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GREG SHERIDAN
Donald Trump, like Barack Obama, lacks legislative experience
THE AUSTRALIAN
JANUARY 28, 2016 12:00AM
Greg Sheridan
The real pioneer for the Donald Trump insurgency in the US Republican Party, and the Bernie Sanders insurgency within the Democrats, is the candidacy and election of Barack Obama.
Back to that in a second. First a snapshot of the campaigns. With the Iowa caucuses next Monday, and the New Hampshire primary just over a week later, both Trump and Sanders are surging.
The arrogance but also strength, perhaps temporary, perhaps not, of Trump was evident in his decision to boycott a Republican candidates’ debate on Fox News. Trump is miles ahead in the national Republican polls, and in Iowa and New Hampshire, with hardline conservative Ted Cruz second and Florida senator Marco Rubio, the only establishment candidate with any life in him, generally third.
Sanders’s insurgency is equally astounding. He is neck and neck with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and well ahead of her in New Hampshire. Nationally, he trails Clinton but is closing.
Sanders seems a nicer guy than Trump but his surge is just as weird as the Donald’s. Sanders is 74, technically an independent senator, not a Democrat, proudly calls himself a socialist and has never been considered a serious contender for national office until now.
He is an American Jeremy Corbyn. But watching the Democrat candidates’ Iowa town hall meeting, I was surprised at how good Sanders was. He performed infinitely better than Clinton. There she was with the same boring — sensible, yes, but certainly dull — cliches and platitudes highlighting her experience.
In contrast was Sanders’s straight-talking directness: I will give free healthcare for all Americans; I will provide free college education.
Hillary’s new campaign ad is an endless droning repetition of her own voice at a thousand dreary political conventions.
Sanders’s ad doesn’t have a word from the cagey old senator. Instead it’s a beautiful montage of Iowa farmlands and Sanders rallies and ordinary American folk, all to the soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel’s lyric: “They’ve all come to look for America.” For a second, you sense the inspiration all over again of the American idea. It’s the finest presidential campaign ad I’ve seen since Ronald Reagan’s “It’s Morning Time in America” in 1984.
Sanders and Trump share an anger on both sides of American politics about the failure and dysfunction of the political system. This anger is well justified. But democratic anger doesn’t always produce a good result. People were rightly unhappy with the failures of democratic politics in Weimar Germany. The outcome of their anger wasn’t very good.
Trump and Sanders offer very simple solutions. We’ve got troubles with terrorists, I’ll keep out all Muslims, says Trump. There are too many illegal immigrants, I’ll build a wall and make the Mexican government pay for it. I’ll make America great again!
Sanders says he will massively increase taxes, create universal free healthcare, abolish college fees, end global warming, stop jobs moving to China or Mexico, support socialism and revive the American dream.
Populists of both left and right have a great strength in being able to offer very simple solutions to very complex problems. And there is a lot in the Sanders and Trump programs, such as they are, that is shared: they both hate globalisation, they both hate trade deals, they will protect and extend entitlements and so on.
Populism, like conspiracy theories, can be simple because it doesn’t have to deal with reality.
The voter asks: why was there a global financial crisis? Some boring guy in a suit starts talking about policies that encouraged subprime lending and the development of collateralised debt instruments, and the voter goes straight to sleep.
The demagogue from a generation ago would shout: the Jewish finance interest is running a conspiracy to milk funds from hardworking people. Simple. Understandable. Also, nuts. The Trump and Sanders conspiracy theories have different demons these days, but the meme is essentially unchanged.
So why do I say that Barack Obama was the forerunner of Trump and Sanders?
Obama was the first successful pure celebrity candidate for the presidency. He was a first term senator who had no legislative achievements. In his short time in the Senate he had often voted “present”, meaning he abstained from actually voting one way or another, to avoid acquiring a voting record that would offend either side of an argument.
Of all the presidents since World War 11, he had the least experience and the least qualifications to be president. His appeal was entirely that of a celebrity, a sort of thinking woman’s reality TV show star. His first memoir chronicled no particular record of achievement. Rather, it was a narcissistic, though immensely clever, paean of self-pity for the terrible burden of identity shouldered by the son of a black father and a white mother, notwithstanding the privilege of private schools and Harvard.
His opponent, John McCain, was not just from a different generation but an entirely different zeitgeist with his memoir of military service and years of torture and solitary confinement as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. So yesterday.
Obama’s most important campaign endorsement came from Oprah Winfrey. At the time I asked whether in due course we would see the celebrity candidate who dispensed with the need to serve even for a minute in the Senate or the Congress. And now we have reality TV star Trump.
Obama was, in his way, as populist and untethered to reality as Trump and Sanders, though more sophisticated. His promises were just as unrealistic as those of Trump and Sanders. He was going to stop the oceans from rising, heal the planet, remake the American soul. It was upper class, liberal populism for the readers of the New York Times.
Modern Western politics is in crisis. Increasingly it rests on voting blocs formed on identity, and it rewards sentimentality, simplicity and anger. Everyone in this American campaign pledges their opposition to the establishment (Obama did this too), as in the 1950s they all opposed the communists. But if the answer is Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, it’s the wrong question.
Nocookies
Donald Trump, like Barack Obama, lacks legislative experience
THE AUSTRALIAN
JANUARY 28, 2016 12:00AM
Greg Sheridan
The real pioneer for the Donald Trump insurgency in the US Republican Party, and the Bernie Sanders insurgency within the Democrats, is the candidacy and election of Barack Obama.
Back to that in a second. First a snapshot of the campaigns. With the Iowa caucuses next Monday, and the New Hampshire primary just over a week later, both Trump and Sanders are surging.
The arrogance but also strength, perhaps temporary, perhaps not, of Trump was evident in his decision to boycott a Republican candidates’ debate on Fox News. Trump is miles ahead in the national Republican polls, and in Iowa and New Hampshire, with hardline conservative Ted Cruz second and Florida senator Marco Rubio, the only establishment candidate with any life in him, generally third.
Sanders’s insurgency is equally astounding. He is neck and neck with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and well ahead of her in New Hampshire. Nationally, he trails Clinton but is closing.
Sanders seems a nicer guy than Trump but his surge is just as weird as the Donald’s. Sanders is 74, technically an independent senator, not a Democrat, proudly calls himself a socialist and has never been considered a serious contender for national office until now.
He is an American Jeremy Corbyn. But watching the Democrat candidates’ Iowa town hall meeting, I was surprised at how good Sanders was. He performed infinitely better than Clinton. There she was with the same boring — sensible, yes, but certainly dull — cliches and platitudes highlighting her experience.
In contrast was Sanders’s straight-talking directness: I will give free healthcare for all Americans; I will provide free college education.
Hillary’s new campaign ad is an endless droning repetition of her own voice at a thousand dreary political conventions.
Sanders’s ad doesn’t have a word from the cagey old senator. Instead it’s a beautiful montage of Iowa farmlands and Sanders rallies and ordinary American folk, all to the soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel’s lyric: “They’ve all come to look for America.” For a second, you sense the inspiration all over again of the American idea. It’s the finest presidential campaign ad I’ve seen since Ronald Reagan’s “It’s Morning Time in America” in 1984.
Sanders and Trump share an anger on both sides of American politics about the failure and dysfunction of the political system. This anger is well justified. But democratic anger doesn’t always produce a good result. People were rightly unhappy with the failures of democratic politics in Weimar Germany. The outcome of their anger wasn’t very good.
Trump and Sanders offer very simple solutions. We’ve got troubles with terrorists, I’ll keep out all Muslims, says Trump. There are too many illegal immigrants, I’ll build a wall and make the Mexican government pay for it. I’ll make America great again!
Sanders says he will massively increase taxes, create universal free healthcare, abolish college fees, end global warming, stop jobs moving to China or Mexico, support socialism and revive the American dream.
Populists of both left and right have a great strength in being able to offer very simple solutions to very complex problems. And there is a lot in the Sanders and Trump programs, such as they are, that is shared: they both hate globalisation, they both hate trade deals, they will protect and extend entitlements and so on.
Populism, like conspiracy theories, can be simple because it doesn’t have to deal with reality.
The voter asks: why was there a global financial crisis? Some boring guy in a suit starts talking about policies that encouraged subprime lending and the development of collateralised debt instruments, and the voter goes straight to sleep.
The demagogue from a generation ago would shout: the Jewish finance interest is running a conspiracy to milk funds from hardworking people. Simple. Understandable. Also, nuts. The Trump and Sanders conspiracy theories have different demons these days, but the meme is essentially unchanged.
So why do I say that Barack Obama was the forerunner of Trump and Sanders?
Obama was the first successful pure celebrity candidate for the presidency. He was a first term senator who had no legislative achievements. In his short time in the Senate he had often voted “present”, meaning he abstained from actually voting one way or another, to avoid acquiring a voting record that would offend either side of an argument.
Of all the presidents since World War 11, he had the least experience and the least qualifications to be president. His appeal was entirely that of a celebrity, a sort of thinking woman’s reality TV show star. His first memoir chronicled no particular record of achievement. Rather, it was a narcissistic, though immensely clever, paean of self-pity for the terrible burden of identity shouldered by the son of a black father and a white mother, notwithstanding the privilege of private schools and Harvard.
His opponent, John McCain, was not just from a different generation but an entirely different zeitgeist with his memoir of military service and years of torture and solitary confinement as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. So yesterday.
Obama’s most important campaign endorsement came from Oprah Winfrey. At the time I asked whether in due course we would see the celebrity candidate who dispensed with the need to serve even for a minute in the Senate or the Congress. And now we have reality TV star Trump.
Obama was, in his way, as populist and untethered to reality as Trump and Sanders, though more sophisticated. His promises were just as unrealistic as those of Trump and Sanders. He was going to stop the oceans from rising, heal the planet, remake the American soul. It was upper class, liberal populism for the readers of the New York Times.
Modern Western politics is in crisis. Increasingly it rests on voting blocs formed on identity, and it rewards sentimentality, simplicity and anger. Everyone in this American campaign pledges their opposition to the establishment (Obama did this too), as in the 1950s they all opposed the communists. But if the answer is Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, it’s the wrong question.
Nocookies
