The 45th President of the United States is a lying and dishonest narcissist who has abused the office of the presidency in the service of his vanity. His term of office is perhaps the darkest moment in American history.
In just over two months’ time, on November 3, Donald Trump is standing for re-election. A second term as president will have severe implications for the European Union, the Western Alliance and the global struggle to avert climate change. Many wish to see him ousted.
The Democratic candidate, 78-year-old former vice-president Joe Biden, has enjoyed a lead for some weeks over Donald Trump in a succession of opinion polls in key swing states. With about 70 days to go, Trump trails Biden – who has made a striking selection in Kamala Harris, a woman of Caribbean and Indian heritage, as his vice-president – by a relatively wide margin.
But it would be wrong to write off Donald Trump’s chances of winning a second term in office. His core supporters, who unexpectedly catapulted him into the White House four years ago against the favourite, Hilary Clinton, remain fiercely loyal. Most importantly, Donald Trump is nothing if not an effective campaigner.
We should not underestimate his re-election chances. The next 10 weeks of campaigning could go either way.
The president’s botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic, growing public disapproval of his response to the crisis and the abject state of the American economy (with 30 million unemployed, double the number in the Great Depression) have hit his popularity.
But the US electoral system could still come to his rescue. Trump prompted a furore recently when he suggested in a Fox News interview that he might not accept the result of the November election if it went the wrong way. Unless something changes between now and November 3, defying the official result may be the only way he will get to stay in the White House.
There is an inbuilt electoral college advantage in the US constitution. Trump could lose the popular vote by as much as three or four percentage points and still win the election since almost all states allocate their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. In the biggest states, such as California and New York, Democrats are likely to pile up massive popular majorities, while Trump could win narrowly in Florida and Texas and take their electoral college votes.
Biden’s age also counts against him. Although Trump is only four years younger than Biden, questions about the Democrat’s physical and mental fitness for office are clearly going to be an election issue. That makes Kamala Harris’ presence as his running mate of primary importance. To win the Democrats need to reassure swing suburban voters that if they elect Biden they have nothing to fear from Harris.
His xenophobia, sexism, crudeness, narcissism, childish petulance, paranoia, impulsiveness and contempt for decent values are what have defined his presidential term- Martin Scicluna
Trump can also take heart from President Harry Truman’s miraculous revival in 1948. Three months from election day, the opinion polls showed the incumbent Democrat president 12 points behind his challenger, the Republican Thomas Dewey. A second term for Truman seemed impossible.
But the path of the 1948 election changed sharply in the last month without pollsters spotting the trend. Unknown to his rival – or the opinion polls – Truman had closed the gap to about five percentage points by election day. His true momentum had been overlooked, helped in the closing stages by an improvement in the economy.
The parallels between 1948 and 2020 are uncanny. Like Trump today, every pollster had counted out Truman. Indeed, many voters were so sure Truman’s opponent was going to win, they didn’t show up to vote (also a factor in Hillary Clinton’s defeat against Trump in 2016 after favourable polling).
Like Trump, Truman complained that the polling was skewed by a media controlled by forces opposing him. And there was fear, as now, that Russia was going to interfere in the election.
The key lesson from the 1948 presidential election is relevant today. Everything in 1948 changed in the final stages, and in the last couple of weeks it changed significantly.
Those foreign leaders in Europe, Britain, Japan, Australia and South-East Asia who have been counting on Trump being a one-term president may need to think again.
Four years ago, the assurances of many American political experts that Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination would fizzle out when “real voting in real primaries” began seemed credible. In 2020, we should not underplay Trump’s chances again.
It remains the general view among western democracies that Trump has been a catastrophe as president. His xenophobia, sexism, crudeness, narcissism, childish petulance, paranoia, impulsiveness and contempt for decent values are what have defined his presidential term.
American conduct since World War II has been based on President Truman’s 1947 anti-isolationist doctrine, based on the noble idea that the US must lead the democracies under the banner of liberty.
Trump’s leadership of the West has been chaotic. America has bounced around between isolation and aggressive projection of power. He has undermined western institutions on security and free trade. Moreover, he has withdrawn the US from combatting the greatest known threat to the future of mankind: climate change.
We must hope that Trump loses the election in November by a landslide. And that the renowned checks and balances of the US Constitution will force him to leave the White House on January 20, 2021, leading to the inauguration of a new president.
But we cannot count on it. World leaders should prepare for the fearsome possibility of President Trump being in office until January 2025.