Thoughts on the 2016 Presidential Election

Many people have attempted in the past 24 hours to unpack various aspects of the 2016 Presidential Election. To me, the mystery is not the core Donald Trump voters who delivered Pennsylvania and Michigan to him. They have genuine grievances about how policies from both parties have failed to raise their standard of living. The work of addressing their grievances begins now, as does the work of holding Mr. Trump accountable to produce the bounty of high paying jobs he has promised them.

My main thoughts about the Trump voters are in line with others -- that they have legitimate concerns but, in my view, picked the wrong person to fix them. I had actually given a speech a couple of weeks ago in Australia about the global forces that had propelled Donald Trump, and that pose a real challenge for every liberal democracy. I'm reproducing the relevant parts and a link to the actual speech below. Neither party will win the core Trump voters back until they help them regain their footing in a rapidly changing economy and society. While it is fine to improve polling and other operations, the best way to win voters back will be to solve their problems. The first step is understanding the forces at work. Here is my best take on it. https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/media_library/7th-sir-james-plimsoll-lecture-jeffrey-bleich/ It's a long one, but hopefully worth it.

Remarks of Ambassador Jeff Bleich

Sir James Plimsoll Lecture

University of Tasmania

Hobart, Tasmania

October 24, 2016

As students of diplomacy know, you need to be partisan to become the U.S. Ambassador to Australia. And you need to be non-partisan to stay the U.S. Ambassador to Australia. 

So I am not used to discussing partisan political elections in Australia. Instead, when asked about our elections, I did what diplomats have long done. I thought very carefully, before saying . . . . nothing. 

So it is perhaps confirmation that I am no longer U.S. Ambassador to Australia and folks here would like to keep it that way, that I have been asked to speak about the 2016 U.S. Election here tonight. And do it two weeks before it will be decided.

While I will answer questions about the candidates for President and the state of the election in Q&A afterward, I'd like to offer some thoughts about the election that will likely endure past November 8.

So tonight, I would like to talk about a defining feature of this election and the domestic and global forces that have produced it. Some of them are unique to the U.S., but many are manifest in every Western Democracy. 

The defining feature of this election has been a populist uprising against every candidate for President -- but one -- who has any strong party affiliation and traditional qualifications for President. On the Democrat side, a popular Governor, Martin O'Malley did not receive a single delegate in the Democrat Primary. A former Secretary of the Navy and popular Senator, Jim Webb, and a former Governor and successful Senator, Lincoln Chafee did not last long enough to even find out if they could win a delegate. The most experienced, best supported, and best funded candidate -- a former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and First Lady of both the United States and the State of Arkansas -- was challenged all the way to the convention by a Senator whose brand was being an outsider who had had few legislative victories during his time in the Senate. 

On the Republican side, seventeen people ran. Nine -- including Jeb Bush and Chris Christie -- had been two-term Governors with national name recognition. Only one of them even came close. One was vanquished before the first primary. Five were current or former Senators. Only one of them lasted, Ted Cruz, and only because he was an outsider in the Senate. His popularity rested largely on the fact that no other member of the Senate would support him, and reportedly most could not stand him. The person ultimately selected by the Republican Party is a man who has never held any public office, never even ran for any other public office, has had no military or other public service, and has expressed disdain for people who have. 

The fact that the Republican Party chose Donald Trump as its nominee for President reflects the fact that a lot of Republicans do not trust anyone -- Democrat or Republican -- who is associated with government as their President. The fact that Secretary Hillary Clinton lost several states to a previously unheralded Senator from Vermont reveals that this is not a one-party issue. 

So the question is why, and what are the consequences for Western Democracies around the world. Recently, we've witnessed the stunning decision by the people of the UK to reject the recommendation of their Prime Minister and virtually all leaders on both sides of politics, and exit the EU. We've witnessed the people of Columbia reject the recommendation of their elected leader to end a 50-year war with the FARC, and effectively vote for continued fighting. We've witnessed the Philippines elect a leader who attacks all politics as usual, belittles allies, and has authorized the vigilante killings of thousands of people. Here in Australia, Pauline Hanson's One Nation party won four seats in the last election, and you've had five Prime Ministers in the past seven years (if you count Prime Minister Rudd twice). So these are interesting times not only in the U.S. 

What I'd like to focus on is what is different this time. Many things actually are very much the same. More than half of Donald Trump's supporters are relatively affluent Republicans who support him simply because he is not a democrat and will not do the things that democrats have promised to do -- principally raise taxes on the top 1% of wage earners. But they would have voted for any of the Republican candidates. What I'd like to focus on is what is animating those who made him the Republican nominee and helped him defeat the other Republican candidates. I believe there are five substantial trends that drive them. Most of these are global, and they have consequences for all of us.

These are the five: (1) the fall-out from the Global Financial Crisis; (2) demographic change in the work force; (3) the run-away pace of technology; (4) corrosion of traditional media; and (5) wage stagnation and the concentration of wealth.

The Post-Traumatic Stress of the Global Financial Crisis

Let me start with the mood of the public, particularly after the Global Financial Crisis.

For 30 years, political leaders on both sides of the aisle in the U.S. secured votes by campaigning on the notion that government is a mess and couldn't do anything right. In 2007, those elected proved it was true.

President Reagan had demonstrated the power of running for election on the claim that that Government was too big and bloated and ineffective. He ran on a campaign of cutting taxes and red-tape. His successor George H.W. Bush did the same, to win, and then lost when he failed to keep his promise not to raise taxes. The next President, Bill Clinton followed the same playbook, leading the charge that the era of big government was over. In all cases, the message was that we needed less and less government. George W. Bush ran almost entirely on promises to continuing shrinking wasteful government. 

Tom Friedman, the New York Times writer, had an insight about this. It came from his days when he covered the advertising war between Hungry Jacks and McDonalds. He was interviewing the head of marketing for Hungry Jacks and asked him why -- with the hundreds of millions of dollars Hungry Jacks was spending to win market share from McDonalds -- it hadn't actually gone after McDonalds burgers. Why didn't they run an ad saying that McDonalds burgers were nasty frozen patties? The marketing head looked at him and said: "That is the very first rule of marketing. You never kill the category."

Well, to win elections, both sides had been killing the category of government. And then Government actually let them down in a massive way. In September 2008, the Country was already mired in an unpopular war in Iraq that was costing us our bravest troops and billions of dollars, and then we were hit by a recession that was directly due to the federal government easing its bank regulations. The two things that we counted on our government to do most -- keep us secure, and protect our economy -- it had failed to do. If anyone was looking for proof that Government couldn't do anything right, that was the moment.

At the time this happened, people were too desperate dealing with the immediate crises in front of them to vent their anger at Government. They were too concerned about losing their job or their home and just finding a way to make ends meet. It took years to dig out of that hole and so during that time people did not have the time, or energy, or focus to channel their anger at Government. But now that the U.S. is back to full employment, that home prices are back and the economy is stable, people finally have the breathing room to avenge their pain. 

I think the Brexit vote suggests that the U.S. isn't alone in this. 

Demographics and Competition

The second major trend in the U.S. relates to demographics. Two major demographic changes that have accelerated dramatically in the past 25 years, and have had a particularly pronounced effect on white males.

Before I discuss them though, let me first put in context what it meant to be a white male in the United States in the first half of the last century. If you were a straight white male with a high school education or less, you might lose out on jobs or opportunities to college educated white males, but that was it. You had an advantage over anyone else. You did not have to compete against women, people of color, or people who were openly gay or lesbian. Moreover, you did not have much in the way of international competition. Industries were largely protected among those countries with which we actually traded. But about half of the world's economy was locked up in a failed economic system -- Soviet-style communism -- which did not compete with American jobs at all. 

During the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. economy changed dramatically. Programs to enforce civil rights laws dramatically changed the work-force, introducing opportunities for women, racial and ethnic minorities, and other previously disadvantaged groups to compete for jobs. 

At the same time, the fall of the Berlin wall was effectively a starting gun for global competition. Suddenly a talented work force around the world that had been denied the chance to compete was unleashed. Western nations saw great opportunity in trading with these countries and working them into their supply chains. And now, suddenly, a white male worker who had a built-in advantage was forced to compete with women, people of color, and people around the globe, who were hungrier and potentially more competitive than they were.

Now I know there is a lot of talk about white privilege and condemnation of white males. But the feeling of loss, and resentment, and unfairness that they felt is a very real emotion that most of us would probably feel in similar circumstances. Even if an advantage we have isn't fair, we still feel pain and possibly anger when it is taken away. 

For example, if your name begins with the letter "A" and you are always the first to get to do everything because you line up alphabetically, you don't feel that you've done anything wrong. It's just how people line up. And you didn't name yourself. So how could anyone blame you for that. But if you are told that you've had an unfair advantage and from now on you can only be at the front of the line one out of 26 times (and maybe fewer than that because you've already had several of your turns). You might be a little resentful. Now imagine how that feels if it is your livelihood and your place in society.

Now some of the resentment is not purely economic. There are prejudices -- against minorities, immigrants, or women -- that help people with an historic advantage justify that advantage. And so it is no surprise that some of the people who are the loudest in their support of building a wall to keep out Mexicans, or banning Muslim refugees from entering the Country, also bear deep prejudices. 

Most white males with no college education are not prejudiced or disrespectful or intolerant, but some are, and they tend to be the most outspoken in their wish to go back to the old ways. 

They are people who are losing hope. Everyone needs hope. All of us want to believe that our lives will improve, or at least that our children's lives will be better than ours. But for people who have lost their advantage in the market, and have to compete harder than ever just to have the same job, they don't feel that way.

 To get a measure of the despair they feel though, consider this. If you are a white male with no college education in the U.S. you are the only demographic in the OECD, the developed countries, whose life expectancy is going down. The main reasons for this are all forms of self-harm: suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, or morbid obesity. 

I have no tolerance for bigots and racists, but I also cannot abide ignoring the fundamental humanity of others, particular people who are heartbroken. Now imagine how the people who depend on them feel, their wives and their daughters and their mothers, and you can understand how many women, too, would feel betrayed by government.

Runaway Technology

The third major trend is pace of technological change and how it is accelerating. 

The pace at which our world is being changed is unprecedented and will only accelerate. Every year there has been some massive new disruption -- Every year a new massive theory of disruption. “the digital economy,” “the social network”, “the Internet of things”, “sharing economy,” “big data”, now “machine learning” -- where machines teach themselves things we do not know -- is the buzzword. 

Three years ago as I was getting ready to depart Australia, I gave a talk about how driverless cars would soon transform our societies, but that this would be a hard transition and it would be several years before we saw driverless vehicles on the streets. Well I was wrong about that. As I was going to the airport to fly here, the car driving alongside me was a driverless Google car. In Philadelphia, driverless cars are operating as taxis. As the tech writer William Gibson wrote: "The future is already here, it just isn't very evenly distributed." Yet.

Now I love driverless cars. Self-driving cars can reduce accidents, save us from needless deaths, injuries, and property damage, reduce traffic, give us more leisure time, reduce stress, and improve our quality of life. 

Believe me, as an ex-Ambassador, life is better in the backseat of the car. 

But that's not how you look at it if you are a 47-year-old truck driver or bus driver or cab-driver or you drive a fork lift and have a high school education, are carrying a lot of debt, and have a family to take care of. All you see is some elites in San Francisco trying to kill your job and destroy your family. 

And driverless cars are only one disruptive technology. If you work in a small hotel or motel, you see AirBnB as an existential threat. If you work in manufacturing, 3D printing and robotics are direct threats to your job. If you are a book-keeper, artificial intelligence is an immediate threat to your job. 

What once took decades to develop can now be developed in a matter of months. We can test the impact of a particular set of compounds on thousands of cells simultaneously. We can take the data of every mobile phone, from every modern vehicle, from every refrigerator and toaster and microwave and desk top and aggregate them and analyze them as fast as the speed of the internet. I was with the director of Google's cutting edge incubator, Google X, Astro Teller, and he was asked what he feared about technology. And he said, it is simply going so fast now that no one can control where it is taking us. Archimedes said that if you gave him a long enough lever, he could move the earth. Today, the lever of technology has extended so long that it takes very little pressure to fundamentally move the earth. 

This dramatic acceleration of technology affects not only the workers who see their jobs disappearing and fear these new technologies. It also explains the disaffection for government by millennials. However for them, it is because they feel just the opposite. Millennials love the new technologies, think they will transform the workplace to the better, and believe that government doesn't get it. To them, as industry seems to solve more and more problems, government seems less and less relevant. So while blue collar workers want to eliminate any government that welcomes these technologies, some millennials want to eliminate government all together. To them, again -- some not all -- government is a joke. 

Whether technology is seen as a threat or as a substitute, the result is the same. Neither certain millennials nor certain blue-collar workers trust traditional politicians to get this right.

Chaos in Media Standards

The fourth major trend is the dramatic change in how we get and interpret media. 

Media disruptions are always dislocating and confusing. Before the printing press was invented, written documents were drafted by scribes. Those documents were trusted because -- frankly -- only those with some standing in the community and reputation had the resources to produce them. It was too expensive and time-consuming for a scoundrel with a crazy idea to produce them. And so people got used to generally trusting things that were written.

When the printing press dramatically reduced the cost of the printed word, all sorts of things could be published that wouldn't have been before. While this actually improved the flow of information, it also confused people who were used to trusting the things they read. 

While one media revolution can be disorienting, two right on top of each other have fundamentally disruptive effects. Until about 30 years ago, news was generally obtained from one or two newspapers, and the small number of network channels available each country -- which usually devoted up to an hour for news. While different papers might cover the same news stories differently, they generally reported the same facts and merely drew different conclusions from them.

With the advent of cable news programs, this changed. We created a vehicle for virtually limitless news. Instead of news organizations being forced to decide what were the most important events that happened each day, they could report on many things that were not necessarily relevant to people's lives but would boost ratings. News organizations could make news a form of entertainment and compete for viewers in ways that didn't exist before. And, before long, news balkanized so that every viewer could pick a news service that reinforced their prejudices. In this way, conservatives who did not trust liberals, could find a channel that reassured them that liberals were untrustworthy, and capable of the most irrational and diabolical acts. And vise-versa.

If this was not enough to bring down trust in government, a second wave of media disruption emerged close on its heels.

With the arrival of cellphones and the world-wide web, suddenly every person with an internet connection could become a journalist and publisher. Before the traditional media had even heard about a story, people were blogging it, uploading images to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and effectively getting their story out faster than cable could. In order to stay relevant, traditional media simply followed suit and began running with whatever came in across the internet -- right, wrong, or horrifyingly wrong. The notion was that you wouldn't be wrong for long, but that you needed to publish quickly or risk being irrelevant.

And so we have the phenomenon that at one point over 40% of Americans believed that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. It did not matter that President Obama was born in Hawaii, and that his birth had been duly recorded and reported in the newspaper for all to see. Bloggers created this lie, sent it around at the speed of the internet, and news channels covered the "phenomenon" as if it were actual news. 

To give you some sense of this phenomenon, consider that some substantial portion of Americans believe Michelle Obama is a man dressed as a woman. Even more believe that climate change is a hoax, that airplane vapor trails are a government conspiracy to spread chemicals to humans, that vaccinations cause autism, and that toilets in Australia flush backwards. 

In this environment, where facts are ignored, and people choose the stories that support their world view, is it any wonder that a substantial number of voters believe even the most outlandish claims? 

Wage Stagnation and the Vanishing American Dream

Which brings me to the fifth phenomenon, and this one really is the fault of a succession of governments. The concentration of wealth and stagnation of wages. 

Again, its helpful to take a step back and consider public expectations. Most Americans are not greedy and they don't expect the government to solve all of their problems or give them a hand out. They expect what we like to call the American dream that was an actual reality (at least for white Americans) in the 1950s.

The American dream is pretty simple. If you serve your country, then when you return the government will pay for your college through the GI bill and it will give you a very low-interest VA loan to buy your first home. With this you could earn a good enough wage working 40 hours that you could own a house with a two-car garage. You could raise your kids and send them to college. Take a two week vacation every summer. Receive good healthcare. And retire at 65 with decent savings and live out your remaining years modestly but with dignity. That was it.

In the 1960s and 70s we did not really raise wages, but people did not notice this very much because we increased equality for women and now many families had a second wage earner. A family could now still have the American dream, but it took two wage-earners at home to achieve it. 

When we ran out of wage earners, we did not raise real wages. Instead, we expanded hours. Stores that had been open from 9-5 suddenly became stores that remained open into the evening and eventually 24 hours a day. People started using overtime and moonlighting to earn enough to keep the American dream going.

But eventually stagnant wages caught up. And so when we ran out of wage-earners per home, and hours in the day, we offered easy credit. People could still have the American dream but they needed to go into debt to have the two cars and the flat-screen t.v. and the two week vacation.

And once the Global Financial Crisis hit and credit locked up and homes disappeared it struck people that they had not been living the American dream for a long time. They had the same material things that their grandparents had in the 1950s, but instead of relaxing as a family each evening and having the weekends to themselves and accumulating savings, they were working all the time, constantly stressed, and deep in debt. And they got mad.

 These are five extraordinary trends converging all at the same time. Over the past 30 years a perfect storm has formed to produce an election in which a large enough portion of the American public has backed ideas that have been heretofore unthinkable. Their candidate has encouraged foreign nations to hack his opponent's internet account. He has encouraged nations to obtain nuclear weapons. He has proposed abandoning allies. He has demanded that our largest trade partner pay for a wall to keep their own citizens away. He has called for banning people from entering the Country based on their religion.  

The only analogy to this phenomenon was during the Gilded Age when a similar rapid change in technology, media, and demographics all converged to and had similar effects on our politics. 

A hundred years ago, revolutions in technology, media, global integration, and demographics all occurred at the same time. In 1879, during a 3-month period, both the electric light and a workable internal combustion engine were invented. Those two inventions produced over the next 40 years a dizzying number of new technologies. The telephone, phonograph, motion pictures, cars, airplanes, elevators, x-rays, electric machinery, consumer appliances, highways, suburbs, supermarkets, all created in a 40-year burst. 

It also caused politics to go haywire. There were massive disruptions in labor markets, unprecedented levels of migration, and other effects of industrialization. The result may sound familiar. Popular unrest especially in Europe and East Asia, xenophobia, isolationism, violent protests, and the emergence of authoritarians and demagogues around the world,

  In the U.S., William Jennings Bryan was nominated three times for President during this Gilded Age -- offering a bizarre mix of populist messages. He was anti-Darwinism, pro-Isolationism, proposed a Silver Standard, favored Prohibition, and stunned the political establishment with the way he campaigned -- defying all conventional logic. Demagogues flourish when large sections of society feel overwhelmed and fear they will be left behind. They offer simple solutions to complex problems and play on people's fears and prejudices.

And that is where we stand today. 

I take great comfort in Winston Churchill's observation that America always does the right thing, after exhausting every other possibility. We made some decisions during that period that we would later regret, but overall, we preserved the fundamentals of what has in fact made America great. 

We remained a nation that ensured religious tolerance, the rule of law, free press, free minds, freedom of travel, free markets, and the free movement of capital. We became a fairer nation, a more prosperous nation, and a more secure nation not by abandoning our values, but by preserving them.

Nations around the world face the challenges that I have described for America today. The impulse to divide and exclude, to isolate, to create barriers, to resist future, and to follow false prophets is strong during times like these. And that is why it is at precisely these moments that diplomacy -- the art of understanding, of giving order and sense to disorder, of finding common ground, and of bringing people and nations together -- has never been more necessary.

And that is why I came here tonight, and why I am so honored to deliver a lecture in Sir James Plimsoll's name. His life was devoted to this craft, and he did it at the very highest and best levels. May we be blessed in this year and in the years ahead to have more men and women of Sir James Plimsoll's vision and character. 

I'll finish with a reference to the words of one of Jim Plim's admirers. He stated he believed that by knowing Sir James, "there are quite a number of highly placed foreigners who think of Australians as persons of intelligence, understanding, courtesy, consideration and a good intention.”

I am honored that you've invited a former U.S. Ambassador, and I hope in my own way I have given you my own sense of the intelligence, understanding, courtesy, and good intentions of your friends -- the people of the United States. May God bless us all.