By DANIEL AFONSO DA SILVA*
Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris seem up to the challenge
Mario Vargas Llosa stated the AIDS versus cancer dilemma in the electoral disputes of the present century. Essentially after the global financial crisis of 2008, for him and for everyone, the impotence, inadequacy and inconsistency of the majority of candidates for major positions in the face of today's growing challenges became obvious.
In the North American case, the 2008 presidential elections inaugurated the end of momentum politicians of the hope of progressive social and economic gains and the beginning of a momentum Hamlet, of to be or not to be, of indifference towards political agents.
Meanwhile, the victory of President Barack Obama had sparked a confused and frenzied furor. The former senator from Illinois was a spiritual heir to Martin Luther King Jr., ascending to the highest office in the nation. The legacy of his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, seemed utterly disastrous. The “war on terror” – initially supported almost unanimously by the American people – was now, in 2008, the object of all sorts of condemnation, also almost unanimously. The unrest in Iraq and the unrest in Afghanistan were producing impressive negative externalities.
The older ones remembered the dilemmas in Vietnam. The younger ones still had the indifference towards Rwanda in their retinas. And both old and young could not understand this immense impotence of their power.
The links between the reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks and the crisis in subprime started in 2007. But it seemed quite clear that the Republicans – and their neoconservative supporters – should not remain in power. So a turn to the Democrats was almost an imperative for new times. A necessary alternation. The change between bellicose burlesque and calculated charm.
And so it was done.
The senator from Illinois had all the attributes needed for the new times. He was a Democrat and sincerely charming. A perfect contrast to his predecessor and the warmongering and ill-mannered memory of presidents from the Republican clan since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
General-President Dwight D. Eisenhower's reason for being was the deep and penetrating presence of the image of American bravery in the total wars against Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and against Hirohito in the Pacific. The trauma of Pearl Harbor still touched hearts. The savagery of the conflicts did not either. So the Eisenhower presidency was a kind of quintessence of the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies. A form of continuation with the aim of overcoming and safely ending the momentum most tragic of the 1929th century, which ranged from the XNUMX crisis to the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For all these reasons, it was under the Eisenhower period, around 1955, that the Americans finally managed to achieve the New Deal inaugurated by President Franklin Roosevelt and, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Thirty Glorious Years also affirmed unprecedented levels of prosperity for Europeans. The land of ruins forged by battles began to become a memory in the Old World.
Despite the colonial quarrels and despite the post-colonial disappointments. Those who led the English to simply subvert the premises of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, abandon the colonial domains and give up the remorse of looking back; and, among the French, in the opposite direction, those who kept them clinging to the colonies until the total collapse of the political regime that forced the recall of General de Gaulle to command the country. Which, clearly, in synergy, allowed the confirmation and expansion of the presence and influence of the North Americans throughout the world. Ending the short reins and rehabilitating the charm of the democrats as leitmotiv of the North American nation through the election of John F. Kennedy.
As is well-known, President Kennedy was neither as shy nor as cultured as President Wilson, nor as fearless or as determined as President Roosevelt. However, he combined and exploited their restrained charm. And that is why he was relevant. After him, Jackie's husband was only Bill Clinton, since Jimmy Carter was too sincere to be empathetic and too hesitant to be truly charming.
Whatever one may say or think about President Bill Clinton, his presidency allowed for an extraordinary breath of fresh air in American policy – especially foreign policy. Just like President Kennedy, he took office after a storm. In this case, after the Wall and after the implosion of the Soviet Union.
This allowed him to work on his charm. It wasn’t just any charm, but the kind of charm that Talleyrand-Périgord called cynicism. The same cynicism that had been flowing through the veins of Democrats since the dawn of time. From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison to James Monroe and John Q. Adams – who were both Republicans and Democrats – all the way to Bill Clinton.
Everyone, from Jefferson to Clinton, was charming by vocation and cynical by conviction. Cynical in the deepest sense of the expression that suggests cynicism as sailing against the wind. In this specific case, in opposition to the aesthetics of the Republicans who have always been, out of pragmatism, more sanguine, more truculent, less cerebral and less charming.
After President Bill Clinton came President Barack Obama, who succeeded George W. Bush, making clear the tension between styles. On one side, Bush's almost rudeness and, on the other, Barack Obama's almost excessive delicacy. The problem was that, after the 2008 crisis, these codes seemed to have ceased to apply. The agony of the crisis shattered the foundations and references of this distinction. President Obama even tried, but failed to rehabilitate President Roosevelt's presence of mind. His easy smile and his calibrated speech were reminiscent of President Kennedy. But, unfortunately, not in his magnanimous points. On the contrary, the Kennedy embodied by Barack Obama was very different from the one who fought with Khrushchev for the fate of Washington from Havana and Moscow from Ankara, and very close to that fragile family man caught in adultery.
It may not seem like it, but it was exactly like that. A charm without content or consequence.
Otherwise, see that, on the international level, Barack Obama inaugurated his true international epic in Cairo with a strong inclination towards stabilizing the relations of the United States and the West with the Middle East, having that famous speech of his On a new beginning as a spearhead. A speech that was received as memorable everywhere. But, as time went by, it completely dissolved into thin air. Because, from 2009 onwards, in contrast to the American president's design, the Middle East became more and more troubled.
Initially, internally. Especially with the Arab Spring, which stained all the main regimes in the region with indecision and instability. The Syrian regime is the perfect example. Externally, it is no different, with the profusion of religious, spiritual and cultural radicalism everywhere. The Islamic State is the greatest example of dissent.
Focusing on Europe, in the same vein, the Obama presidency's stance ranged from euphoria to frustration. He directly applied the "every man for himself" approach to the old world countrymen who were suffering from the euro crisis. This led to boundless unease among European leaders. Among the French, in particular. It is always worth remembering that France, under the presidency of Jacques Chirac, said "no" to the American adventure in Iraq in 2003, thus vetoing the legitimacy of the use of force in that region of the Middle East in the United Nations Security Council.
Which produced, in contrast, all sorts of reprisals from the White House against the Elysium. Making France and the French almost person non grata in the American political kaleidoscope under George W. Bush, notably after his re-election in 2004. In this way, Barack Obama's election projected a cooling of relations between the French and the Americans. But no.
Aesthetically, it was pleasing to see President Barack Obama flanked by President Nicolas Sarkozy – as well as by Chancellor Angela Merkel or Prime Minister Gordon Brown. But in the real world, appearances were neither charming nor deceiving.
Coming out of the euro crisis, the geostrategic offensive against Iran was dehydrated in collusion with Europeans. But the regime change in Libya, with the full support of President Obama, simply threw the Europeans and their Mediterranean into the unknown. France was once again among the most penalized.
Then came the justice has been done, with the interception of Osama Bin Laden, which allowed the Democrats to be re-elected in 2012, as the Americans had no choice but to reciprocate.
But something was not right in the interaction between Washington and the rest of the country. Yes, we can The campaign that led to the Democratic victory in 2008 seemed to have lost all of its strength. And for a simple reason: President Obama's first term had failed to raise the morale of American society. His charm was, deep down, empty. Without truth and, who knows, not even honesty.
The middle class had been indelibly hurt by the 2008 financial crisis, and incredibly, no one in Washington seemed to notice. Even with the persistence of Occupy Wall Street. A persistence that, when reviewed carefully, indicated the end of an intrasocial pact forged between the generations of New Dell, from Vietnam and the “tear down this wall" of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Where the nuclear issue was, yes, pennies, while the protests were about the battle of the 99% versus the 1%. But the essential factor involved a dystopia that buried Americans in the Argentine syndrome of let everyone go.
Thus, it was the first time in the history of the United States that the protests – contrary to all previous ones – fueled negative emotions. Very different from the civil rights protests of the 1960s and 1970s, which had been dramatic, but not as gloomy as the current ones.
Therefore, after 2008, something very profound and worrying was happening. Something that changed the ethos, pathos and the Logos of the Americans. Directly reflecting on electoral dynamics, on the essence of voting and, frankly, on the nature of the political system itself. Making the supposed charm of the Democrats almost a sibling of the supposed truculence of the Republicans. With the difference that the truculence had shades of truth.
With all this, voters – not to mention American citizens – seemed to be losing their souls. Those from the most historically marginalized segments of society – among them, African-Americans and Latin Americans – were the ones most directly affected by the dark news. They were the ones who were most penalized by social demotion and demoralization. And they were also the greatest objects of all the fury of the establishment, who, in their own way, also saw the ground slip away from under their feet after 2008.
In the face of all this, the main promise of the first black American president, which was to build a post-racial society, has become a pipe dream – not to say, an electoral fraud. In the same way that, abroad, the paving of a post-imperial era has hit the wall and gone up to the roof. Demonstrating that the Barack Obama presidency was incapable of restoring the social welfare enthroned in the presence of President Roosevelt and incapable of giving tone to the Wilsonian multilateralism that inspired an international society aspiring to the status of an “international community”. Obama, therefore, failed wholesale and failed retail. Not solely and entirely through his fault. But due to the generalized insensitivity to the changing times.
Barack Obama's presidency thus frustrated the Democratic tradition and called into question the completeness of the American political system's ability to produce concrete solutions to society's hardships. Making charm – as well as words and gestures – seem out of place. For it was the first time in recent American history that the good-naturedness of a Democratic presidency failed to soothe the emotional pain of the population – as Wilson, Roosevelt and Clinton did – and, as a result, opened a safe passage to the unknown, which would take shape with Donald J. Trump.
Thus, no Democratic presidency in the United States has been as Shakespearean as that of Barack Obama, because no other has so clearly demonstrated the power of Shylock's adage to Antonio, the merchant of Venice, who said that “billds could not be paid by words” [words do not pay debts]. And, in this case, neither words nor charm. Which has fueled unprecedented despair among Americans, who would find refuge in Donald J. Trump.
Donald J. Trump, strictly speaking, has never been a Democrat or a Republican. And, if you like, he has never been a politician either. The tycoon has always been a gambler. A typical exploiter of human misery. One who speculates and bets to win. Especially in scenarios of despair and pain, such as the one opened up by the 2008 crisis.
Of all luck, even outsider, he needed to nestle into a party. Which, at the time, was the Republican.
Once a Republican, the venerated entertainer had to join the Republican ranks and forge an aesthetic stance that was contrary to that of the Democrats. And so he did. But no one could have imagined that he would do so in such a forceful and magnanimous way.
It would be worth going back to the beginning and calmly observing Donald Trump's political rise from the Republican primaries, to the battles against Hillary Clinton, to his electoral success in 2015-2016. Everything there was different. Given the strength of the moment, that campaign envisioned a spiritual and moral violence superior and unmatched to any other electoral campaign in the United States or in any other Western democracy.
THE MAGA – Make America Great Again – it wasn't just a slogan. It was a matter of faith, which led Donald Trump to transform the campaign into an existential clash, like a Last Judgment, a battle of the end of times. That was what it was all about.
Once elected, everything that was seen in the transatlantic tension with the Europeans, in the shameless affection for Russia, in the uninhibited affection for Israel, in the depoliticization of tensions in the Middle East through the Abraham Accords, in the real currency war with China and in the skirmishes with North Korea was an explicit demonstration of the urgency of a new era that, perhaps, only Donald Trump took seriously to be born.
That is, different from the other elements of the establishment, Donald Trump, perhaps, was the only one to understand the deep pain that the hysteresis of the 2008 financial crisis had caused throughout American society.
And, knowing this, he was, consciously, the first to decisively dare to transgress all codes and decorums. For, in truth, these codes and decorums were already fading. For all this, the compulsiveness of his campaign and presidency was so disruptive.
He noticed that a society that was extremely hurt, broken, fractured and deprived of its positive expectations refused to revive old dreams. It wanted something new. With quick solutions. Even if dramatic, clumsy and untimely. Which shows that Donald Trump was not succeeding in a vacuum. Quite the opposite. He was the product of an unprecedented multidimensional structural crisis, which was leading Americans to terminal entropy.
Worse than in 1917, when the Americans crossed the Atlantic to contain the people of Moscow. Worse than in 1929, when misery and poverty knocked on everyone's doors indiscriminately. Worse than in 1941, when the uncertain battles to contain fascists and Nazis around the world began. Worse than the Watergate crisis under Richard Nixon and worse than in the discomfort general at the moment Jimmy Carter. Worse than the “9/11” shock.
Donald Trump thus noted the gravity of it all and internalized that “this time is different".
Different because the triumphant globalization after 1989-1991 turned out to be a nightmare in the 2008 crisis and brought to the consciousness of the people a feeling of intense and relentless defeat and humiliation. Leading all the generations that believed in the planetary dividends of UN peace, in the empire of the dollar and in the multilateralism orchestrated from New York and Washington to start sailing against the wind. After 2008, suddenly, China alone seemed to be accelerating to take the position of hegemonic country in the international system.
The BRICS grouping was imprinting its revisionist impetus on everything that Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and De Gaulle had built with great difficulty after the 1941 Atlantic Charter. President Hugo Chávez's Venezuela was demoralizing the order as much as the Castro brothers' Cuba. President Dilma Rousseff's Brazil, under the shadow of President Lula da Silva, continued to organize the peripheries in the Americas and Africa. The Europeans, for their part, were questioning the validity of the transatlantic alliance by consciously turning to Asia.
In short, it was a set of evidence that brought a bitter taste of irrelevance to the crew of the empire. Not simply because of the affirmation of a post-American world, but because of the clear vision of the impotence, internal and external, of the last superpower.
And with all this, Donald Trump simulated the condition of a martyr. Throwing himself into sacrifice. Like a true Quixote. Confronting avatars. Much worse than simple windmills. Which was popular and convinced important parts of North American society who saw in Trump the quintessence of the spirit of the Founding Fathers through your America First and your MAGA – Make America Great Again, very powerful rhetorical strategies in the rehabilitation of the essence of American Dream.
This is the merit of Donald J. Trump. Like it or not. Condemn him or applaud him. But he served and was perceived as a genuine mobilizer of ethos of the nation. But the pandemic came and messed everything up.
The mounting deaths and the clash between staying home and staying calm made the situation morally delicate and challenging for Donald Trump. No one in the entire world knew quite how to act. Donald Trump, even less so. Which, out of desperation, opened a solid path for the return of the Democrats with the election of Joe Biden.
It has lost its meaning to assert that the US elections are controversial and contestable. But the 2020 elections went even further. They became bloody. To the point of leading to the assault on the Capitol.
There is no doubt that the Capitol desecrators were Trumpists nesting in fragments of a lunatic fringe. However, outside the Capitol there were more right-minded people extraordinarily shocked by the defeat of their champion and also willing to barbarize the sacred oracle of the guides of democracy in america. Once again demonstrating that the spirit of let everyone go had taken over everything. That the status quo ante had lost its valence. And that the starched charm of the Democrats was nothing more than an anachronism.
But finally, they voted and elected Joe Biden. But not to forget Donald Trump, but to slow down and breathe. Donald Trump had gone too far, too fast and too deep. And now, in the midst of the pandemic, everyone was not only desperate, but also confused.
Four years have passed. Joe Biden's presidency has done what it did. It has restored some charm and decorum to public administration. But Americans have not been convinced of its value. Donald Trump has continued to rely on immense popular support. And now he is back in the race as the favorite. Against Joe Biden, against Kamala Harris and against everyone.
By any measure, Joe Biden's legacy is reminiscent of Barack Obama's: disastrous. Americans continue to suffer existential hardships and the Democrats have offered them charm – read: band aid for hemorrhaging. Galvanizing the return of Donald Trump. Which led the Democrats to find a way to remove Joe Biden from the race in favor of Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris was not chosen because she is a woman, black, vice president or because she has some charm. Quite the opposite. She was chosen because she was the only one capable of sincerely shedding her modesty, mirroring Trump and Trump-ifying the Democratic campaign.
What initially seemed promising, but over time, in just a few weeks, became a pipe dream and the dispute remains very close. Just like those between Trump versus Hillary and Trump versus Biden. But now, much more complex than before. Social issues remain important in the spectrum of American voters. But, after the pandemic, planetary issues have become the object of internal deliberation and are presented, essentially, in the form of take care the continuation of the conflict in Eurasia, the Middle East and the dismantling of regimes in Europe?
It should be noted that the erosion of European democracies – as occurred in the 1930s and 1940s – does not cleanse the natural flow of American society. Everyone knows this, but only now have Americans become aware of it. The maintenance of high tension in the eternal wars in the Middle East has also become a national issue. And what about the Russian-Ukrainian contraction?
Everything has changed and emerged as existential questions. No longer simply about the economy, stupid! To become a set of much more comprehensive and complex premises involving geopolitics, technology, the digitalization of life, the climate, spirituality, the post-2008 and post-pandemic eras.
In other words, everything has become much more desperate than in Obama’s reelection elections in 2008 and 2012, in Trump’s election in 2016, and in Biden’s election in 2020. So much so that now neither Trump nor Kamala seem to be up to the challenge. Which led the eminent Robert Paxton to come out of silence to state that “if Trump wins, it will be horrible. And if he loses, it will also be horrible.”
Here's the dilemma.
AIDS versus cancer.”To be or not to be”. Something smells very bad in the state of Denmark.
*Daniel Afonso da Silva Professor of History at the Federal University of Grande Dourados. author of Far beyond Blue Eyes and other writings on contemporary international relations (APGIQ). [https://amzn.to/3ZJcVdk]
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