This is one takeaway from the election: Whatever his flaws, the authentic defeated the inauthentic

There has been no shortage of postmortem autopsies about the recent American election — among whose biggest losers are the highly respected “scientific” pollsters and prognosticators who convinced us that the election was too close to call.

Overlooked in the punditocracy’s analytic frenzy is one crucial element: The majority voted for one candidate and rejected the other candidate not so much because of the issues — not merely because of immigration, or inflation, or left-liberal gender issues — but because they knew who one candidate was, and did not know who the other one was.

One candidate had obvious flaws of character and behavior: coarse and abrasive, twice impeached as president, indicted four times, credibly accused of being a misogynist and possibly a racist, a person whose relationship to truth was at best tenuous.

What overcame all these flaws was that there was no artifice about him: What you saw was what you got. He was not packaged to please. He spoke his mind, often crudely, but one sensed that it was not phony.

The other candidate was, by contrast, refined, ladylike, appearing to be sincere. She fought hard and matched blow for blow, but somehow people never felt that they knew who she really was behind all the makeup. And so the majority voted for the person they felt they knew, with all of his failings, and rejected the person who was hidden behind the facade of posings and maneuverings and evasions.

One candidate was real, human, and genuine; the other candidate came across as synthetic: a preprogrammed mannequin, an artificial and well-rehearsed puppet, a kewpie doll wound up and sent into the fray by clothing designers, speech writers, media coaches, clever strategists, and overly smart consultants and technocrats.

This is one takeaway from the election: Whatever his flaws, the authentic defeated the inauthentic.

But — there is always a “but” — it is these very flaws that raise a painful question: If a person with a catalogue full of blemishes and failings could be the preferred choice of Americans, what does this say about America? Instead of being repelled by his shortcomings, Americans seemed to identify with them. Was it because they found his faults humanizing and therefore were willing to overlook them? Was it because there was no aura of phoniness about him? Was it because they admired his stubborn ability to get up from the mat and continue fighting? Or — most troubling — does it reflect a deep strain within the American psyche that no longer finds vulgarity or lying or across-the-board immorality to be so bad as long as you can get away with it?

It was not very long ago when a person who had been divorced could not be nominated for president — as was the case with NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller in the 1960s. America has come a long way since then — whether a long way forward or backward is quite obvious.

One is comforted by King Solomon’s assurance in Mishlei 21:1 that, “Lev melech b’yad Hashem — the heart of a king is in the hand of G-d,” and we pray that the new president’s authenticity will make America authentically great again, especially ethically and morally.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1038)