By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

During my many years in print journalism, I sought to remind voters in communities in Texas and in Oregon — where I worked — that local elections mattered more than national elections. Why? Because the local folks set tax policy that paid for essential services we need and use: police and fire, water, garbage pickup, street upkeep.

That was then. The presidential election that awaits 49 days from now might supplant local elections as the most relevant to our needs.

It’s Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump. Biden wants to replace Trump and restore a sense of national honor, of empathy, of concern for our safety. Biden wants to lead the nation through the pandemic that is still killing too many of us daily. Trump is continuing to lie about what he’s allegedly done. Biden wants to protect Americans against all threats, even those that arrive in the form of a killer virus.

We are being forsaken by a president who doesn’t give a rat’s a** about us. His concern is focused solely on his re-election. One might be able to link the two matters — re-election and a president’s concern for U.S. citizens. Except that Trump’s continual lying about the coronavirus renders his actual caring about us absolutely moot.

It is true that presidents don’t set tax policy. City councils still establish how much we pay for essential municipal services. So do our county commissioners courts. None of this is meant to diminish their relevance in our daily lives.

I do intend to take particular note of the stakes of the national election and to suggest that this Biden-Trump choice means more to us individually than most of the presidential choices we have made … arguably since the beginning of this glorious republic.

Both candidates call this the most consequential election in history. I believe them and I intend to do all I can to ensure we make a change at the top of our political chain of command.

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joseph R. Biden Jr. needs to do all he can to avoid being labeled by historians as the candidate who lost a presidential campaign to an incompetent, immoral, corrupt politician.

Donald Trump is the aforementioned individual Biden is facing in the upcoming presidential election. Will the incumbent slither his way to a second term as president? I have no possible idea.

I am hoping for all I can that Biden defeats Trump bigly.

However, Trump’s uncanny knack of wiggling free of political crises gives me the heebie-jeebies. While it is weird enough that Trump managed to defeat a demonstrably more qualified candidate for president in 2016, it would be far beyond bizarre for Trump — with the hideous record he has compiled in his current term as president — to pull it off again this year.

You have to get busy, Mr. Biden. Millions of us are counting on you.

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have reached a conclusion that others reached a long time ago, but it’s a big deal to me, so I am going to explain what it is and why it’s such a big deal.

The conclusion is that we are going to conduct the most important presidential election in at least the past century. Donald Trump v. Joe Biden is as big a deal as any I have seen since I’ve been voting and I suspect some even older folks would agree.

What’s at stake? I believe the size and gravity of the stakes make this election so incredibly critical. The stakes, simply put are the survival of our system of government.

In 2016, Donald Trump parlayed a desire for radical change in the way we govern into a fluky Electoral College victory. Roughly 77,000 voters in three Rust Belt states gave Trump the Electoral College margin he needed to win.

He said he would be “unconventional” and that he “alone” would solve our problems. He delivered on the first thing. As for the solution, he “alone” has made them worse.

Trump has lied and lied again and again. About everything. He has put unqualified individuals in key advisory roles; e.g., Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. He has burned through national security advisers and White House chiefs of staff. Trump has made a mess of everything he has touched.

He has fomented conspiracy theories. He has called Nazis and Klansmen “fine people.” He has appealed only to his base of fervent supporters.

The experiment in unconventionality has failed.

Joe Biden represents a return to normal governance, to what the late John McCain would call “regular order.” Biden is campaigning to restore our national soul. It needs restoration. Our soul has been damaged, but not destroyed, by Donald Trump and his hideous conduct.

I am a good government kind of guy. I much prefer my presidents to be better than I am. I want them to set moral examples. Biden represents a return to an era of good government. He spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as vice president.

Joe Biden knows how to govern. He is an ardent student of the government in which he has been a significant participant. Yes, I believe Joe Biden can restore our national soul and more importantly, revive our standing as the world’s most indispensable nation.

Thus, we are going to conduct the most significant election in anyone’s memory. It is, as Biden himself once said, a “big fu**ing deal.”