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Why we should not fear a Trump presidency
President Trump would be constrained by the Senate and House of Representatives.
The race for the US presidency is now coming into its final furlong and, against odds which would have seemed impossible even six months ago, Donald Trump is within a whisker of entering the Oval Office. It is therefore incumbent upon on us to ask what sort of presidency we would be looking at were this to happen.
First, let us be clear about one thing: this admittedly bizarre man is a man gifted with huge abilities. Yes, he is a showman of the most extraordinary kind; a loudmouth, many would argue, yet also thin skinned. He is capable of cruel invective and even crueller put-downs. He also espouses policies – his great wall and ban on Muslims – which would be sudden death to any conventional politician. But then again he isn’t a conventional politician. He is a businessman and a very successful one at that. He says things that are thought by many but are unsayable by the Washington elite. And it is that Washington elite that most fears his arrival in the White House.
“I’m going to drain the swamp,” is Trump’s colourful yet terrifying promise. In classical terms, that’s a vow to ‘clean the Augean Stables’, the definition of which is to ‘clear away corruption’ or to ‘perform a large and unpleasant task that has long called for attention’. Hercules is the one said to have carried it out so perhaps that’s where we get the term ‘the labours of Hercules’.
Anyway, Trump says that the little man is trodden underfoot and his interests are completely subordinated to those of the ruling classes. By these he means the politicians, the bankers, the captains of industry and, indeed, all the country’s decision makers – be they in the law, the military, the town or county halls, academia or even the church. There is, he says, a vast gang-up by all those he considers view themselves as superior, a cut above the common herd. We may have arrived, he argues, after centuries of struggle at a one person, one vote system of government in a system where the movers and shakers have contrived to make it seem otherwise.
Once upon a time, the people who put themselves forward for public office were high minded – or at least seemed so – and were driven by factors other than those of enriching themselves. More often than not they were worldly people, middle-aged and sometimes old who had already proved themselves in their chosen field and were esteemed by their peers. Among their successors, however, venality reigns supreme and you have the spectacle of presidents and prime ministers – Tony Blair is a case in point – using the prestige of their former office to tout for business among the world’s most unedifying rulers and all to join the ranks of the mega-rich themselves.
It is a moment of high irony that the dragon which threatens to slay this cabal of self-servers is as rich as Croesus himself. Yet he has never viewed himself as part of the mega-rich’s charmed circle and they, despite his riches, would never have admitted him to it. His brash vulgarity, no-holds-barred rhetoric and giant ego did not lend itself to their view of the world. That view might be one that tolerated all manner of low-life activities – business or otherwise – but they had to be masked in a veneer of respectability and kept from the public view. It was many of Trump’s sentiments which drove our own recent Brexit campaign.
So what are we to make of a looming Trump presidency? Should we fear this devil-may-care outsider, who threatens to hit the establishment like a tsunami? I think not. There are so many checks and balances in the world’s greatest democracy that, were he to run amok – which he has not done in business – he could be contained. And there is just a chance that he could succeed and ‘make America great again’. (Actually, in my view it has never ceased to be great.) In spectacular fashion with this latest Hillary FBI expose, a 10-point Clinton lead has narrowed in two days to one point.
This crazy election of two incredibly flawed candidates is now Trump’s to lose. If he stays on message for one week, avoids scandals of his own and puts a zip on his mouth he might just do it.
Hillary’s most dangerous stumble
Hillary can clearly be seen collapsing before being placed in the van at the 9/11 ceremony. Her head shaking and foot dragging point to a possible seizure. Could this be linked to her blood clot in 2012?
Trump has called Hillary many things in times past. He maintains she is ‘crooked’ and can never be straight with the American people, either in her business dealings or her period as Secretary of State. He believes, as we Brits like to say, that she is not a ‘fit and proper person’ to have charge of the destiny not just of her own nation, but that of the entire free world. He also holds that she represents the dark heart of the politico-economic system that he believes so oppresses the American nation. Now The Donald has found his ace in the hole: her very fitness to govern in the literal sense.
When called to the colours long ago as a humble National Serviceman, my countrymen proposed putting a gun in my hand with a license to use it against our country’s enemies – of which at that time there were many. But first they were going to ensure my competence, both mentally as well as physically. To that end I had to undergo a rigorous medical. They needed to know that I would be up to supporting my comrades, whose lives might depend on my actions. Any suspicion that I could fail at the crucial moment would have disqualified me.
The President of the United States operates on an altogether different plane. He or she, as Head of State as well as Commander-in-chief, has the lives and well-beings of countless millions as a responsibility. Physical as well as mental health is a crucial job requirement. The finger that hovers over the nuclear button must be up to it.
After this weekend, Hillary Clinton would be foolish to think that she can wave it all away with an unfunny joke, as she has done in the past over health issues. She is asking, on the strength of her say-so, that the American people trust her in the matter.
These are perilous times we are living through. The end of the imagined peace dividend that victory in the Cold War would bring us now seems a distant chimera. An ever more assertive Putin in the Kremlin is joined by an almost deranged Kim Jong-un in North Korea, who in quick succession last week loosed off three ballistic missiles, while Syria burns. Hillary has been gung-ho for years to impose a no-fly zone over that country. While that might have made sense three years ago, with Russian jets now crisscrossing its skies daily such an imposition at this time could unleash a big power conflagration. The stresses of such a build -up of tensions would almost certainly bring on one of Hillary’s fits.
The truth is that it is just not good enough that the Americans and all the rest of us should have such worries concerning one individual’s health and fitness for purpose. Hillary must be prevailed on to submit herself to an independent panel of health experts or, at the very least, make her very latest, up-to-date medical records available for inspection.
In my view it is an open question whether she can survive the next two incredibly gruelling months of presidential campaigning. I said as much back in May when I wrote about Hillary and her questionable health on my blog. Now it is out in the open. If she steps down, or is forced to do so, who will take her place? Would good ol’ Joe Biden, Obama’s Vice President, step up to the plate to save the nation and possibly all the rest of us? Although there was talk of him throwing his hat into the ring during the primaries, I wouldn’t bet on that one. Bernie Sander’s devoted and almost messianic followers would be incandescent with rage were that to happen. Quite rightly, they would argue that, democratically, their man is the heir apparent. So Ultra-Left Bernie – the US’s own Jeremy Corbyn – would end in the ring against The Donald.
In that event would anyone care to place a bet against the world waking up one November morning, just a few weeks from now, to a President Donald Trump?
The Last Foundling 