President Trump, the America First Party, and a ‘great nation’ built on Plessy: an alternative history
by Barry Dunham (part 1)
The election of 2016 is likely to be seen as one of the most important in the history of the USA.
Following the decision by President Trump earlier this year to stand down after three terms in office, the question of her successor is largely about where the country now wishes to go — and perhaps how it can pull the 68 states together.
Does it want more of the same, or is there an alternative America around the corner?
Although very largely supported by high ratings across the polls for more than a decade, the retirement of President Linda Trump, America’s longest serving president, marks an important point in America’s history. Is it now time to really grasp the nettle of equality and civil rights for all, in a country that has long been divided and separated?
Now is not the time for eulogies on Trump’s achievements during her years in power. Instead, what is needed is a much longer term reflection on her place in history, and how that legacy now needs to be shaped by the person with the daunting prospect of filling her shoes next January.
Indeed, when she first took office back in 2005, President Linda Trump seemed an unlikely leader for the nation that sees itself as the greatest on earth. Elected as only the second female US president, she came into the role with little experience of public service.
As a woman who made her fortune through business — creating and running the Trump America civil aviation and property business with her husband Freddy — she was probably equally well known as the author of the bestselling book ‘The Science of the Deal’. Her long running stint on the popular TV show ‘Ethical American Business’ was in retrospect a strategic maneuver to further raise her public profile, as her eye had clearly been on the prize of the presidency for a number of years.
Her election was at first a shot in the dark for the America people. As a woman coming into the office she faced considerable skepticism (and in some cases hostility), although as a politician she showed from the start that she was a candidate of reconciliation and forging unity where possible.
Once in power, her leadership took on a very natural quality, and for most of us it is hardly believable that she has now been president for twelve years. In some respects it is difficult to remember how anyone else has filled the role of president, whilst now she leaves office with a feeling that there is still more she could give.
But she has made up her mind to go, and even though she would most likely win again by a landslide if she stood this year, she has made it clear that three terms are well and truly enough for her, for her family, and for the nation. She is also recommending to Congress that a constitutional amendment is made to limit any further presidency to three terms.
And so this leaves us with two questions — will it be another Trump who comes in to continue her legacy, and in what direction will America now go under a new president?
There are in fact two possibilities from her own family: her daughter Mary, the ‘continuity candidate’, who is going into the primaries already with a virtual coronation from the party. The big question, though, is whether the rank and file of the America First Party will be happy to rubber stamp this nomination for a dynastic succession.
The surprise entry from the Trump family is Donald, the younger brother of Linda’s husband. This junior Trump (although now in his 70s) is considered very much an outsider, bringing with him a strong reputation as a playboy and failed casino developer. Until now he has been very much in the shadow of President Trump.
Many are saying that the younger (DJ) Trump is considered too brash and arrogant (misogynist is a term often used about him) for a run at the top office, and to date there is little sign of him connecting with voters. He does not appear to be attached to any clear policy platform yet, and instead relies on a sense of his entitlement and privilege that is largely derived from the success and wealth of his sister-in-law.
It is still not clear which candidate will succeed in the Republican Democrat Party primaries. It is a long time now since the days of President Gore in 2004. The big question the RDs are likely to bring back to the debate is the issue of civil rights, which has long been on the back burner for America First presidents.
To understand President Trump’s place in American history we have to go back as far as the turbulent years of the mid-twentieth century, that set in place the decades of the Cold War with Europe that we are just emerging from.
Peace for America
By creating an uneasy peace with Japan and Germany in the 1940s, the US managed to avoid the repetition of the horrors of the Great War in Europe in the 1910s. But in doing so, we effectively carved up the world into three competing blocs in the mid century that have dominated global politics and economics ever since.
So much seems to have pivoted around the events of late 1941, when intense rumors circulated that Japan were intending to go to war with America. As recent research has shown, this involved planning for a possible pre-emptive terrorist strike against US military targets in the Pacific.
Thankfully such an unimaginable attack never happened.
It is still not clear whether Japan’s sabre rattling was just an intentional distraction from their plans to ‘liberate’ Asia from European control.
They did not need a fight with America when their aim was instead the overwhelming invasion of British Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and eventually the jewel in the crown of India in early 1943. Despite some protests from the by-then lame duck Roosevelt (soon before his death), the continent of Australia finally came under Japanese rule in early 1944, and an agreement was reached for America to keep its air bases in an otherwise neutralised Philippine Islands.
In the face of such Japanese successes, America soon saw the advantages of establishing a trade agreement with a unified single market across Asia, that brought together around one billion people.
Indeed, the US and Japan have been uneasy (and often aggressively competitive) trading partners ever since. Some of the presidential hopefuls are running on a promise of a new trading agreement with Japan and Asia — particularly with Japan’s development of Chinese industries along the Pacific Coast and the interior since the 1990s.
Out of the turmoil of these years, the America First Party (initially the AF Committee) emerged as a dominant force in American politics.
Despite his many achievements in office, Roosevelt was no longer able to stem the tides of history in his final years. The ascendancy of Japan and Germany were held against his pro-internationalist policies. In his final years his policies became more and more sidelined by the rise of America First, led by Charles Lindbergh.
When Roosevelt died just a few months before the end of his third term, his brief successor President Henry Wallace proved to be America’s second shortest serving president — holding office for only 192 days. He was literally swept aside in the landslide win by Lindbergh and the phenomenon that was the America First movement.
At the heart of this was finding a way to avoid war and to safeguard America’s interests at home — literally keeping America great.
The dominating international issue of the time proved how to handle the collapse of Europe to the new German power, whilst still keeping America at peace. It was clear that the nation felt that the US did not have the desire or stomach for becoming embroiled in yet another brutal European imperial war. It was the collapse of the British Churchill government in 1944, and the subsequent peace and alliance they made with the new continental order under the German Reich, that established the uneasy peace that has kept Europe together for so long.
Hitler was a brutal and barbaric dictator, and we know his regime was responsible for horrendous pogroms and massacres. New scholarship that has emerged in the past two decades has taught us much of which the then Nazi government kept hidden for so long about their horrific death camps.
But once both America and Germany had developed the capability for atomic warfare, then it would have been mutually assured destruction to try to do anything other than live in the Cold War peace with that devil.
The final transition of the Reich from Nazism to multiparty democracy in November 1993 has now given us more than twenty years to rebuild our close ties — and business interests — with much of continental Europe. The scale and the terms of a new trade deal with the European Federation and its still emerging member states, such as England, is going to be a vital challenge for whoever comes after President Trump in 2017.
The ascendance of America First
The emergence of the America First Party in the mid-twentieth century can only be described as phenomenal. Within just a few years, substantial sections of both the Republicans and Democrats had transferred their allegiance to AF. Eventually the two old parties had no other choice than to merge in 1962, rather than being perpetually locking each other out of power within the two party system.
From 1944 to 1964, the America First Party dominated national politics. President Lindbergh held office for 3 terms, and his successor President Robert Byrd then achieved a further two terms of power.
A whole generation of Americans grew up knowing nothing except an America First president — such was the desire to maintain the status quo during those early Cold War days when there was continual fear of interference from Japanese Asia and German Europe, not to mention the possibility of a war with either or both of these hemispherical powers.
The pillars of this international policy lay within the combined force of the principle of Manifest Destiny and the practicalities of the Monroe Doctrine.
Without what America First saw as the encumbrance of the need to interfere in European disagreements, the US government focused primarily on the development of American interests within an integrated America. In particular, this saw the continuation of US expansion, both to the north and to the south, particularly with the collapse of British influence in the American continent.
That is, Lindbergh and Byrd maintained and developed the American First policy of Manifest Destiny as a means of spreading American Anglo-Saxon civilization benignly through the continent, wherever it was expedient to do so.
To be continued…
Malory Nye is an academic and writer who teaches at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He can be found on Twitter (@malorynye) and on his website, malorynye.com.
He produces two podcasts: Religion Bites and History’s Ink.
Malory Nye is also the author of the books Religion the Basics (2008) and There Shall be an Independent Scotland (2015).
