Should Donald Trump’s sweeping electoral victory concern European moderates? Yes, but, unfortunately, much of the commentary is alarmed by the wrong things.
It’s misplaced to think of Trump as on the verge of appointing himself dictator. The Democrats are already past it. They’re boasting of how they will give a lesson in handing over power peacefully. To Hitler? Strangely, no one is accusing Joe Biden, who met Trump yesterday, of being Chamberlain.
We should not project European politics onto the US. Here, we are vulnerable to populists capturing the state and changing the rules of liberal democracy.
In a parliamentary system, with a super-majority it is possible to change the constitution. A ruthless government can end the independence of the national broadcasting system, sack journalists and exert enormous pressure on state universities.
In the US, that is practically impossible. There is no state TV. The universities do not fall under federal control. The constitution can be changed, in principle, but it’s impossible in practice; super-majorities, spread across the 50 states, are needed.
The Hitlerologists suggest Trump shall amass power because a recent US Supreme Court decision declared he is immune from prosecution. That’s not what happened. The Supreme Court merely codified convention, giving Trump no less, but also no more, freedom than his predecessors.
If Trump strangles a porn star in the Oval Office, he’ll still be prosecuted. But should he approve the torture of foreign combatants (as George W. Bush did), or the killing of a US citizen without due process (as Barack Obama did), he cannot face prosecution.
Bush and Obama each offered a legal fig leaf but that’s not why they got away with it. It’s long-accepted doctrine, in the US, that the commander-in-chief should not have to worry about having a decision queried with hindsight. The policy can be challenged but the chief shall not be prosecuted.
Should this doctrine disturb political moderates? Of course. It undermines the rule of international law. But it’s not a licence granted only to Trump. It says something about the US, not about the 45th and 47th president. The centralisation of power in the presidency has been underway long before Trump. The question is whether he will speed it up.
It is early days but, as I write, he has limited prospects of a free hand. True, his party shall control both the House and Senate.
Yet, the leading (Republican) candidate to become the Senate majority leader is a known anti-Trumper. The Speaker of the House speaks in mollifying tones about making sure Trump’s agenda is pursued, while being a Ukraine war hawk and evasive about anti-immigration legislation.
Anyone concerned about the impact of big money on politics is right to be anxious about the 50 billionaires who supported Trump. One is the richest man in the world and another gave $100 million to make sure Israel gets what it wants.
But Kamala Harris had 80 billionaires supporting her and formed part of an administration that made no serious attempt to stop the ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
The sooner Trump’s opponents, on both sides of the Atlantic, begin to listen, the faster they will be able to offer a credible alternative- Ranier Fsadni
On China, she was part of an administration that retained Trump’s first-term tariffs. We should expect any US administration to consider China a threat to its hegemony and seek to undermine it.
On Russia, it was Trump who first voiced public hostility to the Nord Stream pipeline feeding Russian gas to Germany. But it was Biden’s administration that blew it up.
On Ukraine, it remains to be seen how much latitude Trump has but, like any president, he will know that accepting a humiliating deal would destroy his authority and legacy.
On foreign policy, therefore, we are likely to see more continuity than discontinuity.
On US domestic issues, state capture – at least the European way – faces considerable obstacles.
If we should be concerned, it’s not about dramatic changes but about creeping normalisation of cruel rhetoric and populism.
Trump has already changed the rhetoric of politics. Everyone, even Obama, is today more vulgar than they were just nine years ago. It’s not just about good form. The heightened violence of the rhetoric, when coming from politicians and the mainstream media, always threatens to put people in harm’s way. Democracy does not thrive in high political temperatures.
Next, Trump is an opportunistic, transactional politician but J.D. Vance, his vice president, looks like an ideologue. Intelligent, thoughtful, smooth-talking, even moving (when talking about his dire upbringing or conversion to Catholicism), Vance is a populist who finds his kindred spirits in Viktor Orbán and other European nationalists.
Let’s see if Vance uses his position to support populist nationalists in Europe. If he does, however, he may well be helped by his opponents.
Trump voters have been called fascists racists, and bigots. Yet, in this election, he won over people who voted against him twice, in 2016 and 2020, just as he earned the vote of people who voted for Obama twice. The so-called wannabe Hitler and racist won more Jewish, Afro-American and Hispanic votes than any other Republican.
Maybe they can’t tell a Nazi and a racist when they see one. Or maybe they are seething at the disdain of elites who arrogantly slur them, without engaging in that basic act of democracy: listening.
The sooner Trump’s opponents, on both sides of the Atlantic, begin to listen, the faster they will be able to offer a credible alternative.