The All-American Circus: A Brief Romp Through the Controversies and Scandals of the 2016 United States Presidential Candidates
By David Baldivia | 1 November 2016

This Race is a Circus (and Why You Should Care)
 
The United States is home to around 320 million people. Right now, it’s also a very divided place. Several political polls have shown that the frontrunners of the two major political parties are the most disliked in their party’s history (or at least, since polls like those began). No thanks to the unending controversies that surround them (some self-inflicted, some merely sensationalized), the Republican Party nominee Donald Trump and the Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton are viewed by their detractors, some of them militant, as the worst of the worst. In fact, a vote for one is quite often a protest vote: something, anything, to keep the bad man or woman away from the Oval Office. Politics has always been about choosing the least evil, and the two most prominent third-party candidates, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party, respectively, have seen single-digit percentage support for being alternatives, but in place of tabloid scandals these two persons hold questionable views about what they think is best for America.
 
“But America is an ocean away,” one might say. “What effect does their election have on me over here? Let them fight; it’s good entertainment, right?” First of all, let me say that statements like those which disregard the importance of screening future leaders are exactly what allow tyrants to seize power while no one’s looking and for institutional cancer to fester. Second, although China is fast catching up, the United States is the world’s largest economy, and whatever happens over there will be felt here, too. And by the way, if a 250-year-old nation like America with a vibrant cultural and industrial backbone can tear itself apart because it can’t seem to decide who it wants to elect President of the United States (POTUS), smaller and younger nations, beware.
 
America’s Commander-in-Chief will be instrumental in mapping out at least the next four years of America’s life. Whoever sits in the Oval Office beginning January 2017 will be faced with a host of challenges from terrorism, to racial inequality, to sustainable energy, to foreign relations, and everything in between. If America wants to maintain its influence on the rest of the world, its next leader must be dependable, trustworthy, have sound judgement and good moral character, and put the interests of their nation above their own. Perhaps these qualities have never been as contested in America’s political candidates as they are now.
 
The Nuclear Option: Donald Trump
 
There has never been a candidate in American politics quite like Donald Trump. I don’t think I need to go into too much detail to explain why this man would be the worst person to win in this election. But just to remind you how horrible he is, Mr. Trump is the man who called Mexicans “rapists;” the man who advocated for a temporary ban on Muslims entering America; the man who wants to build a wall on the U.S.’s southern border and make Mexico pay for it (which doesn’t work from an economic standpoint, by the way); the man who fights with members of his own political party; the man who incites violence in his own rallies by saying he would like to punch people in the face; the man who once said on live television that he wants to kill terrorists’ families; the man who evades taxes and says “that makes me smart”; the man who says he can’t help but kiss beautiful women and grab them in their nether regions; the man who said he will only accept the results of the election if he emerges the winner, thereby undermining the peaceful democratic process of power transfer that America has maintained for two-and-a-half hundred years.
 
(And don’t get me started about his dismal career as a businessman, his use of undocumented workers, or his fraudulent enterprises like Trump University. You can read up on those and feel the crushing disappointment for Mr. Trump on your own. Anyone who thinks Trump is the quintessential embodiment of success could not be more wrong.)
 
People like Mr. Trump are dangerous. They act before they think, and I would say that his supporters are in the same basket. Now, as to why they would even support such a person is baffling to me, as it is to a lot of people. Donald Trump has a penchant for saying vague and outright untrue things as if they were facts – “Hillary and Obama founded ISIS”; “I have the best temperament”; “America isn’t winning” – and the media has the responsibility to fact-check these statements. The 24-hour news cycle has allowed people to hang on to every outlandish remark that he makes, perhaps more for entertainment purposes than anything, but without a fact-check people won’t know which statements are credible and which ones should be ignored. For example, fearmongering about terrorism while at the same time downplaying or even ignoring altogether the threat of climate change – something not only Donald himself has done – ignores the fact that, while terrorism is in fact dangerous, it is nowhere near as widespread and causes not nearly as much damage as climate change.
 
So when Donald Trump starts attracting fringe groups like the so-called Alt-Right, a loosely-defined right-wing group of semi-serious, semi-Internet troll people who peddle conspiracies and dangerous levels of nationalism, it makes one pause and consider what kind of person he is. A Trump presidency would morally bankrupt Americans by reinforcing the already prevalent “us-versus-them” mentality such as white-versus-black and Christian-versus-Muslim prevalent in so many niches in American society. Unfounded opinions should have no place in serious political discourse, but the Trump campaign has made “truthiness” – a word coined by comedian Stephen Colbert to describe something that feels true even when it may not be – the new normal.
 
On the relatively rare occasion that he does present a policy solution, Mr. Trump has a habit of…not explaining them. Watch him while he’s being interviewed or when he’s at his rallies say the most ludicrous things. Notice how he uses words like “tremendous,” “fantastic,” “wonderful,” “great,” “and other superlatives to describe himself and his plans. That’s how he sees himself – the business tycoon who will save America and make it great again, but won’t say exactly how. In fact, one has to wonder if Donald is even totally serious about running as a Republican. Republicans believe in free markets and minimal government interference. Yet, Mr. Trump has voiced opposition towards free-trade agreements such as the TPP and NAFTA (the latter of which he called a “disaster”) and, prior to this campaign, has actually been favorable towards immigrants, noting that they do in fact contribute to output.
 
The one thing Mr. Trump admits to being less endowed with compared to his main opponent Hillary Clinton is experience. He is right in that regard. We’ve seen businessmen, athletes, and celebrities run for office before, but usually for relatively lower public offices. Mr. Trump’s outsider status is somewhat reminiscent of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, who was a movie star before he entered the Oval Office. But despite his admiration (and obvious campaign slogan rip-off) of the late Mr. Reagan, Mr. Trump does not give any indication that he can make America great again. This isn’t to say that someone without a political science degree cannot be President – that would be an affront to democracy – but when someone displays a near-total lack of understanding about what it means to be President, or even about a democratic form of government to begin with, all bets are off.
 
The Shady Lady: Hillary Clinton
 
Of course, another reason why Donald Trump has so much support is because a lot of people don’t like the main alternative. Hillary Clinton has been bombarded left and right with accusations, some of them totally untrue, some of them blown out of proportion, and some of them truly scandalous. The most notable of these “scandalous” issues concerns her use of a private server to store over 30,000 classified emails related to the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that ended in the death of four Americans, including the then-ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens. In no way is that a small event, and the fact that Mrs. Clinton kept classified information on her own private server should raise some serious red flags. But how deep do Hillary’s scandals really run? A lot of them have to do, actually, with emails.
 
This year, WikiLeaks, an online repository of leaked classified documents and information, churned out information concerning Mrs. Clinton’s emails found on her private server. In June 2016, several thousand more damning reports regarding another set of emails related this time to this year’s Democratic National Convention (DNC), held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Among other things, the content of those emails included members of the Democratic Party speaking unfavorably of Senator and then-candidate Bernie Sanders’s campaign, thus leading to extreme speculation of bias towards Mrs. Clinton and prompting the chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to resign from her position.
 
Most recently, in October of this year, WikiLeaks unloaded another set of email correspondences taken from the email account of Hillary’s campaign manager John Podesta. Some of these emails contained excerpts from several paid speeches that Mrs. Clinton gave to Wall Street businesses. Now, to be fair, the content of those emails – as well as the content of the other emails exposed during her campaign – aren’t as terrible as they sound. There’s not nothing, but what is there is usually blown out of proportion. After being investigated extensively by the FBI on the Benghazi fiasco, Mrs. Clinton’s actions were deemed “extremely careless” but not enough to warrant pressing criminal charges.
 
Nonetheless, Hillary for many years has been derided for being too touchy-feely with Wall Street, as if her affiliation with Wall Street to enrich her political goals and the goals of those in Washington was the force driving the wedge between the top one percent and the bottom ninety-nine. She, together with her husband and former POTUS Bill, have long been the subject of controversy, a lot of times because of their wealth. Both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton are household names on Wall Street; the banks were all too generous as they donated to Bill’s campaign in the 1990s. But speculation and distrust of both the American financial and political systems in recent years, likely as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, has since made many weary of politicians strolling the streets of business districts and making small talk with blokes in suits. Mrs. Clinton has since adopted a somewhat colder tone when speaking about Wall Street in her 2016 campaign, but her connections with corporate America remain as strong as ever.
 
A vote for Hillary is a vote for more of the same policies that outgoing President Barack Obama has forwarded. This will be disconcerting for people tired or disappointed with the eight years of “hope and change” that the Obama administration (partly) lived up to. That means government health care, gun control, and potentially more simmering rivalry with Russia, among other things. Left-leaning individuals will naturally be delighted; rightists on the other hand would balk. Russia is a major talking point, and one I don’t have the time (or space) to get to in this article. To keep it short: The bickering that America’s electorate is engaging in right now must be making Russian President Vladimir Putin laugh with delight. A divided America is a good thing for Russia, which dreams of one day reclaiming its status as global superpower numero uno. Some might say that it would be wise to put Donald Trump in power, because at least he has expressed signals that he would be willing to work with Mr. Putin. But Vlad is not interested in an American alliance, and we know that. Mrs. Clinton will keep up the ugly fight, but Mr. Trump will knock America out even before Round One.
 
Hillary represents “the establishment,” the embodiment of big government and big bureaucracy. Now, it’s easy for people to feel disenfranchised by the government, especially when they’re on the losing end. This belief was what propelled Bernie Sanders to the top of many Democrats’ lists, particularly those of young voters. It’s also pretty easy to be caught up in the mantra that “politicians are corrupt,” and while I must agree that Mrs. Clinton is incredibly shady and that if she were to win her actions in office ought to be kept under intense scrutiny at all times, she probably won’t do anything to destabilize the institutions that give her power unlike her opponent Donald Trump. (And not all of Mr. Obama’s policies have been disastrous, mind you. Hillary’s economic platform is set to be founded on and improve the success of the current administration’s, and her progressive stance on both societal and scientific issues is a big feather in her cap.)
 
If it was just Hillary and Donald, it would be ridiculous to suggest that Donald would be the better of the two candidates. Even when you factor in all the sleaziness of both persons, Trump’s dark blotches far, far outweigh Clinton’s. We don’t know for absolute certain that Mrs. Clinton is not as corrupt as Mr. Trump, but from sheer observation alone based on what we’ve seen and heard on the campaign trail for the last year-and-a-half, Clinton will not do as much damage as Trump. In fact, she’ll probably finish all four years of her term, unlike her opponent who, if he keeps up his destructive behavior, will probably last only half a year at best.
 
The Liberty Boy: Gary Johnson
 
But the world isn’t black and white (or in this case, red or blue). Third party candidates provide alternatives in America’s two-party system, and when the frontrunners are as unfavorably regarded as Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are, “anyone but them” suddenly becomes very attractive. Meet the first two alternatives (or protest candidates, depending on your sentiments): Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico and the current party nominee of the Libertarian Party of the United States. As expected, Mr. Johnson holds many of Libertarianism’s views close to heart, most notably minimal government intervention, laissez-faire market solutions to societal problems, and responsible practice of individual liberties as a cornerstone of healthy community life.
 
So how does Mr. Johnson carry himself in his campaign? He currently has about 6% of the national polls, while the other third-party candidate, Jill Stein, trails behind at 2%. As a Libertarian, he represents another potential right-wing candidate; when compared to Donald Trump, who looks less and less Republican with every passing day, Mr. Johnson seems to represent the only right-wing candidate with a chance at the Presidency, however tiny that may be. Indeed, it is common criticism in two-party systems like America’s that third parties can siphon off undecided voters, allowing the “most evil” to win over the second-best option. But Gary Johnson does legitimately have a voter base that supports his views. What are these views?
 
Consistent with his political ideology, Mr. Johnson is all about promoting individual liberties such as abortion rights and marijuana legalization. But things start getting a little more questionable when Mr. Johnson talks about the wonders of the free market. He supports the taxation of religious establishments such as churches and synagogues, believes that the minimum wage is unnecessary and probably even counterproductive, is opposed to paid family and medical leave, and has advocated in a live television interview the abolishment of the United States Departments of Education, Commerce, and Housing & Urban Development, “for starters.” Now, regardless of your stance on these issues, there are legitimate economic arguments in favor of these proposals, but the way Gary Johnson responds to criticism of these free-market issues is telling. For example, when he was questioned about his stance on abolishing the aforementioned agencies, Mr. Johnson conceded that those agencies did in fact do a lot of important work but gave no credible solution as to how to continue their operations should they be removed.
 
Mr. Johnson has also said he wants to get rid of the National Security Agency (NSA) and, even more astonishingly, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); for the latter, he has said that he would eliminate both federal income taxes and corporate taxes, to be replaced by a single federal consumption tax. Critics of this approach argue that not only would this take away an enormous amount of revenue from the government but that this proposed federal consumption tax would be so large that it would hurt the least affluent families the most. As a solution, Gary Johnson envisions each household will receive a state-sponsored rebate that will cover a part of this tax. This, however, would require massive government dole-outs, and with the revenue that somehow could have been used for those dole-outs no longer present, it’s easy to see why such a move would be disastrous to the American economy.
 
Things don’t look much better on his non-economic opinions. Johnson was heavily criticized in September of this year after he was asked about the humanitarian situation in Aleppo, Syria, wherein he genuinely responded, “What is Aleppo?” Later that same month, Mr. Johnson expressed worryingly uneducated views about global warming, noting that in the distant future, the Sun will grow more massive and heat up the Earth’s surface, so global warming is certainly in our future and we shouldn’t be concerned about it if we take “the long-term view.” He also believes that genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) should be labelled, despite overwhelming evidence showing that GMOs are safe to consume. And if you think his anti-scientific leanings are troubling, have a look at the other third-party candidate.
 
The Spin Doctor: Jill Stein
 
Jill Stein, the nominee for the Green Party of the United States, espouses many of the same values that hers and other Green Parties in other countries stand for, especially environmentalism. Mrs. Stein is a retired physician who has practiced medicine for two and a half decades and has long been concerned with the public heath situation in the United States, which led her to co-found several health groups and initiatives emphasizing the importance of citizen participation in solving issues like waste management and preparing for the future through environmental sustainability initiatives.
 
Sounds good, right? A medical doctor who took up her practice to help those in need for the good of the planet. But a look at some of her stances on science – and remember that she is a medical doctor – and you might not be so sure about that. Like Gary Johnson, Dr. Stein would rather have GMOs labelled on account of the possible “health risks” they pose and claims that GMOs have not yet been proven safe to consume, in spite of mountains of scientific research that say otherwise. Dr. Stein is also staunchly anti-nuclear power, which is unfortunate since nuclear energy is both 100% renewable and produces no carbon emissions. In a tweet in March 2016, Stein even wrote, “Nuclear power plants = weapons of mass destruction[.]” More troublingly, Dr. Stein has been wishy-washy on vaccination. While she has acknowledged that while vaccines have proven effective in disease prevention and elimination, she has also gone back on solid statements in favor of more dubious ones; in response to anti-vaccination accusations, Dr. Stein replied, “There is no evidence that autism is caused by vaccines” and then replaced her answer with “I’m not aware of evidence linking autism to vaccination.” And if that wasn’t enough, Dr. Stein also genuinely believes the old claim that Wi-Fi causes brain damage. It does not.
 
Dr. Stein’s political leanings lie on the left side of the political spectrum; she could be thought of as diet Hillary. Her Green Party is in favor of LGBT rights, is against armed conflict, and supports societal collectivism. Despite this, Dr. Stein’s judgement has been called into question several times. Like Donald Trump, she has not released all of her tax returns. In line with her anti-war platform, she has denounced Israel for engaging in war crimes, but for some reason has not called out Russia for its airstrikes in the fight against ISIS in Syria. But perhaps her most telling bluff stems from her plan to cancel all student debt through quantitative easing should she become POTUS. This echoes one of the main talking points of Bernie Sanders’s campaign, and Jill has expressed support for the old senator, but Mr. Sanders at least presents a more methodical and level-headed proposal than Dr. Stein does.
 
The first problem with this plan is that the President does not have the authority to cancel debt, only the Federal Reserve does, and to suggest that the President be given such wide discretion over the power of the purse is deeply concerning. The second problem is that the use of quantitative easing (QE) is far from appropriate for addressing this problem. QE involves central banks buying financial securities such as bonds from other financial institutions in order to lower interest rates and raise money supply, but without the need to print new money. QE is monetary policy – and a not-often used one at that given its extreme impact on money supply – and not something that can be used to forgive liabilities. Dr. Stein has even suggested on television that people don’t need to understand “the magic trick” that is QE. For an issue that is as serious as the $1.3 trillion student debt that burdens 44 million American youth, her proposals on the issue matter.
 
The Bottom Line: The Show Must Go On
 
The controversies and questionable moments laid out in this article are not exhaustive. Do a little bit of digging online and you are guaranteed to find more damning evidence about these candidates than I can list down here. Then again, do a little bit of digging on anyone and you’re bound to find something truly eyebrow-raising. In any event, the painful but necessarily true reminder here is that no candidate is perfect. But there are definitely candidates who are better than others. A public office is a public trust; naturally, we only want those who we think are capable, or who we think have our best interests at heart, to fill that office and that trust. It’s just a matter of picking a side.
 
The best way to pick a side is to base one’s decision on the evidence. It is very easy to get carried away on headlines like “WikiLeaks drops yet another shocking Clinton email bombshell” or “Trump said WHAT again?” (not real headlines, by the way) and form monolithic, non-negotiable opinions about these people. A reaction is fine (we’re only human, we get emotional), but the rational and mature response is to wait for more data to pour in before making an educated comment. Own up to your candidate’s flaws. It is very likely you will disagree with at least one of their points, and that’s alright. But always understand who you’re getting when you cast your vote and the implications of their policies on your life and the lives of others. Then, if your candidate wins, hold them accountable for their actions in office. If your candidate loses, accept it and move on. Accusations of rigged elections should not be dismissed entirely, either. If enough people believe that a peaceful and honest turnover of power is not possible, then a collapse of such a trust could lead to societal mayhem and irreparable damage to a nation’s integrity.
 
Election Day in America is on November 8, and with it comes the close of possibly the most insane presidential races in recent American history. But Act II is set to pick up right where Act I leaves off, because whoever emerges the winner in this race will make history. If Mr. Trump wins, hiss electrifyingly terrifying rise to fame might be nothing compared to the craziness his presidency promises to be. Mrs. Clinton will be the first female POTUS and put the Clinton name squarely back in the White House, but her term will be riddled with public mistrust of her character, and she will have to be extra careful how she handles herself. In the unlikely event that either Mr. Johnson or Dr. Stein clinch the win, both will have to do some serious soul-searching of their policy proposals. One thing is for certain: This circus is not over. It has only just begun.