Wall Street Journal - Gerald F. Seib - "2020 Now Represents a Turning Point, Toward Parts Unknown"

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2020 Now Represents a Turning Point, Toward Parts Unknown

Such inflection points tend not to be kind to the presidents and parties in power, but results of today’s tumult are hard to forecast

By Gerald F. Seib

October 5, 2020

Americans define turning points in their national life by the year in which they arrived. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln took office as president and the Civil War began. In 1932, the Great Depression approached its peak and Franklin Roosevelt was elected to usher in a new era of Democratic dominance.

And in 1979, an energy crisis and stagflation froze the economy, Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, creating an air of national despair that paved the way for Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution.

These inflection points tend to occur not when one shocking event arrives, but when such events pile up, one on top of the other. By that standard, 2020 increasingly appears to be just such a moment.

It’s impossible when living through this moment to know exactly what the consequences will be, political or otherwise. In general, history shows, such inflection points tend not to be kind to the presidents and parties in power, as Americans turn away in search of something new.

And indeed, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken after last week’s presidential debate showed President Trump falling 14 percentage points behind Democrat Joe Biden, apparently in part because of the way the president behaved on stage. Yet that poll was taken before the arrival of the next shock to the system, the disclosure that Mr. Trump has contracted the coronavirus, a turn with unknown and unpredictable political consequences.

It may be that Mr. Trump, the ultimate disruptive force, still turns out to represent the alternative to the status quo that many Americans decide the times require. He may succeed in turning his own illness into a tale of confronting and conquering the pandemic. At a minimum, the country’s intense polarization suggests a tightening of the race is likely as voters return to their places in today’s deeply dug political trenches.

Yet the impact of 2020 on the American psyche and the rhythms of life can’t be measured simply by electoral outcomes. The sheer size of the shocks felt so far this year—impeachment trial, coronavirus pandemic, economic plunge, renewed racial reckoning and the emergence of angry divisions amid what might otherwise have been unifying national traumas—ensure that patterns of American life won’t be the same again.

Because of the pandemic, the basic lifeblood of the American economy for the last century, retail commerce, has been transformed, moved more decisively out of stores and into cyberspace. Some jobs lost along the way may never come back, though just as surely many more will be created. Meantime, the way Americans do their work, now remotely and outside traditional office settings, may never be entirely the same.

The threats America confronts have been redefined, away from Cold War confrontations and terrorist threats to the new-wave risks of cyberwarfare and pandemics. Both have been revealed this year as far more likely in a globalized world.

It’s entirely possible that America’s handling of the coronavirus, particularly after its own leader and at least a dozen people in his close orbit have been struck, has diminished trust in its government at home and hurt its image abroad.

Regardless of the outcome of next month’s election, politics and civic life are changing before our eyes. The way Americans perform the most basic of civic tasks, casting a vote, is likely to be altered permanently. The unifying scenes of Americans gathering at the local library on Election Day may increasingly become a kind of Norman Rockwell painting, a quaint reminder of calmer days gone by.

The national debate has been coarsened further amid it all. Presidential debates may never recover from the blow President Trump delivered with his intemperate performance last week.

As a result of this year’s shocks, at least some Americans are prepared to consider changes in fundamental American elements of civic life, including the Electoral College, the Supreme Court and police departments across the country. These are institutions that were largely accepted as they were before 2020, yet could emerge from the year’s tumult in new form.

Wildfires are tearing through the West, hurricanes are streaming onshore in the South and a derecho has plowed through the Midwest, each of them individually, and certainly all of them collectively, drawing new attention to the consequences of global warming.

Even sports, the most common diversion, are altered. Thanks to virus disruptions, Major League Baseball has allowed a staggering 16 teams in the once-exclusive playoffs, and saying that may be the new norm.

Any one of these shocks would be noteworthy if standing alone. Taken together, they leave some Americans angry, some unsettled, some simply weary.

Humility requires admitting that no one knows the precise consequences, except for this: Those politicians who win election this year will be asked to handle a national agenda that was unimaginable at the start of the fateful year of 2020.

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Appeared in the October 6, 2020, print edition as 'Turning-Point Year Heads to Parts Unknown.'