Fresh air

ONE OF THE BEST THINGS about my recent trip to Valencia, Spain—besides the warm and friendly people, medieval cathedrals, modernista architecture, the orange-tree-studded public park built in an ancient riverbed, and cloud-like croissants that may be derived from actual manna—was the population’s distinct lack of interest in American politics.

To be certain, café conversations over cappuccino and sangria contained their share of the political. But Beltway melodrama was definitely not the center of the universe.

Politically speaking, being in America sometimes feels like living in a switched-on blender. Getting out of the country for just a few weeks helped me get a little perspective: Be it Trump or Biden in November, life—and God’s reign—will go on (Psalm 103:19).

During my six-week visit, only one person asked about the two presidents—a taxi driver. My traveling partner Suzy and I had cabbed down to the lyrically named “Festival of the Winds,” a kaleidoscopic celebration of kites that takes place each year at Cabanyal Beach. We’d made a practice of chatting with taxi drivers, gleaning tips and tricks such as how to avoid the city’s crafty carteristas (pickpockets).

The drivers also served as kindly captives upon whom I could perpetrate my busted Spanish. (Me: “Nos gustaría ir a la estación de trenes.” Translation: “We would like to going to the station of trains.”)

On the ride back from the kite festival, I noticed the taxi driver fiddling with his phone. He then held it up, turning the screen to face us in the backseat. There, squinting from the screen like Walter the Puppet, was Joe Biden.

“¿Te gusta?” the taxi driver said, smiling.

Suzy and I laughed. I whipped out my phone and dialed up Google Translate. I knew what I wanted to say and did not want to garble it, station-of-trains style.

“Biden no tiene todas sus facultades,” I read from my phone after typing in the English, “y Trump es detestable.”

Now, hang on and let me explain.

I meant neither assertion as an insult. “Detestable” doesn’t mean what you may think. It means “obnoxious.” This isn’t a value judgment, just a fact, as evidenced by Trump’s social media blurts and visceral, ongoing attacks on fellow Republicans who decline to taxi down to the station of trains and climb aboard Trump’s.

That said, I do have friends who’ve spent significant time with the former president. To a person, they tell me that, one-to-one, he’s actually very personable: attentive, encouraging, interested in others, the opposite of self-involved. Given these reports, as well as the loyalty of his supporters in the face of unprecedented attempts to unseat him from his position atop the GOP, it may be that Trump is, to adapt a phrase, obnoxious like a fox.

As for Joe Biden, even children know the current president is not in possession of all his faculties. In my view, the people propping him up to fumble his way through public memory lapses and into international incidents seem almost guilty of elder abuse.

Here’s my bottom line, which I shared with the taxi driver: ¡Necesitamos otra persona para presidente!

Not Biden, a sock-puppet for cynical socialists. And not Trump. Yes, I loved many of his policies, especially his work on the federal judiciary. I voted for him twice and will again, in William F. Buckley Jr. fashion, if I must choose between Trump and the Party of Death.

Still, I would rather see our nation get back to focusing on neighborhoods, not the Beltway. On faith and family and Little League, instead of noxious, nonstop political theater. Sadly, both Trump and Biden guarantee four more years of Beltway hysteria—and this in a nation whose key institutions are already politicized and disintegrating fast.

Despite the opinions of sincerely divided Christians, neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden can save America. That’s because America’s root problem isn’t political, but instead a systematic abandonment of God.