Sept. 25 (UPI) — As election 2024 draws closer, there are three big issues that need to be put in declaratory form and answered by the candidates: Truth, debt, and defense. But as the so-called political debate continues to descend to unprecedented levels of bad taste and ignorance, this prospect is less likely than one of the candidates landing on the sun.
No matter if one supports one candidate or neither, the biggest loser and victim of this year’s electoral follies is the truth. Truth and fact simply have little impact or effect. Manufacturing one’s truth trumps the truth. It is far easier to deny truth and fact and then pivot to what the candidate would like to see, not what is seen.
While Donald Trump is unchallenged and untied in the numbers of falsehoods, lies, misstatements and purposeful misdirection he has concocted, Kamala Harris is far from innocent. And to the acolytes and true believers, that makes little difference. Beating the other side is so crucial that the means to win dominates all.
The origins of this current condition were conceived during the Vietnam War, which started over a PT boat attack against two U.S. destroyers that never occurred. The infamous Saigon “Five O’Clock Follies” perpetuated the lack of truth and fact, as victory was always in sight of the end of the tunnel.
The Watergate scandal forced President Richard Nixon to resign after a failed cover up did not prevent the truth from finding its way to public view. While many complained President Bill Clinton should have never been impeached over a sexual encounter with an intern, he lied. And with the wars in Afghanistan and then Iraq, in which evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was cherry-picked and invented to rationalize the invasion, four administrations continued to falsify conditions in both places.
So, why not press both candidates on truth and why it is still missing in action?
Perhaps the most dangerous long-term economic threat is debt. The national debt is headed toward $36 trillion. The nation’s GDP is $25 trillion. Under Trump, $8.4 trillion of debt was added, the largest of any presidency. Under President Joe Biden it was $5 trillion, still about a fifteen percent increase.
Neither candidate has suggested specific actions to deal with this growing debt. Harris talks about economic opportunity with plans to increase grants for first-time home owners and new business start ups. But what are her overall fiscal (budget) and monetary policies, or productivity increases as the only way to cut debt by growth? There are none. Why?
Trump talks about large tax cuts and extending the cuts previously approved during his first term. Independent think tanks report the impact on debt will be significant. And Trump has not explained the sum total of what his fiscal, monetary and productivity policies will achieve in reducing debt. Simply put, they will not. So with both candidates, the question is not how to control debt but how much more debt will accrue.
Even with wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and conflict in the Red Sea, national defense has been missing in debate, as has normally been the case since the end of the Cold War. In prior elections, defense has been defined in terms of winning or ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with little impact. Trump asserts the Biden-Harris administration has overseen a weakened, woke military. Harris has been silent.
Trump also contends the Afghan withdrawal convinced Russian president Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, and for China and Iran to take more aggressive actions against the United States and its allies. Yet, most countries, including Russia and China, regard the United States as having the most formidable military in the world. But here is the worst-kept secret neither candidate wants to acknowledge.
Despite a defense 2025 budget, once approved, of nearly $900 billion, the U.S. military is shrinking in numbers and aggregate power. The current strategy is unachievable, unaffordable and unable to recruit sufficient military and civilian personnel. Without profound strategic change, the next president will preside over a less capable military as the number of global hot spots and crises increase in intensity.
As commander-in-chief, Trump claimed he was smarter than his generals. And his senior officers held the C-in-C largely with contempt, although these views were held privately. About C-in-C Harris, who knows.
Truth, debt, and defense need to see daylight. But will they? Probably not.
Harlan Ullman is UPI’s Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior advisor at Washington’s Atlantic Council, the prime author of “shock and awe” and author of “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.” Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
