Behold the rise of the outsiders! A Seismic Shift in the Axis of US Politics
Behold the
rise of the outsiders! What should we take from the rise of Donald Trump and
Bernie Sanders in the Republican and Democratic Presidential Primaries,
respectively? For one thing, it indicates that there is a distinct possibility
that a candidate that is not only an outsider to the mainstream political
parties but also somebody who eschews the political process will become the
next president of the United States. And that will be no small thing. But there
is a broader view to consider in response to the rise of the outsiders,
particularly when we add to the picture the support also received by Ben Carson
and Carly Fiorina during the Republican Primary.
Is the rise
of Trump and Sanders an aberration, confined to the political dynamics of the
2016 US Presidential Campaign? I suspect that the majority of us regard this
phenomenon as an unusual blip in the lifecycle of US politics. One may expect,
whether Trump or Sanders makes it all the way to the presidency or not, a
return to conventional party politics in 2020. We have arrived, after all, at
the end of history, as the seminal work by neoconservative Francis
Fukuyama declared in 1992 with regards to the apparent path taken by all
societies towards liberal market democracies.[1]
However, this idea of the end of history perhaps owes more to the innate
desire, by us all, to regard the society that nurtures us as the standard
bearer for social order, provided of course that such a society brings forth a
sense of security and nourishment.
Yet history
tells a story of continual flux. It is not just those countries that aren’t
imbued with the strong legacies of democracy that are wavering in their pull
towards social and economic liberalism. The US is itself often undergoing
incredible politico-demographic shifts that may have dramatic implications for
its future.
There was
the major transition in the political axis that commenced during the 1960’s,
heralded by the progressive agenda adopted by the Democratic Party, as
symbolized by Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights platform. The long standing battle
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, that had been taken up with the
advent of the industrial revolution, was cooling. The American automotive
revolution of the early 20th century, with its advance in assembly
line manufacturing, delivered huge improvements to the living standards of all
Americans. With the flow-on benefits delivered across all rungs of society, the
class warfare that had excited previous generations no longer drew heat. In its
place, battle lines were redrawn between the liberal progressives who supported
LBJ’s reforms and the reactionary conservatives who, quite simply, didn’t.
Two decades
later, the Ronald Reagan era solidified the change with two clear outcomes.
One, the allegiances of large numbers of non-college-educated white voters
moved from the Democrats to the Republicans. The changing political posture of
this class, known as the Reagan Democrats, confirmed the shift in the political
axis from the blue-collar unionists versus the moneyed class, to the liberal
progressives versus the social conservatives. The Democrats were now seen as
serving a collective of constituents, minorities and the poor, ahead of the
working class. The other outcome during the Reagan era was the end of the cold
war. The collapse of the Soviet Union helped affirm the end of socialism as a
global political force; the Chinese, under Deng Xiaoping, having already bowed
to the apparent benefits of market economics.
It could be
argued that the bourgeoisie, those business owners that had provided much of
the discontent that led to the French Revolution and the War of Independence
between the US and Great Britain, had finally overcome their working class
adversaries to deliver a world where free markets are unchallenged; a world
ruled by a “neoliberal consensus”.[2]
But it
could equally be argued that the end of the class war was a result of the
wealth generated by the automotive revolution, whereafter the working class
achieved vastly improved wages and conditions than their nineteenth century
forebears, to become the “affluent proletariat” as analyst Samuel Francis
described the post-World War II American middle class.[3]
And, as Samuel Francis predicted, the white middle class has become alienated
by a unifying ethos that is sustained by both liberal Democrats and
conservative Republicans, an ethos of economic globalization that serves the
“globalist elites”. The benefits given to America by the automotive revolution
seem to be ebbing away with manufacturing jobs are moving across to the growing
Asian economies.
The
citizenry is angry. Something is wrong in Washington. The standard of living
for middle class America has dropped over the last 15 years, with the median
income of the middle class having fallen by 4% since the year 2000.[4]
It is clear
that the presidency of George W. Bush was a major let down for Reagan
democrats, given his inability to contain spending and the advent of a
miscalculated profligate war in Iraq. An over cautious Barak Obama presidency
has riled many for its inability to prevent the resurgence of Islamic Fascism.
Donald
Trump’s response is to, effectively, call for an end of American
exceptionalism. It is time for the US to remove the white hat that it has worn
in its global role, which, I might add, has at times been an uncomfortable fit
due to the inward looking culture that is pervasive across America. This is not
to say that America does not have a proud history of global engagement.
American exceptionalism, as adopted by Theodore Roosevelt as he sought to
“project American power onto the global stage”[5],
does indeed represent an exception in the history of foreign policy by global
powers. Never before has a global power acted with such magnanimity in victory
as was witnessed post WWII with General Douglas Macarthur’s Japanese policies
and the Marshal plan in Europe. And then, throughout the cold war, the defense
of the Western Bloc was effectively bankrolled by the American people.
Where
American exceptionalism has led to disaster it has been a case of ideology
displacing realpolitik in foreign policy calculations. The Vietnam War arguably
was a result of the ideologically liberal mindset from Lyndon Johnson’s
administration. Then there was George W Bush’s ill-conceived misadventure into
Iraq that was directed by the neoconservatives. With strategic inanity that is
hard to match, the neoconservatives, headed up by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz (with Richard Perle playing himself in caricature in the
background), proceeded to dismantle the secular socialist Baathist bulwark against
Islamic extremism as a response to the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US carried
out by al Qaida.
No wonder
Trump has called this expedition out as stupid: one for its strategic idiocy,
but also for the fact that the US did not seek reparations for their efforts.
This is indicative of the Trump platform. Discard the doctrine of making good
what is bad in the world. Trump is out to make deals, not promulgate ideals.
Trump is,
after all, a business man, and it is through this prism that much of his
bluster needs to be understood.
He is happy
to call the relationship with the House of Saud to review, for it has been, and
remains, a bad deal for the US, when one considers the serpentine role it has
played in the spread of firebrand Sunni attitudes across the Islamic world.
When Trump
muses about running as an independent, which he does with some regularity, he
is not in the act of ripping up the deal that he has made with the Republican
National Committee through its chairman, Reince Priebus. Trump is simply
responding to noises of a brokered convention and communicating to the
Committee members that they need to give him a fair run at the primary
nomination.
When Trump
says that he will build a wall across the southern border of the US and that
the Mexicans will pay for it, he is not suggesting that this will necessarily
be an outcome, should he become president. He is simply opening negotiations
with Mexico, the scenario playing out along the lines of: Trump’s US: “Let’s
say, I build a wall and you pay for it.” Mexico: “Let’s see. What about, you
build a wall and you pay for it?” Trump’s US: “OK – let’s meet somewhere in
between.”.
This
doesn't explain the full absurdity of many of his comments, the roots of which
are likely found in the black arts of reality television.
Trump may
at heart be a businessman. What Trump is not is a conservative.
He has
stood as pro-choice in the past, even if his most recent proclamations have
swung towards a more conservative tune.
He has
called for increases in taxes, declaring that he “would let people making hundreds of millions of
dollars-a-year pay some tax, because right now they are paying very little tax
and I think it's outrageous.” This, in the face of recent conservative zealotry
against tax rises.
The
accusations of Trump’s lack of conservative credentials that come from his
Republican rivals misses the point. Trump is not fighting the conservative
versus liberal battle. He is taking a completely different angle in the
political debate, that of the anti-Washington outraged versus the Washington
orthodox.
There is a
general lack of awareness across political parties as to the new axis that
Trump is operating on. Both the Democratic National Committee and Republican
National Committee seem to believe that a Trump victory at the primaries would
assure the Democratic Party victory at the general presidential election should
the traditional candidacy of Hillary Clinton win the Democratic nomination.
However, Trump’s appeal to the disaffected will make him a formidable national
candidate. Should he win the Republican nomination, Trump won’t require a
Romney style “etch a sketch”, ala the clumsy annunciation of Mitt Romney’s
proposed repositioning for the federal election by Romney’s senior campaign
advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom. Trump need only de-emphasize his hard right agenda
and highlight his opposition to the prevalence of Wall Street money in politics
and the bankruptcy of the foreign policy position held by the neoconservatives;
a foreign policy position that still lingers around Clinton since her 2002
Senate vote on the Iraq war.
Sanders
argues that he has the ability to appeal to Trump voters[6],
which is true, given that both candidates are reaching out to the disaffected.
But the converse is just as true; Trump can take disaffected Democrats with him
as well. This is no longer a fight between liberals versus conservatives. This
is a fight between insiders versus outsiders. It is a fight between Marco
Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich versus Trump, Ted Cruz, Carson
and Fiorina. It is a fight between Clinton versus Sanders.
In the
fight between Clinton and Sanders, Clinton appears to have a sufficient fire
break in the South, though she does tend to self-destruct with an unseeming
disposition when placed on the defensive, as witnessed with the recent
deployment of Chelsea Clinton to attack Sanders on health care. Like Obama, but
from a very different political position, Sanders is able to generate great
excitement from the podium.
On the
Republican side, Fiorina and Carson have had moments of success, but they fail
to speak as clearly as Trump in regards to the need for the hard renegotiation
of America’s plight in the world.
And this
perhaps provides a more concerning aspect to the Trump candidacy than his
vituperative rhetoric. Under Trump, could the US be relied upon to uphold
liberal values across the globe? Perhaps a further question is the degree to
which a Trump presidency would respect the institutions of democratic
government. To be fair to Trump, he has signaled a desire to work with people
across government, as is his mode of doing business.[7]
More ominous, though, is the antipathy, held by the disaffected demography that
underpins the rise of the outsiders, towards the necessary compromises, checks
and balances that go hand in hand with the democratic process. In a national
survey of Trump supporters, conducted under the auspices of the University of
Massachussetts, Amherst[8], Trump
supporters were found to be distinguished by one key variable: their attraction
to authoritarianism. Perhaps this ought not to be surprising, as the rising
popularity of the outsiders is, after all, derived from a loss of faith in the
institutions of Government.
And so the
question must be asked: how does the rise of the outsiders for the 2016
presidential election augur for future elections? Will the 2020 presidential
election be a return to normal, that is, the normalcy that was conservatism
versus liberalism? There is good reason to believe that it won’t. Trump is
riding a seismic shift in the US political axis; a shift from liberalism versus
conservativism to establishment versus discontentment, a shift that presents
long term repercussions for the direction of US foreign policy as well as for
the US’s own instruments of government.
[2] See “This election could be the birth of a
Trump-Sanders constituency” Vox, January 30, 2016, “http://www.vox.com/2016/1/30/10869974/trump-sanders-economic-history
[3] See “How an obscure adviser to Pat Buchanan
predicted the wild Trump campaign in 1996” The Week, January 19, 2016, http://theweek.com/articles/599577/how-obscure-adviser-pat-buchanan-predicted-wild-trump-campaign-1996
[4] See “The American Middle Class Is Losing
Ground” Pew Research Center, December 9, 2015, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/
[6] See “Sanders says he’s courting Trump
supporters” Politico, December 27, 2015, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-217147
[7] See “Donald Trump: I’ve always had good
relationships with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid” The Washington Post, January 26,
2016, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/26/donald-trump-ive-always-had-good-relationships-nan/
[8] See “The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether
You’re a Trump Supporter” Poliico, January 17, 2016 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533
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