Leader of the free world

The US Presidential Election

Now that the dust has settled on the date when England celebrates Bonfire Night and Europe marked the 35th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's collapse, let's highlight 2024's November 5th as the occasion of America's Presidential election.  

For weeks in the run-up to polling day, all of the experts eshewed predictions about the likely winner.  The Presidential race was, by all accounts, too close to call.  The question is - how in the modern age can all of America's psephologists and experienced pundits so badly misjudge their research as Republicans proved them wrong storming to victory with majority control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.  No need for recounts or for recourse to prolonged legal challenges, and - mercifully, no call to storm the heart of American democracy, the Capitol in Washington DC.

Instead emphatic adjectives like momentous, historic and unprecedented appeared in response to the results.  Political leaders across the world congratulated the victor, careful about being diplomatic, respectful of the office.  In contrast, however, non-political folk, especially abroad, ponder existential questions.  Now that America has voted decisively for a major political shift, the ever-cautious "man and woman in the street" express concerns and ask what can we expect to happen here, given the campaign rhetoric.  For instance -

• will election promises to end wars in the Middle East and Ukraine be delivered?; 
• what effect will tariffs and related policies have on us in foreign lands, and will they make the American economy to "great again?"
• will millions of undocumented immigrants be forcibly rounded up and deported from the USA as the top priority of the new Presidency? 
  
• will America boycott international cooperation to mitigate and adapt to adverse climatic events?; and, more generally, 
• is our world going to become a safer and more sustainable place? 

Mr Trump has a clear mandate to be President of the United States.  Whether or not the additional moniker of leader of the free world beyond America will apply where he has no mandate will be open to debate.  Putting "America first" doesn't have to mean that the rest of the world doesn't matter.

Presidential Nominations

Clues as to the philosophy of America's new régime that will assume power on 20 January 2025 may be detectable from its post-election nominations to top posts.  The process got off to a stormy start following controversy surrounding allegations of illegal sexual activity against the President-elect's first choice to be Attorney General, Mike Gaetz.  He has had to withdraw. The second choice is Pam Bondi.  She chaired the America First Policy Institute and is a former attorney general of Florida.

Announcing her nomination, Mr Trump said "For too long the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponised against me and other Republicans - not anymore.  Pam will refocus the Department of Justice to its intended purpose of fighting crime and making America safe again."  

Ms Bondi has herself described the justice department special counsel and other prosecutors who charged the President-elect in two federal cases as "horrible" people who were trying to make names for themselves by "going after Donald Trump and weaponising our legal system." Last May, she told Fox News that a "tremendous amount of trust" was lost in the justice system after Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in his criminal trial - "a sad day for our justice system," she added.  Whatever the case, Ms Bondi's new boss is the first felon to be elected President of the USA.

When a President-to-be-again rails against America's Justice department with accusations of partisanship, prima facie concerns arise about impacts on the country's Constitution.  Given the democratic principle applied elsewhere of maintaining clear separation between the Government's Executive and the Judiciary, one wonders if America is mandating a fundamental new challenge to the operation of its legal system. 

Will the new attorney general find ways and means to win back some or all of the trust that she says has been lost?  Will, for instance, the Presidential prerogative of selecting Supreme Court Justices, or judges, be withdrawn in the interests of ensuring non-partisanship?

The trenchant criticism of America's justice system by both the President-elect and by the Attorney General designate has other implications.  Assuming that the accusations are correct and not "campaign hyperbole," presumably the same inference of miscarriage of justice could apply to other convicted criminals - or felons - and not just to Mr Trump.  And if so, presumably the top priority of the nascent administration will have to be the reorganisation of the US Dept of Justice and the judicial system.

Other Presidential nominees to key posts include:-

• Marco Rubio, the Florida Senator is nominated to be the Secretary of State.  He has defended Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza and opposed calls for a ceasefire.  When asked a year ago about Palestinian civilian deaths, he is reported to have said "I think that Hamas is 100% to blame";
  

• Mike Waltz, also from Florida, is a Congressman and former Green Beret.  He is nominated to be national security adviser.  He has argued that Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should have gone further in attacking Iran by striking its oil depots and nuclear facilities;
  

• Elise Stefanik, the New York Congresswoman is the nominee to be US Ambassador to the United Nations.  She has criticised the UN for providing insufficient backing in Israel's war against Hamas.  She has gone further and accused the UN of being anti-Semitic, describing it as a "corrupt defunct and paralysed institution."  In October she called for a "complete reassessment of all US funding for the UN";

• Robert F Kennedy Jr is the nominee to be Secretary of Health.  He is a well-known critic of vaccine restrictions having claimed in 2023 that "Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people.  The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese;" he has also said that "autism comes from vaccines," and more recently that "he would be advising the President that all US water systems remove fluoride from public water.... Fluoride is "associated with arthritis, bone fractures, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease;"
  

• Lee Zelden, a former New York Congressman, is the nominee to become head of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Described by the President-elect as a "true fighter for America First policies he will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions ..." Mr Zelden does not support the Paris climate agreement.  It is expected that the President will again withdraw from that accord.  Mr Zelden's priority is environmental deregulation and, in his own words, "to restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs and make the US the global leader of AI."

• Tulsi Gabbard is a former Congresswoman for Hawaii (2013-21) and, like Robert F. Kennedy, a former Democrat.  She is nominated as the Director of National Intelligence which includes the CIA, FBI and the National Security Agency.  She served in the US military in Iraq, opposing American intervention in the Syrian war.  Ms Gabbard is said to have alarmed colleagues in Congress with her sympathetic stances on Iran, Syria and China.  On Russia she is reported to have repeated that country's falsehoods about biological weapons labs in Ukraine; 
  

• Pete Hegseth, a Fox News presenter, is the nominee for Defence Secretary, responsible for the world's most powerful military machine.  He paid a confidential financial settlement to a woman who accused him of sexual assault to stay quiet so he wouldn't lose his presenter job.  Californian officials investigated the case and no arrest or charge resulted.  Mr Hegseth is also reported as having suggested that Jerusalem's Islamic sacred site the Al-Aqsa mosque could be replaced by a Jewish temple.  He has questioned the role of women serving in combat, he has complained that, in his own words, "woke" and "effeminate" appointees to top jobs have weakened the US military, and in 2019 he asked Mr Trump to pardon service members accused of war crimes;
  

• Tom Homan is nominated as "border czar."  He is an ex-policeman who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration, having been one of the officials behind President's controversial family separation policy.   He described immigration at the US border as "the biggest national security vulnerability this nation has seen since 9/11 and we have to fix it."  

And, briefly to conclude, three of the other nominees are

• Mehmet Oz is nominated to oversee Medicare and Medicade and another TV personality to feature as a Presidential nominee.  He started out as the Oprah Winfrey's show doctor prior to hosting his own show;  
  
• Sean Duffy is the President's nominee to be transportation secretary.  He is a former reality TV personality and more recently a Fox business show host.  He has also been a member of Congress.   And the businessman 
• Elon Musk is the President-elect's nominee as co-chair of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
  

Matters Arising

 

Continue on the basis that nominees such as these examples above reflect the express will of the American electorate.  In which case the outside world will have to accept its democratic choice and try to live with the consequent policy directions.  To outsiders, however, alarm bells toll loudly.  For instance, given the Republican Party's avowed support for the philosophy of free enterprise and deregulated capitalism, how will tariffs help economically?

 

Following Mike Waitz's withdrawal, there may be speculation about who may emerge as the most controversial nominee - perhaps Pete Hegseth or Robert F Kennedy Jr?  Susan Summerall Wiles, who managed the Trump Presidential campaign is being appointed as his White House Chief of Staff.  She will need all of her HR skills in working with the selected personnel, if ratified.  Assertive as the stances of certain nominees are, consensual silence abroad may a difficult reaction.

 

Specifically, the prospects of an end to humanitarian strife in the Middle East would appear to be even more remote, remembering the Biden administration's vetoing of a ceasefire motion at the United Nations Security Council.  Can his outgoing régime deliver more by building on news of a peace deal in Lebanon? 

 

One wonders if nominees like Ms Stefanik and Messrs Rubio and Waltz are aware of pleas to stop the bombing from a long list of apolitical charities such as Oxfam, Médicins sans Frontiéres (MSF), and Save the Children.  And we ask if those nominees have seen distressing televisual images of human catastrophies in Gaza and in Lebanon, innocent women and children bearing the brunt of military aggression.

 

These internationally respected charities do not feature "fake news" in their lexicons.  MSF, for example, has described factually on-the-ground the heavy bombardment in northern Gaza districts by "Israeli forces who indiscriminately attack entire areas, thereby accepting massive civilian losses.  At the same time, they are issuing evacuation orders that cannot be obeyed.  Among those who try to leave, many are exposed to arbitrary detention while others are being shot at and bombed as they flee...(which) only goes to show that Israeli forces had no intention to spare civilians and that these warnings are cosmetic." 

 

There have also been judgements from the International Criminal Court (ICC).  The ICC, for instance, recently accuses the Israeli PM and Defence minister of "criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare along with the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts."  As a concomitant, arrest warrants have been issued by the ICC.

 

Mr Zelden's ability to allow his EPA to "protect" the USA (and its neighbours) from climate change is another issue.  Given his stance, it would seem likely to be harder to protect the natural environment with a policy which is stripped of regulations and the nation withdrawn from international climate agreements.

 

The President-elect's communications director has reacted resolutely to criticisms over some nominees.  In a statement he said that 

 

     "President Trump is nominating high-calibre and extremely qualified candidates to serve in          his administration."   

 

Let's hope that in delivering a mandate to put America first, the President and his high-calibre nominees do their duty consensually to make the world a better place for all of us together.

Postscript (01Dec2024)

A newspaper article endorses (with evidence) my rhetorical question above about how American psephologists and experienced pundits so badly misjudged their research:- 

Keith Duggan (Irish Times 30 Nov 2024) refers to Kamala Harris staffers admitting that "their internal polling never found Harris to be ahead in the race;...but that nothing had led them to conclude that Trump was about to land such a comprehensive win.... We were supposed to have this information chamber (Pod Save)but instead became this cocoon where messaging has not been able to prove successful with those same voters that Donald Trump did so well with..."  

The article reveals comments from Democrat committee members complaining about "no postmortem about how we blew through $2billion in just 100 days....millions were spent on greedy consultants, celebreties, private jets"...; with another member complaining about the party being "avoiding real left-wing economic messaging because they are terrified of upsetting their corporate donors...."

© Michael McSorley 2024