Election 2016
Clinton versus Trump
The Campaign Proper Begins
by Professor John Kane
The first debate is over and Hillary won hands-down according to:
- her team and her supporters;
- most mainstream commentators; and
- ‘the Donald’ himself who immediately afterward said that “She did good” (though protesting he was sabotaged by a faulty microphone and a biased moderator).
Not, though, according to:
- Trump’s die-hard supporters; and
- various online polls including one by Time magazine of nearly two million people which had ‘the Trumpster’ ahead at 55 per cent (which Trump would later credit as proving he had in fact won).
So, a technical knockout perhaps but not an outright KO and consequently, according to some, a political draw.
Why then did it matter? It certainly mattered to the candidates. With a US audience estimated at around 85 million and with up to 20 per cent of voters still undecided, the potential for a decisive moment of triumph or disaster was acute. Imagine if Donald had had an extreme temperamental meltdown, or Hillary had had a recurrence of that pneumonia-induced fainting fit.
Neither happened. Trump, though increasingly wrong-footed by Hillary’s provocations, survived as a plausible candidate (no doubt benefiting from low expectations), while Hillary showed herself steely and imperturbable throughout (a model of the stamina Donald said she lacked).
The debate was not so much a game changer, therefore, as the beginning of the end-game following the protracted preliminaries of the primary season − which indeed required stamina from both candidates.
Australians complained of the inordinately long campaign called by Malcolm Turnbull in the recent election, a whole eight weeks, but the US presidential campaign has been in progress for at least eighteen months. Yet the real head-to-head campaign, after a period of long-distance sparring, sniping and posturing, began with the debate. From that perspective it was a much better start for Clinton than for Trump.
Clinton, after weeks of narrowing poll leads, walked away energised and with confidence boosted. Trump, feeling the sting of his perceived loss, doubled down (as usual) on losing reactive strategies, among them, trying to justify his old slight against a Latina beauty queen, further damaging his standing among female voters.
Moreover the debate left a video record of Trump that could be exploited either for ridicule — his unconscious sniffing — ( or the sign of a coke habit?) or critique — his frank admission of tax avoidance — “that’s business!”
In fact, Hillary’s real success in the debate may have been to divert the harsh spotlight from herself and onto Donald. Her team often complains that her so-called ‘flaws and failings’ are exaggerated in press coverage while Donald’s dubious history and outrageous lies get dismissed as run-of-the-mill Trumpery.
It will be interesting to see whether the blistering, blustering game plan Trump has followed thus far will pay dividends post-debate, for it is very likely to be continued and even intensified.
What Trump should have learned from the debate was that preparation and discipline pay off and that he must adjust accordingly. But discipline seems not to be in Trump’s nature. His team had in fact instituted a policy of ‘practice, practice, practice’ on responding to key phrases that Clinton uses when she’s uncomfortable, but one aide observed that “he did not seem to pay attention during the practice sessions”. And the lesson he seems to have taken away from the debate is not the need for greater discipline but that playing nice doesn’t work.
His debate demeanour, though hardly edifying, was by his standards a model of decorum and restraint, an attempt at being ‘presidential’. (He advised Hillary at one point that he could say something really nasty about her and her family, but just couldn’t bring himself to do it.) That strategy having failed, he has mused that it may be best to “hit her harder” next time. “I was respectful toward you”, he seems to be thinking, “and you were mean to me, so gloves off now”.
The playground nature of this might be funny if the stakes were not so apparently high for America and perhaps the world. It is very probable that the battle is going to get increasingly nasty and personal over the remaining weeks till November 8, with two more debates scheduled and the final outcome still in doubt.
It may be that, for all the extravagant theatre of this unusual season, the structural realities of American politics will assert themselves and the election will look, in retrospect, like just one more Republican-Democratic contest hinging on a few votes in marginal states.
Given Trump’s deficit with women, African-Americans, Hispanics and educated people, this should give Clinton the decided advantage, which most polls indeed show. But no one can be sure in these strange times that the normal laws will hold, and Trump seems to be showing well in key states like Ohio and Florida.
Clinton meanwhile does not arouse much enthusiasm even among many Democrats, certainly not among those who loved Bernie Sanders. ‘Stopping Trump’ may not be an adequate substitute for enthusiasm. The great danger for Clinton is that she will not get the vote out in sufficient numbers to capitalise on her advantage.
But who cares who gets elected, one might say, given the grid-locked state of American politics? Hillary, if she wins, will probably confront, like Obama, a divided government. If the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate remain in the hands of intransigent Republicans, they will block her every legislative proposal, making nonsense of the extravagant promises she made during the debate. And Trump, should he win, would hardly be in a better position. Congressional Democrats will certainly oppose him, and Republicans, many of whom have refused to endorse him, will hardly be receptive to his advances.
Maybe we will see a period of government by Congress such as the Founding Fathers originally envisaged for the American system. Or maybe not. The variable factors in play here are many, making everything uncertain.
The election itself may hinge on factors beyond the control of either candidate − perhaps another mass terrorist atrocity on US soil, or a damaging WikiLeak release against Hillary such as Julian Assange has darkly threatened. Or another economic crisis, perhaps even more severe than the last given the parlous state of the world economy. Trump during the debate accused the Federal Reserve Bank of playing politics and warned of a “big, fat ugly bubble” in the stock market. These comments didn’t get much attention and were predictably pooh-poohed by Wall Street, but Trump is not necessarily wrong. After years in which major governments have reduced interest rates to zero (and below) while pumping money into a stubbornly stagnant economy, stocks have risen dangerously (money has to go somewhere) and the bond market has become simply weird. A renewed crisis is far from impossible.
And in severe crises, whose timing is inherently unpredictable, the whip hand tends to pass swiftly and decidedly to the executive power. Recall how the George W. Bush administration could, after the events of 9/11, lead the nation into two middle-eastern wars, repudiate the Geneva Convention, imprison people indefinitely without trial and condone torture by Americans, all in the name of security. A comparable crisis during the next administration may similarly empower a determined executive whatever the composition of Congress, so who sits in the Oval Office may matter very much indeed − to all of us.
We will therefore continue to watch the progress of the final campaign with intense interest and somewhat bated breath. To paraphrase Bette Davis’s famous admonition in All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROFESSOR JOHN KANE
John Kane attained his PhD at the London School of Economics and is now Professor in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University.
John teaches in political theory, political leadership and US foreign policy and is a researcher in Griffith’s Centre for Governance and Public Policy.
He has published widely, been awarded numerous research grants, and four times been Visiting Professor to Yale University. He is the author of The Politics of Moral Capital (Cambridge UP) and Between Virtue and Power: The Persistent Moral Dilemma of US Foreign Policy (Yale UP). He is also co-author (with H. Patapan) of The Democratic Leader: How Democracy Defines, Empowers and Limits its Leaders (Oxford UP).
