Why Trump Happened and the New Political axis in Western Politics
A lot of people outside the US wonder why Trump happened and why he is the GOP nominee. Trump rise is far from being an uniquely American phenomenon —as most South American and European countries had some kind of populist leader-based movement take power before sometime in their history.
Why Trump is popular is mainly because political leaders as seen as more and more as sort of quasi-Gods among a part of the population. Why the United States were a strong society for many, many decades was because of this reluctance of seeing politicians as living Gods.
It’s difficult to pinpoint Barack Obama ideologically in the sense where it’s a politician who says one thing and do another in many regards. He promised the most transparent administration ever when his administration was one of the least transparent in history. On healthcare, his system is not a state based single-payer system like many outside the US may think, but a system where most people pay higher insurance rates for less coverage.
On foreign affairs, his policies were quite contradictory. He uses drones to kill people in countries which the US is not even at war against like Somalia. He opposes the Keystone pipeline but he supports drilling in the Arctic for oil. He talked a lot about the debt ceiling when he was in opposition — but he eschewed this subject when in power.
The Democratic Party is a big tent party just like the Republican Party — but the party have a problem. It’s too many things to too many people. It’s basically a mainly-based urban big machine which is less clear-eyed than many European social-democratic parties on many issues. Because of how the US political system is conceived, it’s very easy to pass the buck on many issues and push them to a date later and later. Take defense spending. It’s still high in the US and nobody wants to really make it leaner, better and more efficient while protecting the US at the same time.
My opinion of Trump? He have really bad policies (and Hillary does too on many fronts) and most of his landmark policies are based on half-truths which Trump put over the top. Trump have this tendency to put everything over the top — he indeed commission great condos, hotels and towers — but in politics this is sometimes not the best way to go even if it’s good to get clicks or headlines.
It’s indeed true that the fact that the US spend a lot for NATO funding is problematic and not sustainable. Many mainstream Democrats and Republicans are quite uneasy with this situation. Trump have put the issue over the top by saying that he would not protect countries which are not contributing their fair part — but the issue still remains with or without Trump. Many countries in NATO are seen as freeloaders.
Just like the immigration issue is a joke in the US. The whole US-Mexico wall is not a big deal (and the Obama administration is really tough on illegal immigration while the Border Patrol is already doing the job of this wall) — the wall is already there all over urban parts of the US-Mexico border. But the immigration question in the US is basically a sad joke. We talk a lot about immigration from Mexico and Central America by land but never hear about how that the US could have a better legal immigration system.
On trade, Trump have the same talking points as Bernie Sanders which borders on conspiracy theory with a zero-sum approach. This whole zero-sum approach (you must have a winner who have everything and a loser which gets nothing at the end) is becoming more and more common in US politics. Managed trade accords are indeed not perfect because they are least worse option on the table — but it’s indeed the least worse of solutions to have a win-win situation for everyone. A great number of Democrats and people close to trade unions are very protectionist and to end this protectionist mindset, you need to explain to people that trade is good for everyone. If not, it will probably get worse in the coming years.
I do understand quite well why a number of Americans are attracted to Trump — in part because people who support Trump know that his policies will means a better America. Every challenger wants to portray a dark country which becomes better because of their politics. Trump have some gravitas because a number of Americans see him as someone who is ‘‘winning’’ and who will make their family and their own community win.
You indeed sometimes need a ‘‘bastard’’ in politics to make things work. But the problem with Trump is that his policies have been tried elsewhere in the world and they did not made people better. It’s also true of some of Clinton’s policies — but unlike Trump, people know what to expect from Clinton as the devil they know even if it will be probably a very corrupt and very hawkish administration based on what Clinton herself have done in the past.
In conclusion, western politics are nowadays not really divided on a ‘‘left-right’’ or ‘‘open-closed’’ axis as some may think but rather on an axis if you believe that politics, society and life is a zero-sum game or not. If you believe that someone is poor because another person is rich — or if you believe that a country is getting worse economically because another one is getting better, you may be on the zero-sum side. This kind of approach gets people people of many different political or societal horizons together and it’s becoming the new axis in western politics.
