photo by: Creators Syndicate

Jamie Stiehm

Election 2024 is certainly as classic an American courtroom drama as sure as “Twelve Angry Men.”

The contrast, nay contradiction, between the two leading witnesses could not be clearer.

Speaking of angry men, one star witness in the witness box seems to swim in the spittle of his own outbursts of outrage. He is a 78-year-old man, but nobody would mistake him for a gentleman or a sport at court. The queen of England found his ugly American manners poor.

His tastes are no more refined than Big Macs, golf and watching television like a maniac. He does not feign interest in art, books, history, music. He’s just a guy born into a place of white wealth and privilege in booming post-war America.

He’s walking proof that privilege is not the same as class.

For all he was given, he sowed chaos and hate over years, especially toward Blacks, women and immigrants. Women are reeling from and dealing with his theft of their human rights.

In fact, he introduced a new word into our vocabulary — misogyny. Not that he knew the ancient Greek word, but he made such a practice of it that it made a comeback.

We are a country of immigrants, with compassion for those seeking a better life. Right? It’s written on the Statue of Liberty pedestal: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …” Lines written by a woman, Emma Lazarus.

But he has long dehumanized immigrants, lately accusing Haitians of eating pet cats and dogs in Ohio. He sank a bipartisan immigration bill.

He’s prone to violence if he loses or doesn’t get his way. I mean, serious mob violence that placed his vice president in grave danger.

“So what?” he said.

He took an oath to tell the truth, but one of the few true things he said was that “American carnage” was coming. And so it did, on one dark January day.

The New York Times expressed concern about his “rambling discourse” in campaign speeches.

One remark reveals a touch of narcissism and lack of candor:

“You have never seen a body so beautiful,” he said to a crowd, referring to his huge frame.

Now, as a second devastating hurricane lashed Florida, he is spreading disinformation that federal disaster relief is being used to house migrants.

The second witness is on the verge of 60, with poise and polish. She was born from a marriage of immigrants and identifies as Black. As a woman, she completes a trifecta that he spent many years mocking.

And yet.

Still she tours the nation and speaks in a ringing voice, seen and heard in rip-roaring campaign dates in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. She’s found her own voice out on the stump, exceeding expectations (perhaps even her own).

She took command of a party in crisis, within 24 hours, after the aging chief stepped down. She stepped up with more aplomb and confidence than Americans had ever seen in her before.

She told some of her life story, as a girl growing up in the “flats” in Berkeley, California. Her mother was divorced, a research scientist from India raising two daughters.

This illustrates the hardworking middle class versus the pampered elite. She represents fresh blood from the west, rising through merit.

Merit is the essence of the self-made American ideal.

Here we have a case study in achievement opening the door to the White House at a possibly historical hour, less than a month from today.

She learned foreign policy in the White House situation room.

She is a woman who knows how to wield the rule of law to find the truth, trained to prosecute cases for the people.

He is an amazing escape artist from justice, two impeachment trials and four criminal indictments in his wake. Give him that. Yet he walks the streets a free man. That takes talent.

He is “never, ever wrong,” he says, as if making a closing argument.

So which witness wins the day in court?

This man and this woman are not the ones on trial. Make no mistake.

We the American people are on trial Tuesday, Nov. 5.

— Jamie Stiehm is a syndicated columnist with Creators.