Back in 2008, when a young senator from Illinois became the 44th president of the United States, I was so proud to be American that I hung a photocopied image of Barack Obama superimposed with the word "Hope" on the door of my Paris flat.
It was such an un-French thing to do; but even my bourgeois neighbours in the 6th arrondissement grinned when they saw it. Some congratulated me as though I had personally got Mr Obama elected. One even sent me a note: “High five. When you guys do it, you really do it right.”
That was a dozen years ago, a golden time when the White House had a cool, highly intelligent African-American man at the helm. For the first time in my many years of living abroad, I did not hide the fact I was born in the US. Mr Obama single-handedly rebranded America after the horror of the Iraq war.
Since then, my country has been assaulted at a level I never could have forecast. Every pillar of democracy is threatened to crack in two: human rights, rule of law, freedom of the press, the justice system. All are endangered.
Egged on by Donald Trump's approach and his terrifying fan base composed of right-wing militias such as the Proud Boys and conspiracy theorists such as QAnon, we've succumbed to a nastiness that is unprecedented. It has made the tribalism between Americans even more apparent; it makes me fear we could head down a road to potential civil war.
Watching President Trump's now infamous 60 Minutes interview last week, when he stormed off the set leaving veteran reporter Lesley Stahl aghast, I wondered when we let this campaign get so dirty. Shouldn't there have been a referee?
Both sides are guilty, but one side more so. The 2020 election makes Mr Trump's 2016 bellicose attacks on Hillary Clinton – the "Lock her up!" and "She's such a nasty woman" taunts – look tame.
The 2020 election has had no holds barred. Mr Trump told Ms Stahl that he was a victim of fake news; that he was bullied; that “Sleepy Joe” never had to answer tough questions; that "Potus" was shown no respect; that he was beleaguered and attacked.
What has been revealed this election season is Mr Trump’s lack of empathy, his mockery of those who are weaker: stutterers, “losers”, the poor, the disenfranchised, those who are not strong enough to become real estate sharks or marry supermodels.
Hunter Biden – an allegedly seedy character but one who deserves compassion for battling addiction, and losing his mother and sister in a childhood car crash – has been used as a centre-piece of Mr Trump's venom. Biden senior has a history of making gaffes – so he's been attacked as intellectually incompetent. The New York Times called the debates so cruel that they were "trampling decorum".
One Massachusetts voter told me she still has “PTSD” from the shock of the 2016 elections. She says she will refuse to watch the election returns this year, because they are too cruel. Instead, she will “take something strong and go to bed early”.
In 2016, a glowing Michelle Obama told the Democratic National Convention: “When they go low, we go high.” It’s been a battle cry for the bullied, the underclass, those who are subjugated. But the Democrats weren’t much better than Mr Trump this time around.
Mr Biden would not have been my choice for president – I backed Elizabeth Warren – but he is, above all, a decent man. He's suffered losses that no one should be expected to shoulder and, despite that, appears not to be broken by life. But even Mr Biden – a veteran Washington politician – seemed stunned by the vehemence of Mr Trump's malicious barbs.
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FILE PHOTO: Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden answers a question as President Donald Trump listens during the second and final presidential debate at the Curb Event Center at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S., October 22, 2020. Morry Gash/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo -
Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden waves to supporters before speaking at a Drive-In rally in Dallas, Pennsylvania. AFP -
Joe Biden delivers remarks at an event in Cincinnati, Ohio. AFP -
President Barack Obama awards Vice President Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2017. -
President-elect Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, vice president-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill arrive for an election night party in Chicago, Illinois in 2008. AFP -
Jill Biden hugs husband Joe Biden at the end of the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. AFP -
Joe Biden, accompanied by his granddaughter Natalie Biden, speaks to people outside a campaign victory centerin Fort Lauderdale, Florida. AP Photo -
Vice-President Joe Biden and his sons Hunter and Beau walk in the Inaugural Parade in 2009 in Washington, DC. Getty Images -
Rose Boehle of Davenport, Iowa, becomes emotional as she and one of her granddaughters speaks with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden at a campaign rally in Iowa. AP Photo -
Joe Biden delivers remarks during a Drive-In Presidential campaign event in Tampa, Florida. AFP
"They are vicious," Mr Trump said of the "Dirty Democrats". He called Mr Biden "senile" and said House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi "sounds drunk". Meanwhile, the Lincoln Project, a group of disgruntled Republicans with a brilliant social media strategy, have cruelly gone after Mr Trump to a point where even I – who can't wait to see the end of the Trump presidency – think that he is himself being bullied. The balloons of him wearing a diaper and floating above cities were low blows. The schadenfreude when he tested positive for Covid-19 was mean-spirited. The posters of daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner in Times Square looking like idiots are a step too far.
At what point did we stoop so low? When did elections become 7th grade and full of adolescent angst and pimply aggression? So I started looking back at American history and nasty moments. I found plenty that I was not taught in history class.
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US President Donald Trump listens as Nigel Farage (R) speaks during a Make America Great Again rally at Phoenix Goodyear Airport October 28, 2020, in Goodyear, Arizona. / AFP / Brendan Smialowski -
U.S. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up during a campaign rally at Phoenix Goodyear Airport in Goodyear, Arizona, U.S., October 28, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY -
Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden takes part in a virtual Get Out the Vote event with Oprah Winfrey in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., October 28, 2020. REUTERS/Brian Snyder -
California Senator and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks during a drive-in campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona on October 28, 2020. / AFP / ARIANA DREHSLER -
Vice President Mike Pence motions to his daughter Audrey Pence to walk on stage after he spoke during a campaign top on behalf of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020, in Flint, Mich. (Nicole Hester/Ann Arbor News via AP) -
Jessie Dales entertains supporters as they wait in line to enter the venue where US President Donald J. Trump will speak on a campaign stop, outside the venue at Goodyear Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. EPA -
Poll worker Alice Machinist, of Newton, Mass., right, wears a mask and shield out of concern for the coronavirus while assisting a voter, left, with a ballot during early in-person general election voting, at the Newton Free Library, in Newton, Massachusetts. AP Photo -
Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill wave as they depart after casting their votes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Wilmington, Delaware, Reuters -
Mark Swindell (R) and his daughters Ivy (L) and Ella try to keep warm at dawn while waiting in line to attend a campaign rally with U.S. President Donald Trump at Phoenix Goodyear Airport n Goodyear, Arizona. AFP -
Tara Immen of Happy Valley, Arizona, wears decorative glasses while waiting in line to attend a campaign rally with U.S. President Donald Trump at Phoenix Goodyear Airport. AFP -
-A truck adorned with decorations and a Mitch McConnell sign sits outside of the venue where U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, makes a campaign stop. AFP -
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell stands and speaks to the press and his supporters during a campaign stop in Smithfield, Kentucky. AFP -
Julian Belilty, from the Kalorama neighbourhood of the District of Columbia, casts his early vote at the Marie Reed Elementary School in the Adams Morgan Neighborhood in Washington, U.S.. Reuters -
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks outside of the state building after voting in Wilmington, Delaware,. AFP -
Scott Brady stands in front of his house with a Trump campaign sign in Springfield, Pa. Once a Democrat, Brady says he switched parties to vote for Donald Trump in 2016, and plans to vote for him again in 2020. AP Photo -
Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer as he walks off stage after speaking during a campaign rally at Phoenix Goodyear Airport, in Goodyear, Arizona. AP Photo
In 1800, for instance, former friends and co-draftees of the Declaration of Independence John Adams and Thomas Jefferson went head to head in a most politically incorrect way. The founding fathers were decidedly not moral and decent. Jefferson called Adams “a hideous hermaphroditical character”, neither man nor woman. Adams then predicted a Jeffersonian win would be akin to Armageddon with “female chastity violated… children on pikes”. Jefferson beat the hermaphrodite; the former friends never spoke again.
In 1828, the European-educated statesman John Quincy Adams got personal. He called opponent Andrew Jackson’s mother a common prostitute “who married a mulatto man”. Herbert Hoover was more ridiculous. He smeared Al Smith in 1928, at the height of the Jazz Age, for being Catholic, and a “card-playing, cocktail-drinking [fan of] prize-fighting, divorces, novels, poodles.” In 1964, the notoriously uncouth Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson destroyed the Barry Goldwater campaign by stealing speeches and made an ad of Goldwater blowing up a little girl with an atom bomb.
But nothing came close to Richard Nixon’s renown for cold cruelty. He told his supporters to call New Hampshire voters in the middle of the night whispering that black people would be bussed in for work if they voted for his rival Edmund Muskie. Nixon stole stationery from Muskie and forged the famous “Canuck letter” showing prejudice against Americans of French-Canadian descent. The Canuck letter made Muskie publicly break down in tears.
It got even lower. Nixon also released mice at a news conference with tags on them, calling Muskie "a rat fink". We all know what happened next: Nixon won but karma and the Watergate scandal brought him down.
Mercifully, we are now close to the end of the race. Most Americans are worn out by the pandemic and the economy. The election has been an additional psychological strain. I truly believe the entire American population is suffering from moral injury from the events we have seen over the past six months.
Will we be celebrating a pandemic Thanksgiving – one of the most important American holidays – with a new man heading for the White House? Given 2016’s trauma, I am not going to make a call on who will win. I have already voted; I will wait it out.
But either way, whoever gets it, they should issue a formal apology to the American people for forcing us to endure a long, bitter and deeply unpleasant campaign: one that revealed how low people will go to cling to power.
Janine di Giovanni is a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs
