A reader once asked me how I’d vote on 8 November if I could, to which I replied: “Trump, weeping all the way to the booth.”
Having followed US elections for almost half a century, I can safely say that I’ve never seen a contest featuring two such awful candidates. Both of them are corrupt in every possible way, of which fiscal corruption is the least important.
I distinguish between peripheral and fundamental corruption. The former is a politician using his position to help himself to a bung or a bang; the latter, a politician corrupting the very principles of government.
For example, Edmund Burke’s finances probably wouldn’t stand up to today’s exacting standards. And yet this great political thinker courageously battled in Parliament against every threat to the realm. His fundamental integrity was beyond doubt, and that’s what really matters in a statesman.
This is more than one can say for Trump, who won by using the whole repertoire of vulgar populism. His business experience has taught him how to trick rich people into giving him money. Now Trump has used similar techniques to trick poor people into giving him votes.
To that end he has done an about-face on 17 major issues, which doesn’t bode well for the next four years. His elasticity on every serious matter of intellect and morality makes it impossible to predict what he’ll do as president.
Conservative noises feature prominently in Trump’s brand of populism. Indeed, it’s hard to find fault with most of his pledges on domestic policy: cutting taxes, reducing social spending, undoing Obamacare, tightening immigration controls.
Some of his ideas on foreign policy aren’t bad either, such as repudiating Obama’s nuclear treaty with Iran. His motivation for it, however, is open to doubt.
Reintroducing sanctions on Iran would reduce the supply of oil and therefore increase its price. This would benefit every oil producer, but most of all Putin’s Russia, bringing us to potentially the most dangerous aspect of Trump’s presidency: his apparently reciprocated affection for the Russian dictator.
This may not be entirely disinterested. Trump’s son Don once admitted that, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets… We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
I’m not convinced that Trump is capable of looking beyond his business interests, or of considering foreign policy in any other than mercantile terms. Hence, for example, his manifest contempt for collective security underpinned by NATO: America’s partners, he believes, aren’t pulling their budgetary weight.
That’s true, but if Trump regards this as sufficient reason for America not to come to the aid of a NATO member attacked by Putin’s Russia, we’re in for a rough ride. Any sensible president would reconfirm America’s commitment to the NATO Charter first, and only then put pressure on other members to contribute their fair share.
I don’t know whether or not Trump’s presidency will benefit Putin. It is, however, certain that Putin thinks so.
His mouthpieces, both on TV and in the Duma, were screaming for weeks that the choice between Trump and Clinton was one between peace and nuclear war. Putin’s Goebbels Dmitri Kisiliov has reissued in this context his favourite threat to turn America into radioactive dust, which was reiterated even more stridently by the leader of Russian Lib/Dems Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Another mouthpiece, Sergei Sudakov, predicts that Trump will see his principal task in restoring trust between America and Russia. Therefore “he’ll move away step by step from the politics of globalism and American hegemonism.”
Dmitri Mikheyev of the Hudson Institute confirms my suspicion that the Russians are banking on Trump’s predominantly mercantile worldview. America, he writes, “can’t fight wars against all and all over the world… That’s expensive, so Trump will strike a deal with Russia – that’s cheaper.”
Dr Deliagin, of the Institute for Globalisation Problems, is ecstatic: “Trump’s victory is one of reason, hard work and dignity over corporate madness and a real danger of a world war. America has decided to go to work rather than destroy mankind…” which contextually was Hillary’s goal.
Everything points at Putin’s preference for Trump, and Vlad clearly did all he could to help his friend Donald: having Assange drip-feed compromising revelations of Hilary’s numerous misdeeds, using the bombing campaign in Syria to punctuate Trump’s messages at critical points in the campaign, computer hacking.
In fact, Michael McFaul, Hillary’s man and former US ambassador to Russia, tweeted a sardonic sour-grapes message to that effect: “Putin intervened in our elections and succeeded. Molodets [Well done].”
Interesting times lie ahead. It’s conceivable that, by appealing to Trump’s business sense, the Russians will try to talk him into striking a global version of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, dividing the world into mutually respected spheres of influence.
If that’s the case, the outcome of such a ‘deal’ (a word understandably over-represented in Trump’s vocabulary) may well be the same as that of the original pact – with even more cataclysmic consequences.
All we can do at the moment is pray, rejoice in Hillary’s demise – and take solace in the amount of spittle sputtered by the neocons at the very mention of Trump’s name. Their enemy has a decent shot at becoming my friend, but Trump has a long way to go.
What was all that guff about the suicide of a superpower? Looks like the USA’s got another century of dominance in her.