HUMPTY TRUMPTY’S GREAT FALL

The Tragic Rise & Fall of a US Head of State

06.12.2020

By Laurence I. Sithole, Harare

If you are like me then you have followed the events surrounding the US election with almost rabid fascination.

Congratulations to the President Elect Mr. Joseph R. Biden and Vice President Elect Senator Kamala Harris. The results of this election have brought out a lot of firsts.

It is the first time in 28 years that a president only has a single term in office. It’s the first time in 96 years that a presidential candidate having won the vote in major states namely Florida and Texas went on to fail to win the White House. It’s the first time that the country now has a woman and a woman of color as vice president! It is also the first time in 28 years that a democrat has won the state of Georgia a traditionally Republican state. It’s the first time in the history of the United States that a candidate has refused to concede defeat in an election and go on to question and cast doubt on the credibility of the electoral process. It is the also the first time a presidential candidate has garnered the most votes in the history of that country. We have all been treated to a first-class drama and soap opera courtesy of Mr. Donald John Trump.

The world has never seen a head of state like Donald Trump. He is the very personification of anti-establishment. A man who busts every myth and defies any idea of what the ideal conduct of what a president should be. He ran against Hillary Rodham Clinton a seasoned politician in the race for president in 2016 and won much to the surprise of the whole world. He was behind in terms of the popular vote and yet he won the race. His campaign was not as well funded as the Clinton campaign and his campaign did not nearly enjoy as much exposure in the mainstream media as the Clinton campaign received. Donald J. Trump triumphed despite these apparent obstacles. He took the White House in a landslide victory by winning 306 of the electoral college votes.

For all intents and purposes, he was not supposed to win any election especially against a major contender like Clinton especially considering the many scandals and controversies that came to the fore. How he won the 2016 election is totally epic and will remain the stuff of legend. It was not long however, before the wheels started coming off as soon as he had assumed the presidency. It is both a gift and a curse that Donald Trump is not presidential material. During the campaign trail it served him in good stead and paid him rich dividends in that he was able to tap into the constituency that was tired of the establishment and wanted change but once in the oval office it became a liability. The story broke that there was Russian interference in the election that he had won. He instigated a trade war with China, withdrew from several international agreements and treaties (the Iran nuclear deal and Paris deal to name a few). Under the Trump presidency the United States became increasingly isolationist in a highly globalized world. There was also of course the matter of his impeachment…

What exactly brought him down?

Firstly, it was not one thing. It was several things acting in concert that caused Trump’s star to wane if he ever had one.

Foreign policy

I do not believe in all honesty that there was no other time in history where US-international relations where at an all-time low than during the Trump administration. In terms of what is totally bizarre Donald Trump was the first US president to meet with a North Korean head of state in June 2018. US-North Korean relations have been hostile for decades and with good reason. The Kim dynasty that has ruled North Korea has to be among the most reviled of characters for their crimes and poor human rights record. Despite all this Trump met with Kim Jong Un and the pretext given for this was the signing of a memorandum of understanding in which North Korea undertook to work towards denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. This act had the unfortunate consequence of elevating the international status of the North Korean leader and diminishing that of the US leader on the world stage. North Korea has for the longest of periods been a nation that has been isolated and it remains to be seen whether Trump’s overtures to the North Korean despot will yield the intended results. It is highly unlikely though. We must all get used to a permanently nuclear North Korea.

In November 2019 the US president officially pulled out the Paris Agreement on climate change. “The deal unites all the world's nations in a single agreement on tackling climate change for the first time in history. Coming to a consensus among nearly 200 countries on the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions is regarded by many observers as an achievement and has been hailed as historic.” It was also not the only well-meaning and well-intentioned international agreement that Trump pulled out of: the list is exhaustive and includes withdrawing funding from the World Health Organization at the worst possible time during the COVID virus.

Donald Trump’s mantra “Make America Great Again” sounds very reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson’s stance in the early years of the last century which was increasingly and markedly isolationist. At that time taking an isolationist stance may have been arguably appropriate given all that had taken place. There had been a world war which the US had participated in and public sentiment was not in favor of the US taking the lead in world issues. In modern times which we live in, globalization and interdependence makes it very inappropriate and ill-advised to even consider taking an isolationist and hostile stance against global allies even if such a stance is in the name of making your nation great again.

Mr. Trump has never minced his words whenever China is brought up as a topic of discussion. He has led efforts that have resulted in a trade war that truthfully is a stalemate and the world is still smarting from the collateral damage it has caused. It is indeed a stalemate in that no clear victor has emerged and the state of the world now shows the result of the trade war is no more than a Pyrrhic victory at best. The trade war was totally unnecessary. A globalized and interdependent world makes war with an emerging economic power doubly stupid. China is not the poverty-stricken economic backwater that it was 50 years ago. It is in fact a highly developed and advanced economic power. It would have dire consequences to engage in any kind of conflict with such a nation.

Allow me to make the case for China’s economic emergence. The boom in the commodity space and mining industry enjoyed by the entire world from 2000 to 2008 was driven primarily by the urbanization of China together with its seemingly insatiable demand for catalytic converters for motor vehicles. What this means is that China in those years single-handedly drove the economic growth of just about every commodity producing country in the world. To get a better understanding and perspective it is important to note that for many years during that same period no other nation held more United States Dollar denominated Treasury Bills and Bonds than China. What that effectively means is that China is one of the biggest lenders to the United States Government. The economic growth that China has enjoyed over the last two decades has resulted in excess funds and capital which Beijing has deployed not only in US Government paper but also into various multinationals a good number of them are American companies.

Why would any US president think it a good idea to antagonize such an emerging country and not collaborate constructively?

China consumes massive amounts of commodities produced by many countries of the world. The proverbial statement: “If China sneezes the world will catch a cold” could not be more apt.

Another of Mr. Trump’s central thrusts was to bring back jobs that had been exported to China and other countries. China for a long time has had the lowest labor costs anywhere, with that said all major multinational corporations in the pursuit of profits have sought to monetize this comparative advantage that China offers by investing in that country en-masse. This development is a natural consequence of doing business on a global scale.

A good number of classical American companies have benefited from investment in Chinese operations namely Apple which produces and sources parts for its products in China as well as Nike which out-sources the production of its foot wear to a Chinese company. The list is endless however, the point essentially to note is that conflict with China is not a good idea given the unpleasant consequences that may arise from its retaliation.

At home

Donald Trump is polarizing.

He is a man who even to this day divides opinions.

There many who view him as a petulant insular villain whose view of the world was severely distorted by his privileged background. Other people who are less kind have called him deranged and a pathological liar for good reason of course because many fact checkers have found that he seems to enjoy a flexible relationship with the truth. Yet in other circles he enjoys an almost cult like hero status.

On the domestic front Mr. Trump has had some fantastic failures. At no point in time has the US been as divided as during the Trump administration. Ideally a president or head of state should be a unifier after all he is the leader of the entire country and not just sectors of the country. Trump however appears to thrive on dividing and ruling and he does it deliberately. There is no doubt that in 2016 this disposition paid him rich dividends because through it he managed to capitalize on the frustration and anger of the broader electorate with the establishment. For example, it was unheard of that an aspiring and subsequent sitting president would pledge to build a wall along the border of a neighboring country to keep immigrants out. At no other time in American history has immigration policy been openly hostile to foreigners as it has been in the Trump administration.

Now it needs no mention to state that the US is a country that was built literally by immigrants from other nations. The only people indigenous to the United States of America are in fact the red Indians. Those are the only people who can truthfully be termed the native Americans. Mr. Trump himself strictly speaking is not American at least not by descent. His roots have been traced to Germany and yet in an episode charged with extreme levels of hypocrisy badgered and bullied former President Obama into producing his birth certificate to prove that he was in fact born in the US and not Kenya.

At the time of this debacle with Obama it should have been clear to the American people that the incoming at that point and current president was and remains a person who is intolerant of foreigners and racist. We all saw last year the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement which protested police brutality towards predominantly black people that culminated in the murder of George Floyd. When asked about his thoughts regarding the movement he trivialized the matter. Classic Trump. To add insult to this injury, facts began to emerge that suggested and showed that Trump was a supporter of white supremacist and far right groups. The resounding consequence of this is has been simmering racial tensions in the country. The US needs healing and the job is no easy task for the incoming president.

Reaction to the COVID pandemic

This if nothing else, must be Donald John Trump’s Waterloo.

The corona virus from the time that it hit American shores has claimed over 200,000 lives. This is more than any other affected nation in the world. Practically speaking a leader who is worth his or her salt must be able to see and deal with any situation before it becomes a crisis. This was not the case with Trump, America and the COVID crisis. The president in stead of treating the crisis with the gravity it deserves was very casual and cavalier about it.

During the campaign trail he held mass rallies with no social distancing among his supporters who in most instances did not even wear face masks. The president himself tested positive for COVID on one occasion and had to be hospitalized. He never wore masks until he had to be admitted into hospital and when asked why he did not wear the life saving garment he retorted that it made him look weak. This is in stark contrast to Joe Biden who held fewer rallies with less people confined to their vehicles for the duration of the rally. He and the Democrats did not have any mass rallies because of the corona virus.

The incoming president to Mr. Trump’s disadvantage has demonstrated greater leadership regarding the crisis by moving swiftly to set up a special task force to deal with the pandemic when he takes office and advocating for mail in ballots during the campaign trail.

In conclusion

Donald Trump’s rap sheet is a long one, but he has some things to his credit that deserve mention. In terms of his foreign policy he secured some very critical wins. He has eradicated ISIS from the world and eliminated some very key figures within that movement including its leader Abu Bakar Al Bagdadi and Qassem Soleimani. He has formally acknowledged Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. At home he cut back on regulations and tax reforms that led to a lift in the economy on a broad level. In keeping with his knack for attracting controversy President Trump still refuses to concede the election and has made repeated claims that the election was fraudulent. All these claims have been thrown out of all the courts that have heard them. There will be a new man in the White House come January 2021. Have we seen the last of Donald J. Trump though? He has hinted very overtly his desire to run again in 2024 which is not unprecedented in American history. Grover Cleveland had two terms in office as president even though they were not consecutive.

We might just be in for another treat from the drama king president in another 4 years!