Invalid character

THE WORST THING WE READ™

Can Donald Trump Still Win a Race to the Bottom?

IT'S QUICKER AND easier to get everyone talking about headlines than about articles these days, and the New York Times opinion section gave everyone a headline to talk about yesterday: "Trump Can Win on Character." The original headline on the item had been "Trump's Best Strategy to Beat Harris Is Actually Pretty Simple," which was gassy and blah. The new one was shameless and built to pop: Trump??? On CHARACTER???? Who could possibly believe that??

Naturally, the answer was that no one did believe it. The headline had an article hung below it, as every headline outside the Onion or Clickhole must, and that actual article, by National Review editor in chief Rich Lowry, fell in the space between its dueling headlines, simultaneously shameless and blah. It was one of those pieces that an opinion editor publishes out of pure political cynicism—not a direct expression of the writer's beliefs about candidates, but a proposal about what might be rhetorically or strategically useful in the campaign. 

Rather than straightfacedly, and untenably, arguing to the readers of the New York Times that Donald Trump is a person of higher character than Kamala Harris, Lowry was aiming to shake their confidence in the rousing beginnings of the Harris campaign. His message was that Trump could successfully raise doubts about Harris—that it was still possible to scare voters away from her, or at least discourage them, by making the election a contest about something he called "character," which was not to be confused with what people usually mean when they talk about character: