Jules Witcoveer

WASHINGTON — In a speech last Friday in which he wished to tout the latest Labor Department unemployment figures, President Donald Trump imagined the reaction of the late George Floyd, the man whose killing at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across the nation. “Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” Trump said. “This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. … This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

In Trump-speak, he was saying it was a great thing for his reelection chances, hinting that an economic recovery might be on the way after one of the worst weeks politically of his presidency,

The rest of the world knows by now that Floyd’s real last words were “I can’t breathe,” as the arresting officer knelt hard on his neck in the last eight minutes of his life. On hearing of Trump’s comment, prospective Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called it “frankly despicable.”

Sixty-six years ago, in the Senate Caucus Room on Capitol Hill, an obscure elderly Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch memorably chastised then Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin for accusing a young defense aide of being a Communist. Welch told McCarthy: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” before storming out of the room. The young man in question was never on the committee staff, and Welch told McCarthy: “I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you.”

McCarthy eventually was censured by the Senate, succumbed to alcoholism and died in office. Welch’s question could well be asked even more justifiably of Donald Trump today, as he crassly latches onto the posthumous celebrity of George Floyd to buoy up his flagging re-election prospects. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll has him running 14 percentage points behind Biden.

The president’s woefully insensitive recruiting of the memory of George Floyd to boost his political stock draws a distinctly sharp line between himself and Biden in how their words and actions are generally perceived in assessing common decency toward others. Trump openly advertises his contempt for all who deign to differ with him, starting with his mocking nicknames, as in “Sleepy Joe” for Biden, among with many other sophomoric taunts.

Biden largely eschews references to Trump’s physical appearance, concentrating on his serial lying, misrepresentations and policy differences. Yet any direct encounter between them, as in general-election campaign debates, promises to attract record television audiences, as Biden for all his less bombastic demeanor has promised backers he will figuratively “beat the hell out of” Trump when he gets the chance.

Trump signaled long ago that he anticipated the former vice president and 36-year Senate veteran would be his challenger in the 2020 election. His efforts to enlist Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in obtaining political dirt of Biden and his son Hunter, formerly a highly paid board member of the giant Burisma energy company, became an early issue in the campaign.

Trump withheld American military aid to Ukraine for a time, conditioned on announcement of a promised investigation of the Bidens, but it never occurred and aid funds finally were released. Still, the stage remains set for a combative engagement between the two men.

In contrast to Trump’s readiness to put words in a dead man’s mouth, Biden chose to meet Floyd’s family members privately in Houston in advance of the funeral Tuesday to avoid creating undue distraction from the solemnity of the occasion. But by now it is abundantly clear there is no love lost between the two candidates, and the social distancing required by the continuing pandemic will be readily self-imposed.

The competition between Trump and Biden, once the formalities of party conventions and nominations are accomplished, could come down in part to voter perceptions in terms of candidate toughness on one side and common decency on and the other; of “law and order” behind pugnacious Trump or “racial justice” behind conciliatory Biden.

But the events of the last week appear to have drastically reshaped the political environment from just two months ago, when Joe Biden seemed finished, hanging on behind frontrunner Bernie Sanders and needing salvation from African-American voters in South Carolina.

Now the sudden reawakening of the historic American struggle to achieve racial equality casts him in a stronger light and obliges Trump to hunker down in a more defensive posture. With public emotions at a fever pitch, Democrats look to the ballot box in November while Republicans express fear the wrath an electorate repulsed by Trump.

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Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.