuinely hard to work out what to do.

I would add another layer of complexity: the bundles on offer are too damn big, and I wish people who followed politics closely -- and particularly people who report on politics -- would spell out just how messy even one component of governance as practiced (food, health, education, infrastructure, hypersonic weapons) is and how a single candidate or a single party platform has to put together a bundle out of all those things.

Here's Mr Cooke breaking down those bundles.

I am not, I suppose, a truly “undecided” voter, in that I cannot vote for Joe Biden and I will not vote for Joe Biden. I am pro-life, Joe Biden is not, and, for me, that’s the end of that. So the question becomes, “Can I vote for Trump?” Or, put more starkly, the question becomes, “Given what remains important to me, which risk do I consider greater?”

This is a nearly impossible query to examine. As of now, it seems highly unlikely that a second Trump term would achieve anything much at all beyond blocking the excesses of the Left and ensuring that Kamala Harris gets nowhere near executive power. Even at the best of times, second terms tend to prove dicey, and, in the absolute best-case scenario, a newly reelected President Trump would have a majority of one or two in the Senate. Even if Trump were to win, we would see no substantial legislation or reform; we would see a further hollowing out of talent in the executive branch; and we would see the striking of no treaties or international deals of which the Democratic Party did not already approve. Naturally, if Trump were to win while the Republicans lost the Senate, we would see a dramatic slowing down of the appointment of good judges, too. Worst of all, come the midterms we would likely see meaningful Democratic gains in the House and Senate, as well as in the states — and, potentially, a landslide Democratic victory in 2024.

If the Democrats were sensible, I would likely sit this one out. But the Democrats are not sensible. The Democrats are threatening to blow up the American constitutional order in ways that would make President Trump’s execrable excesses seem quaint. And, rather than promising to act as a check, Joe Biden is having it both ways. Thus far, he has refused to answer whether he would back the abolition of the filibuster, which would radically alter the way that the Senate has worked for more than a century and thereby allow a slim majority in D.C. to make sweeping changes to American life; he has refused to answer whether he would sign a bill to pack the Supreme Court with judges who favor his party, thereby reviving a plan that, in 1937, was “emphatically rejected” by a Senate Judiciary Committee that hoped “that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America”; and he has refused to answer whether he would acquiesce to the addition of two new states, the admission of which would be designed solely as a means by which to give the Democratic Party four additional seats in the upper chamber. How, I wonder, should I balance these permanent revolutions in American government against another four years of President Caprice?

Mr Cooke recently secured his citizenship and this will be his first election.

I envy those on the left who admire both Joe Biden’s agenda and Joe Biden himself, and who are not terrified by the Democratic Party’s turn. For them, this decision is easy — akin to watching your football team play. For me, it is filled with enough moving parts and what-ifs and on-the-one-hands to drive a person to distraction. I have often caught myself wondering what it must be like to watch a presidential election and be entirely happy about the results. As of today, in the first presidential election in which I am eligible to vote since becoming a citizen, I still will not know. I guess I’ll get another shot in 2024.

It's not that simple. It was never that simple. I recall, in close to forty years in the faculty ghetto, how the cheerfulness that accompanied a Carter or Clinton or Obama victory soon became tempered with practicality, and the dire consequences that were supposed to follow a Reagan or Bush, elder or younger, victory, never materialized.  There are probably enough moving parts among the Democrats that even a decisive victory in 2020 will quickly devolve into faction fighting.