Michael Clifford: Let’s hope America can repair its broken country
President Donald Trump pumps his fist after speaking at a campaign rally at Phoenix Goodyear Airport earlier this week. Picture: AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Is the curtain coming down on the pantomime? Will Kim have anybody to play footsie with after next Tuesday?
The US presidential election is nearly upon us.
On one level this is showbiz, baby. Just to illustrate the point, a lovely release popped up on my email during the week.
It was offering the chance to interview a US-based doctor, Eugene Lipov, who specialises in stress and pain management.
This was designed to alert the populace to “election stress disorder”.
“Uncertainty around the 2020 election is linked to a number of social aspects, including the current Coronavirus pandemic, deeply affecting our emotional levels, causing stress, anger and anxiety,” the statement read.
It went on to reveal that research, carried out at San Francisco State University, found that 25% of those surveyed reported that the 2016 election was so traumatic it has caused them to experience PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) symptoms.”
They think that was bad? Wait until we get to next Tuesday.
This is going to be a major global event, the most important election in a generation.
The USA is no longer the global power that it once was. We have passed from the American century into what is expected to be the Chinese century.
But the USA is still the flagbearer for the free world, that segment of the globe in which, despite many problems and stresses, everybody nominally gets to have a say in governance.
On Tuesday, the medium-term future of the free world may well be mapped out.
For instance, should Donald Trump retain office it is likely that America will withdraw further from its role in global affairs.
It is also likely that the various tenets of democracy within the country will come under attack as Trump attempts to gather further power into himself.
His obvious admiration for strongman thugs like Kim Jong-un, Putin and Erdogan suggest that he aspires to wield the kind of all-encompassing power they enjoy.
His capacity to arrest the economic decline of America against its main competitor in Asia is highly suspect.
In such a milieu, there is every likelihood that he may attempt to reassert American power through some form of military escapade.
Whatever he does, his tenure in office has made plain one thing – it will be done exclusively for the betterment of Mr Trump himself.
He has not felt the burden of making decisions that impact on millions of people and is unlikely to change in that respect at this point of his life.
From the perspective of his capacity to shape events, society and the direction of America, Mr Trump’s personal achievement has been historic.
As one individual, without any organised political base, experience in public life, or a politician’s instinctive capacity to empathise, he has thrived over the last four years.
The Republican party has abased itself before his power.
This is a party that has had a huge role in shaping America, has displayed principles associated with personal freedom and responsibility.
This is the party of Abraham Lincoln, Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan. Whether one agrees with Republican party politics is not the point. What matters is that it had politics.
Now it merely exists as banded followers of Donald Trump.
They live in fear of his power over their prospective voters.
They live in fear of the narcissism that prompts him to lash out at anybody he perceives as slighting him. They have surrendered their political self-respect in the name of survival.
The great majority of Evangelical voters have abased themselves before him.
They know he has the personal morality of a recidivist crook and is a compulsive liar.
They know he has no religion. Even in terms of sexual morality, of which they apparently obsess, they know he has none.
They cheer him on when he uses their holy book as an electoral prop. And all because he is prepared to back them in limiting a woman’s choice to have an abortion.
To subjugate such powerful forces in a country like America is a phenomenal achievement in terms of demagoguery.
Fitting then perhaps that the only thing that may unseat him is the modern version of a Biblical plague. Before the virus, he was set fair for re-election. But its advance has exposed his strengths as weaknesses.
Donald Trump’s ability to focus on a narcissistic tunnel meant he was incapable of viewing the virus other than how it would affect his prospects on re-election.
The virus is impervious to his spin, charm and bullying. Large tracts of America, willing to believe, or at least put up with, his brand of horse manure heretofore, now only see the mounting death toll and illness. It took, it would appear, a global pandemic to find him out.
Waiting in the wings to take his mantle is Joe Biden. He does not illicit passion, negative or positive. He is no Obama, no Clinton, no Regan.
He is past his best and at a stage of life where he would probably be better off slowing down than ramping up to the intensity required of office.
But just as Trump was lucky in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was unpopular with swathes of the electorate, so too is Joe this year.
His unique selling point in electoral terms is that he is not Donald Trump. And right now decency in a country that is tearing itself apart is attribute enough to be going on with.
But it’s not over yet. The polls, favourable to Biden, are tightening. Trump has indicated that he will cling to office. So unless Biden wins comfortably the outcome may well be disputed and go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Right now, it looks as if this is Biden’s to lose. But read the following, which was the final paragraph on a column on this page nearly exactly four years ago.
“When Clinton does win, as she must surely do now, she would be well-advised to stop and take stock of where the US — and, by extension, much of the western world — is now at. If she doesn’t recognise that the status quo is kaput, then she will merely be kicking one big can down the road.
"But, as a long-standing political manager, schooled in the short-term, that is most likely what she will do.”
So what do I know?
Strap yourself in. Tuesday will be a long night that may run for some time. Let’s just hope America gets a chance to have a make some fist of repairing its broken country.
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