Roger Kimball:
“…A genuine liberal education is as much an education of the emotions as it is an education of the intellect. The truly educated person experiences the right emotions at the appropriate times in the appropriate intensity for the appropriate reasons.
Aristotle explains all this in the Nicomachean Ethics. Knowing this, I felt badly watching the ‘debate’ among the first tranche of 10 Democratic aspirants to be their party’s nominee for president in 2020. I felt, I must admit, an immoderate access of schadenfreude — tinged with revulsion, it is true, but the element of pleasing disdain predominated. I am not proud of it. I merely record the fact…
…I understand that the candidates had a tough assignment. Here they were, competing not only against themselves, but also against the most ostentatiously successful president in…well, maybe ever. Look at the white hot economy, the historically low unemployment figures, especially among blacks and other minorities. Look at the rising wages of the working class, the renaissance of manufacturing, the rekindled spirit of national self-confidence.
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has presided over one of the most — I think it is probably the single most — successful opening years of any president ever. That’s a difficult record to run against. So what tonight’s 10 candidates did — and I am certain that tomorrow’s will as well — was to deny reality and pretend that they were running against the Donald Trump of their dreams: a dark figure whose policies hurt instead of helped average Americans, who was anti-black, anti-woman, anti-immigrant…”