Trump and The United States: Observations From North of the Border

This is in response to the simple question put to me by you, my dear sister, living in America and curious to know why I, and most other Canadians, don’t like your President. So much has been written about Trump, it’s impossible to not duplicate something that has already been attempted. But here is your brother sitting in Canada, sifting through the written stuff, reeling from watching Trump’s performances on the news (and not just on CNN) for the past few years and trying to be objective about it all.

It’s sort of astounding that I find myself trying to explain my reaction at all when it seems it is something that is so obvious, so clear, so unequivocal. I am writing as a Canadian, and with some rare exceptions, I feel my opinions reflect the lot of us.

While I will not pull any punches on the man, the most curious fact about him is realizing that a significant number of people support him. I’m tempted to say that this is a symptom of something quite seriously wrong in the U.S. I’ll leave that worrisome conclusion to the end. I’ll start with what is fresh and tick off areas where I believe Trump is both a deeply flawed human being, as well as a poor President and has done your nation ill.

Inadequate handling of the COVID-19 situation

We are watching a true embarrassment unfolding with his handling of this pandemic. When the epidemic first emerged Trump dismissed concerns over the virus as a “hoax”. The NY Times and Axios revealed memos written in Jan and Feb by Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade advisor, warning him about the growing problem, apparently to no avail.

In a serious public-health crisis, the public has the right to expect the government’s chief executive to lead in a number of crucial ways: by prioritizing the problem properly, by deferring to subject-matter experts when appropriate while making key decisions in informed and sensible ways, by providing honest and careful information to the country, by calming fears and setting expectations, and by addressing mistakes and setbacks. Trump so far hasn’t passed muster on any of these metrics.

From his daily briefings (Trump has, from the start, viewed the coronavirus primarily as a media story) that are clearly political posturing, to the out and out lying on what he has done and trying to backpedal and convince he didn’t do this or say that (“we have it totally under control”; ‘I don’t take responsibility at all”) to watching the sycophants (Pence being the most embarrassing one of them all) preening and supporting him (except perhaps for Dr. Fauci), to the absurd remedies he proposes for solutions (injecting disinfectant, for goodness sake!; using the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine; or to “So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light …supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way”, etc) as a possible treatment for coronavirus symptoms), etc. A public health emergency like this one requires putting the “we” before the “me” — and with each passing day the President makes it clear he is either unwilling or unable to do that.

His disdain for multilateralism and the UN, in particular, is reflected in the U.S. not supporting a draft resolution declaring the pandemic “a threat to humanity and to international peace and security”. This would be leadership – rising to this moment of global crisis. Then go to his withdrawing millions of dollars from the World Health Organization when the world is in the middle of a crisis.

In a recent Globe and Mail article, one of Canada’s preeminent historians Margaret MacMillan writes, “It is the United States’ great misfortune that fate has provided it with a president who is so manifestly incapable of occupying the office, much less dealing with a serious crisis. Donald Trump has pretty much driven out any of those who were good at their jobs and surrounded himself with sycophants with few other discernible talents.”

[I keep trying to imagine how the U.S. would be dealing with the current COVID-19 virus if someone else was in charge. For example, Barak Obama or New York Governor Andrew Cuomo or even Hillary Clinton, who I know is such a red flag to so many Republicans but might have been well skilled at handling this crisis. Mentioning Hillary, brings up some of the excellent analysis of the countries who have best handled the crisis. The top seven are from countries who have a leader who is female: Germany (Angela Merkel), New Zealand (Jacinda Ardern), Taiwan(Tsai Ing-wen), Iceland (Katrin Jakobsdottir), Norway (Erna Solberg), Denmark (Mette Frederiksen), Finland (Sanna Marin).]

Trump’s habit of distortion and lying

What I don’t get is the seeming acceptance by the American people of his quite clearly documented distortions and lies. Joseph Goebbels said in the early 1940s, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” This is what is happening in front of the American people, and the rest of the world every day. There are objective, competent people measuring and confirming the President’s false utterances. As of early April, Trump has told 23.3 lies per day in 2020, slightly more than in 2019. Even during a pandemic, when the public needs to trust and rely on him the most, deception remains a core part of the president’s playbook. Trump’s lies are problematic because they force us to question our institutions and the value of information.

Trump was legitimately impeached by Congress:

it was apparent that he really tried to influence the President of Ukraine to say he would investigate alleged corruption by Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Withholding military aid to compel a foreign government to investigate a domestic political opponent for personal gain was his tool. It was also clear that he obstructed the official investigation into his misdeeds. The evidence was clear. I sat through all the hearings and there was no doubt in my (slightly biased) mind.

Russia meddling in the 2016 election by Trump Campaign officials inferred by Mueller:

There seems to be a significant possibility that people in Trump’s election campaign colluded with the Russians. Regarding former special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s inquiry into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, the report said that “the investigation established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer, while in other instances the Campaign officials shied away.”

Investigators “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations.” But, the report said, “[b]ecause we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct.” Factoring into the decision to not weigh in on prosecution, according to the report, was an opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel that found that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Upping the tension and rhetoric regarding China:

Trump is embarking on a dangerous trade and economic war against China where the world will suffer. Tariffs imposed are part of the ammunition. Another example close to home is the U.S. requesting that Canada arrest Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou and then seeking to extradite her to the U.S. This is almost a declaration of war on China’s business community. Of course managers should be held to account for their company’s malfeasance but to start this practice with a leading Chinese business person – rather than lots of culpable U.S. CEOs – is a stunning provocation to the Chinese government and business community. Meng is charged with violating America’s sanctions against Iran but a great number of other company’s were also, and many paid fines.

(To be clear, I’m not a great fan of this authoritarian, repressive Chinese regime, particularly their playbook of reward and punishment in international diplomacy. As well, the world is enduring a global pandemic rather than a regional one because they kept the new virus secret for weeks. But we need not be sucked into a counterproductive Cold War at this critical time.)

Trump has a disregard for international institutions and built-up norms:

The United Nations and the World Health Organization have governed international cooperation, not perfectly but effectively, for years. Trump wants to reduce U.S. funding to both. More egregious still, through U.S. control over voting rights with the IMF, they have vetoed the special drawing rights denying billions of dollars to low income countries. COVID-19 does not discriminate between rich and poor countries, and until the virus is eradicated it will imperil the health of the world’s people and the global economy alike.

Recently the U.S. blocked a vote on a UN Security Council resolution that called for a global ceasefire aimed at collectively assisting a planet devastated by the coronavirus outbreak. The U.S. did not want any reference to the WHO in the text and rejected a compromise version that didn’t directly mention the organization — and instead cited the UN’s “specialized health agencies,” according to two diplomats familiar with the process. The U.S. has similarly blocked expressions of global unity at G7 and G20 meetings due to anger about China and the WHO.

He would revoke America’s status as a signatory of the arms trade treaty regulating conventional weapons including small arms, battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships. He said in a speech (to the NRA, of course), “we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your second amendment freedom”. Trump also mischaracterizes how the commitments for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military spending work and has had harsh words regarding the financial support of allies.

Trump is a climate change denier:

Trump has been a staunch opponent of the need to address climate change, arguing for an increase in coal use and suggesting that he would withdraw the United States from a landmark agreement meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions. He replaced Obama’s Clean Power Plan, intended to sharply reduce emissions from U.S. power plants. He took the first step to weaken fuel economy standards for cars, a most important initiative for reining in the largest driver of U.S. emissions.

Trump, right after assuming office, issued a sweeping executive order directing all departments to target for elimination of any rules that restrict U.S. production of energy. He set guidance to make it more difficult to put future regulations on fossil fuel industries, and he moved to discard the use of a rigorous “social cost of carbon”, a regulatory measurement that puts a price on the future damage society will pay for every ton of carbon emitted.

Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S.from the Paris climate treaty, the agreement signed by nearly all nations to reduce fossil fuel emissions. As Derek Burney, Canada’s former ambassador to the U.S., said in a Globe and Mail article, “without re-engagement, if not leadership, from the United States, and without real commitments from other major polluters, no cure will work”.

Trump is a poor manager of the U.S. debt and deficits (this excludes the COVID-19 impact):

I will refer to the economic health of the economy later when I cover what drives people to Trump (stock market growth, healthy GDP, decent wage growth, low inflation and interest rates)but it’s important to refer to another stat: the total U.S. debt has continued to grow – to over $24 trillion from 19.6 trillion in 2016; his tax loopholes and reductions for the very rich continue to increase the annual deficits (way before virus challenges). “Booming economic growth has not been sufficient to lower the budget deficit — in fact, the deficit and Treasury borrowing are headed sharply higher, and virtually no one in Washington seems to care,” said Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon Investments.

He undermines the importance of journalism:

Trump delights in inciting crowds at his rallies by attacking the news media – “crooked media…fake news.” He feels he can call the media an “enemy of the people”. Objective and courageous news media are one of our democratic underpinnings; we undermine them at our peril. Trump is dismantling one of America’s (and the world’s) cornerstones.

Trump supports and promotes his own “fake news”:

Ironically, at the same time Trump attacks fake news, he supports it when it serves his own purpose. Witness one of his principal tools, his tweets, many of which are distortions of fact, thus feeding the fake cycle. I won’t even deign to comment on the contribution and role of Fox News.

But the power of a fake-news item does not depend on its plausibility. The power of a fake-news item depends on its target audience’s will to believe. In the autumn of 2016, many cultural conservative white Catholics strongly wished to believe that voting for Trump was consistent with their faith. Somebody provided them with a basis for that desire to believe, and the invitation was eagerly seized. In the campaign of 2016, Trump benefited from fake news disseminated by troll accounts, some Russian-sponsored. The most circulated fake-news item of 2016 claimed that Pope Francis had endorsed Trump. That item was incorrect and unlikely.

Trump’s inflames the resentments and bigotries of his base: his style feeds on this. He makes clever use of slogans. His strength as a reality TV star feeds the population that feeds off that thin gruel of entertainment, and Trump as entertainer is a role he relishes.

Effective diplomatic protocols have been upended:

In his desire to “drain the swamp” he has filled it with political appointees. Experience built over years of diplomacy has been overturned. He has placed people in positions because they donated to the party and not for expertise. Gordon Sondland, the Ambassador to the European Union is a good example, giving $1 million for the Trump inauguration and being appointed to a position he knew nothing about.

Trump’s contempt for conformity has reduced foreign policy to the erratic vagaries of his own seemingly unstable mind. Examples abound. One last fall was when he announced, out of the blue, a withdrawal of troops from northern Syria while giving the green light to Turkey to move on the country no matter the impact on the Kurds (who were instrumental in the fight against ISIS in Syria). He cancelled a state visit to Denmark over its refusal to entertain his offer to buy Greenland. (I’m not making this stuff up!)

He promises more in foreign policy than he can deliver:

While I am going to later give him credit for his non-interventionist approach regarding conflicts, a counter to that will be that his results don’t match his rhetoric. His withdrawal of troops from northern Syria created chaos. His promised major Afghan troop withdrawal hasn’t happened. There’s no deal with North Korea, no progress on peace in the Middle East. He has withdrawn the U.S from international accords.

Past loyalties count for little resulting in low levels of trust:

One involving Canada was the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum based on “national security” (an exceedingly offensive argument from a Canadian perspective) without consent of Congress. Another was his ordering in early April a halt to the export of medical gear for Canada (subsequently rescinded). Apparently Newfoundland’s famous 9/11 support meant little.

Trump skirts conventional checks the constitution designed for a potential oligarch:

He invokes executive privilege to defy congressional oversight (two examples being declaring national emergency to build his medieval wall on the border with Mexico and dismantling regime of industrial, commercial and environmental regulations). His justification for FBI director James Comey’s firing — his handling of the Clinton email scandal and Trump’s increasing lack of confidence in Comey’s ability to do his job — was completely bogus. Reports from inside the administration suggest that it’s all about the Russia investigation and that the email stuff was just a pretext. Multiple outlets have reported that Comey asked for more money for the Russia investigation, and was turned down. Comey was fired, it seems, precisely because his FBI posed a threat to Trump’s authority. Trump is doing exactly what new authoritarians do in the early stages of their leadership. (By the way Comey first learned that he had been fired from television news reports!)

Trump doesn’t seem to value (or even understand) the U.S. constitution; Republicans want to change it:

They want to get rid of automatic citizenship for people born in this country; they’re talking about policing the Internet so they can stop discussion of Trump’s lies and criminality; Trump wants to take away the power of Congress; he is talking about censoring newspapers; the farther right Supreme Court could elevate religious belief over almost any other right (and that’s a serious cutback on affirmative action, on gay people, on women, and on others because religion, as they might interpret it, is very restrictive for a lot of those groups).

Trump wants to get rid of due process for people fleeing danger; Trump does not appreciate the value of the checks and balances and the separations of power that the Constitution designed and implemented. Trump seems ignorant of the definition of ‘treason’, he fails to understand how ‘checks and balances’ work; he’s ignorant of the authority and responsibilities of the Supreme Court (he thinks it has ‘authority’ over the impeachment process); he is ignorant over the budget process, and who has authority over the budget (stealing money from the Pentagon to build his wall, etc,)

Trump’s offensive personality:

This one has to be confronted head on. I’ll start with someone else’s analysis, an articulate and witty British writer Nate White. He tried to explain where Trump’s qualities differ from those the British traditionally esteem. “He has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace”. If that wasn’t enough, he states the ultimate British critique, that Trump lacks a sense of humour. “He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty”. “And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them…There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface”. We British see this “as having no inner world, no soul”. Worse, he is a bully.

What bothers White is what really bothers me, as I said at the beginning. You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot his flaws. “His faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss”. It’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form”.. “Rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or
nastiness so stupid”.

Adding a few other characteristics to the man, it can with evidence be said that he is also animated by impulse, anger, hyperbole, vanity and revenge. Journalist and professor of journalism Andrew Cohen, said in a recent Globe and Mail article that Trump was, before impeachment, “a strongman unfazed by convention, unmoored by law and unencumbered by decorum” and that didn’t change post impeachment except that he has now beaten the rap and remains largely unaccountable as long as the Republicans control the Senate and he controls the Republicans. As Cohen says, Trump never apologizes for flouting rules and denying norms. That’s how he can blithely resist demands from Congress to summon witnesses and release documents. He simply stonewalls. (He’s done that, since assuming the presidency, regarding revealing his income tax returns. When people hide something you can be pretty confident it’s for a reason.)

Appearance and mannerisms matter. Trump trades in bombast and braggadocio. He swaggers, swells his chest, juts his chin and struts about. The long ties and strange haircut that so easily is mocked are part of it. Aids follow him subserviently and you can tell he loves it. Airforce One is always ready. So is the golf course.

Trumps skills and habits are questionable:

His work habits have been challenged. Since inauguration (to the end of 2019), Trump has spent roughly 3 out of every 10 days at a Trump property and 1 of every 5 at a Trump golf course. According to CNN’s tally, he has spent 252 days at a Trump golf club and 333 days at a Trump property as President (to the end of 2019).

There is a great deal of talk about his reading and comprehension capabilities. His use of the English language is rudimentary; his use of capitals in his tweets amusing. Trump’s ability to read and perhaps allergy to reading is among the most fully corroborated assertions of Michael Wolff’s 2018 book, Fire and Fury. Wolff quotes economic adviser Gary Cohn: “It’s worse than you can imagine … Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

He has a reported four-to-eight-hour per day television viewing habit (which, by the way, is only somewhat greater than the norm for North Americans).

Certainly there is sufficient evidence that Trump was not “self-made”. In late 2018 the New York Times completed an investigation that proved Trump received millions of dollars from his real estate developer father, Fred. And, not so incidentally, that he participated in tax fraud (being investigated; much more to come).

Trump’s use of hyperbole and childlike talk:

Some examples of many include when talking about Turkey he tweeted,”if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey…”. He has made references about “shithole countries”. When Trump was speaking at a rally in late 2018 he revealed that he “fell in love” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “I was being tough and so was he. And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love, ok? No really he wrote me beautiful letters. And they’re great letters. And then we fell in love.” Regarding questions about his mental stability, Trump has responded in a series of tweets, saying, “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart” and that his achievements in life qualified him as “not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!” He has continued to describe himself as “a very stable genius” on multiple subsequent occasions.

Trump’s misstatements and missteps earn him mockery/undermine his stature around the world:

His shaky grasp of the underlying currents means Trump is more likely to blunder on any given case, and his misstatements and missteps undermine his stature and that of the United States around the world. The world is laughing him – and at the country. There is also pity, which is almost worse.

The United States has scaled back its role on the world stage, taken actions that are undermining efforts to battle the pandemic and left the international community without a traditional global leader, according to experts, diplomats and analysts. The U.S. has declined to take a seat at virtual international meetings convened by the World Health Organization and the European Union to coordinate work on potentially lifesaving vaccines. As mentioned, the administration’s decision to halt funding for the WHO, the world body best positioned to coordinate the global response to the raging pandemic, has appalled global health officials.

He is a poor manager of people and a questionable judge of character:

Turnover in the White House, as well as Cabinet-level positions, has been extraordinary; he fires without advance warning or the courtesy of discussion or even explanation (he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via tweet!) Several Trump appointees, including Michael Flynn, Reince Priebus, Anthony Scaramucci and Tom Price have the shortest-service tenures in the history of their respective offices. His White House has seen more firings, resignations, and reassignments in its first year than any other young administration in modern history. His first-year cabinet turnover exceeded that of any other administration in the past 100 years.

Regarding his judgement, I go back to the quote also from Margaret MacMillan regarding his handling of the COVID-19 situation, where she refers to the current low quality of staff remaining. Trump admires, and compliments, a strange range of characters on the world scene, generally ones with an authoritarian bent: Kim Jong Un (North Korea), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Boris Johnson (U.K.), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey), Jair Bolsonar (Brazil) and even President Xi of China.

He has indicated he will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh. Rush for goodness sake – the quintessential trafficker in conspiracy. The same Mr Limbaugh, who has a long history of making homophobic remarks, has long been a supporter of Trump.

His misogynous attitude towards females:

This one astounds me as he receives so many female votes. Here is a man who pays off a porn star and gets her to sign a nondisclosure agreement. He also stands accused by multiple women of sexual assault. He’s the one infamous for his video-recorded comment regarding the norms of a famous man: “They let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy”. This isn’t necessarily new territory for Trump. An affair, while he was married, broke up his first marriage. In appearances on The Howard Stern Show, he frequently rated women based on their looks and desirability. In the office, according to the New York Times, his employees were subjected to “endless commentary on the female form.”

Evidence suggests Trump is a racist:

Trump has a long record as a provocateur on matters of race and ethnicity. He has called Mexicans “rapists” and proposed a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. In 2016 Trump repeatedly publicly attacked the judge who presided over Trump University class-action lawsuits. Calling the American-born Gonzalo Curiel a “Mexican,” he said Curiel was therefore biased against him. In his property rental policies, he was forced to comply with federal regulators but in so doing he clearly staked out his position on race. He was on the side of those whites who resented civil rights laws intended to redress racism. In a 1991 book by John O’Donnell, who had been president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, O’Donnell quoted Trump saying, “ Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes… Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else…Besides that, I tell you something else. I think that guy’s lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks.”

Researchers have found that disproportionately black counties “account for more than half of coronavirus cases and nearly 60 percent of deaths.” The disproportionate burden that black and Latino Americans are bearing is in part a direct result of their overrepresentation in professions where they risk exposure, and of a racial gap in wealth and income that has left them more
vulnerable to being laid off. An unpleasant possibility exists that Trump may not really care.

This, I contend, is one of his appeals to a certain segment of the country; there remains in America a serious race question that continues to simmer from its early history. It’s not just black issue, although that is serious; it affects first nations people and immigrants of all kinds. A tremendous irony considering who built the country.

Why do 35 to 40% of the American public support Trump?

This question is probably the most difficult one for Canadians (and others around the world) to understand. One of the comments I often hear is that he is admired just because he is not a politician, that they like the image often used of him going to Washington to drain the swamp. In one of my business roles I ran my company’s government affairs department. I received surveys regularly indicating the steadily declining image politicians had in the public’s mind. So I get it; stir the pot, disrupt the cosy connections, etc. But stirring the pot wears thin, when serious issues abound

Peace and prosperity are strong assets for Trump to bring into the next election. Talking of peace, Trump has avoided entangling the country in any further military conflicts, and in fact has begun a steady withdrawal of troops from places where military lives can be lost. He has said, “Great nations do not fight endless wars. The United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world.,” Non-interventionism aligns with the mood of the country.

And while there is a factual argument that U.S. prosperity began well before Trump became president, what seems to matter is what people see in the now, and that now has been quite spectacular. In particular, there has been a steady rise in the stock market, near-record unemployment lows, combined with a gross domestic product growth between 2 and 3%, decent wage growth, low inflation and interest rates. The president promised and delivered on two major economic policies that have been good for markets. Number one is the tax cuts and lowering of corporate tax rates. That theory being that this encourages more investment in the American economy. Over the past year, nominal wages for the lowest 10 percent of American workers jumped 7 percent. The growth rate for those without a high-school diploma was 9 percent. Eliminating harmful economic regulations has probably been good for American business and markets in general.

I would contend that the American psyche places tremendous value in these kinds of economic measures and are prepared to close their eyes to other distractions.

The above of course is up until the COVID-19 disaster. To speculate on the outcome at this stage is tricky. What is does for Trump’s reelection possibility will unfold.

One of my preoccupations is how people can fool themselves into a given idea. One that is perhaps promoted by simple, clever slogans about making America great, or draining the swamp, or a counter-culture warrior solving problems like protecting the nation’s workers and industry from evil (offshore goods, incoming cheap labour that takes advantage of limited American resources, etc.). Trump feeds that narrative. A quote by the French geneticist, Albert Jacquard, helps explain my point. “The first obstacle is the preconceived idea. We often only know what we are ready to see.” People see only what they are ready to see – in Trump rallies, on the internet, in White House briefings, and in Trump tweets.

Until the final emergence of Biden out of the Democratic Party presidential candidate selection process, Trump had another unlikely ally – the Democratic Party selection process itself. It wasn’t looking good though back when the various presidential candidates were tearing each other apart. When the version of the Democratic Party might well have been a flirtation with the self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and an equally left-leaning Senator Elizabeth Warren. Their ideas would have resulted in an expansion of government power into the private sector unlike never before. Trump would have loved it and would have ranted on about socialism destroying nations and all that.

Trump as a symptom of an underlying malaise in the United States:

Now to what I alluded to at the start of this analysis: where is the U.S. going? Trump is a problem, but he is only a symptom of what really is going on. Underlying are some critical factors that have been seen at one time as assets (some of them) but may now lean to liabilities (the judgement of this also depends on ones political/economic
philosophy). The America of today, I contend, is a country where:

• Rule of law is being weakened: witness as only one example the recent Justice Department, led by loyal Trump cabinet member Attorney General Bill Barr, dropping the charge against Michael Flynn – a clear politically motivated move indicating interference with the legal system
• There are inadequate checks on presidential powers: presidents (particularly Trump) often think of themselves in monarchical terms, even as they are constrained by co-equal branches of government
• A seemingly irreconcilable Democratic and Republican partisan divide exists: the U.S. system of government is characterized by stalemate right now, as it has been for a long time. (A huge example: the soul of American democracy has been wounded by the Republicans in the Senate voting not on evidence in the impeachment hearings but on party lines – with Mitt Romney being a moral light drawing on his faith and voting “guilty” on the abuse of power charge – as well as an unprecedented rejection of witnesses. Another deeply disturbing concept came out of the impeachment proceedings: his defenders argued that as president, he can do largely what he wants. If it’s in the national interest, it is not a crime. As Andrew Cohen said in his Globe article, “Alan Dershowitz peddled this, falsely, and the Republicans embraced it, slavishly.”)
• There is no responsible Republican Party: it’s hard to function in a two-party system when you have one party that has become bankrupt of ethics and the sense of norms and decencies that have generally been taken for granted. The Republican Party has gone from the party of Lincoln to essentially a party that appears to embrace white nationalism
• Serious problems exist with American democracy: many of which are embodied in the Constitution itself. This would include an electoral system that permits the election of President that does not represent a majority of the people and a Senate which is one of the least representative bodies in the world. (You don’t need to appeal to a majority of Americans any more; you can appeal just to a minority of Americans who can then begin to shape the policy for everyone through their excessive power in the Senate. Karl Rove realized you didn’t need to win all the people all the time, you just needed an electoral majority.) Woodrow Wilson (a President but also a scholar) believed that the deadlocking emanating from the doctrine of separation of powers required moving to a more parliamentary form of government
• The courts, under Trump, are moving right and are ideologically divided: the Supreme Court will be a flashpoint in the next presidential election campaign. The nine justices are deeply divided among ideological lines. The five Republican-appointed conservatives often comprise the majority (note the contentious confirmations of Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh), with the four Democratic-appointed liberals dissenting. Issues of gay rights, abortion, one person/one vote, separation of church and state (a most significant issue), etc. will continue to be challenged
• Citizens seem to have a historical hate of government: almost any government it seems, which probably springs from the country’s origins peeling away from the excesses of british colonial rule
• There is a love for all things military: for power defined by weapons, and ships and planes and all that military might require. The military production complex has to be fed, and revered; it’s also a serious financial liability
• Individual rights predominate: every man (mostly man, it seems) to himself. The COVID-19 situation has brought this into sharp focus recently (an individual’s right to engage and do as they desire clashing with an individual’s right for protection)
• Socialism is a four-letter word: the free enterprise system seems to be running amok with many getting left behind and a few being sensationally rewarded
• Money rules all with little constraint: money has become more important than values; it is a value. Is it time to relook at Keynes and say redistribution needs to be back in there as an equal good?
• Corollary – the electoral system is highly driven by money leveraging power: Super Political Action Committees (PACs) and 501(c) organizations (National Rifle Association for example) are allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts exempt from regulation nor disclosure of donor information; also candidates now are afraid of losing in a primary, more so than in a general election, because of the ability of the President or party figures to raise huge amounts of money against you. This undermines independence and individualism within the congressional system
• America’s relationships with the rest of the world have deteriorated: as long as two years ago, a Gallup poll conducted in 134 countries, faith in American leadership had plummeted to a new low of 30 percent, compared to 48 percent in 2016 while Barack Obama was president
• Anti-climate change attitudes flourish
• Fascination with and reverence for guns exists: the United States is far and away the most densely armed country in the world
• A race problem continues to exist: the legacy of slavery and post-civil war segregation gives rise to the South’s current political culture. (In a recent book, Deep Roots, authors Acharya and Blackwell state,”It is within formerly high slave areas that whites are the most likely to oppose the Democratic Party, oppose affirmative action, and express sentiments that could be construed as racially resentful.”)
• There are huge differences in the economies of States around the country: the Northeast and Pacific States lead the U.S. in high technology, innovation, higher education, well-paying jobs and per-capita income. The South lags far behind
• Automation and foreign trade have steadily eroded employment: Trump has been able to effectively mobilize an appeal at a time when technology, not trade, has been changing the economic prospects for many. But economic dislocations are only part of the story. Thirty percent of the population simply does not accept the fact that the United States has become a much more diverse country

The risk of authoritarianism:

In the past 20 years or so, we’ve started to see a new kind of creeping authoritarianism emerge in places around the world. Leaders in these kinds of countries — Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, born-again Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, and both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Putin in Russia —don’t come into power and immediately dissolve the legislature and get rid of elections. What they do is corrupt those institutions, slowly and over time, rendering legislatures powerless and elections not truly competitive. “It looks the same from the outside — there’s elections, there’s a judiciary, there’s a bureaucracy,” Sheri Berman, a professor at Barnard College says. “But the sort of power centres within those things, the people who populate them, have changed dramatically, so that … the substance of true democratic competition, true power competition, no longer exists.” In the wake of Trump’s recent actions, this creeping authoritarianism now has ominous parallels to the United States.

Two possible outcomes:

There are some in my men’s book club (made up of a bunch of quite bright, informed and articulate guys) that feel America is in the midst of an irreversible decline from the informal hegemony that the United States has enjoyed since 1945. That the forces grinding away reflect a system that’s disintegrating, that’s almost dystopian; that the checks and balances carefully thought out by the creators of the republic are collapsing. At the worst, it will be a failed state that deteriorates into revolution, or simply loses steam economically and loses leadership in world affairs, relinquishing this to China or whatever.

My son Brendan, when he read a draft of this tome, wrote “the US of its own myths is disintegrating from inside as some of its pillars are undermined; the US has fallen in the eyes of the world and on its way to awkward irrelevance in many realms that aren’t military or economic…and that one may change if the pandemic implodes their economy; and the world is decidedly a nastier, more unstable, less safe and dirtier place than it would be without today’s version of the US. So America is worse inside, and worse outside.”

Myself, I think the decline can be halted, but it’s going to take some Churchillian-like figure (not Biden so don’t hold your breath; maybe even a Merkel clone). There is a trap that shorter trends can be mistaken for historical inevitabilities. The Americans have shown over history an amazing tolerance for diversity, innovation, resiliency and drive. They remain huge in economic terms; they have education and technology strengths and their military is truly powerful. At least one-third of the population is strongly opposed to the current direction and another third that can be swayed. Rejigging democracy and the free enterprise system can be done; they’re powerful concepts. Some political reforms need to be made in managing the impact of money on the electoral and economic system plus how candidates get elected. American power rests on a sturdy economic and military foundation that took many generations to build. If Trump is elected to a second term, reversing some of his damage will be difficult. However, it will take more than one president to destroy it.

Postscript extracted from earlier writing in my autobiography”

(Note: I wrote the following over 10 years ago and included it in my autobiography. The interesting thing is that most of it stands the test of time. The issues are the same, and much of the data correct when testing for currency. )

Leonard Cohen captured it succinctly in his song Democracy: the United States is “the cradle of the best and worst”. GDP, population size and politics make it an easy target. There are so many things about the people that can be lauded, from their early acceptance of Old World dissidents to the entrepreneurial free enterprise fervour that exists, through to its great political systems and traditions.

It’s risky to make generalizations, as they can’t be applied to specifics – although often generalizations have a ring of truth. On both a specific and general basis I find the America people friendly and hospitable. This is especially true in their service industries. There are, however, sides to the United States that cause me worry. I want to be careful in not falling into the typical anti-American streak we have here in Canada (Canada’s state religion, as historian Jack Granatstein calls it) but despite our similarities we have some important distinctions. The opportunity to live in the United States as I have for over four years, on two separate occasions, plus having extensive business and pleasure travel through forty-eight of their fifty states has provided me a certain perspective.

The issue of literacy is a concerning one. According to Chris Hedges in his diatribe, Empire of Illusion – The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, nearly a third of the U.S. population is illiterate or barely literate. Fully one third of high school grads never read another book for the rest of their lives and neither do 42 percent of college grads! In 2007, 80 percent of families did not buy or read a book. Hedges passionately argues that the U.S. culture is imploding, that the population is severing itself from a literate, print-based world – a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas – for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans, and a celebration of violence. (Trump connection: To understand the Trump phenomena one has to face the reality that 35 to 40% of the US actually voted for him. The make-up of this cadre is quite a mixed one. It is tempting to say only the less educated did, and they did. This is one of Trump’s constituencies. There are others, to be sure.)

It amazes me that half of all Americans live within fifty miles of their birthplace. The percentage of Americans possessing a passport is quite modest – only 25 to 30 percent versus over 50 percent for Canadians, according to Maclean’s magazine. (Another reliable source puts the American number at one in eight holding a passport!).

According to Frank Graves, president of Ekos Research Associates, Americans are much more ideological than Canadians. “They tenaciously hold on to their ideological orientations and they are much more conservative, much more moral, with more religiosity and so forth.” (Trump connection: another cadre that support Trump is the deeply religious.)

Religiously the United States is a first-world anomaly. While the number of people in Europe attending church and professing a religious affiliation is declining, the United States is headed dramatically in the other direction. Religion dominates directly or subtly American political affairs. There appears to be a more “in your face” approach to religion, from big
roadside signs (“Become an organ donor; give Jesus your heart”), to bumper stickers. The Canadian religious aren’t so intrusive.

In Canada, 20 percent of our population acknowledges some regular and active church affiliation. In the United States, the number is over 80 percent. One of the realities when talking about Americans is that they would describe themselves as a “Christian” nation, perhaps the most professedly Christian of the developed nations. Over 85 percent of Americans call themselves Christians and 75 percent claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis.

The problem is that it appears to be the least Christian in its behaviour. A Harper’s article pointed out that the United States ranks second to last among developed countries in government foreign aid (per capita), nearly 18 percent of American children live in poverty (vs. 8 percent for Sweden!), and on many other fronts they come in nearly last among the rich nations (childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to preschool, etc.)

America is also the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of Europe, prison populations greater than six times that of other rich nations (it has the world’s highest rate of incarceration with one person in one hundred and thirty in jail) and it remains the only Western democracy that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest. (Only China and Iran outdo America in executions.)

To further the potential carnage they continue their fascination and almost obsession with guns. Current estimate is there are two hundred million of them in private hands with about hal of them handguns. This makes the United States far and away the most densely armed country in the world! In June 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense in their homes. This struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns while supporting the Second Amendment, which reads rather confusingly, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The American health care system is crumbling. Some forty-six million Americans have no coverage and twenty-five million are underinsured. Canadians pay 40 percent less for drugs Administration expenses swallow up 31 percent of American total costs vs. one fifth of that in Canada. The health care debate has widened further the political schisms that exist.

In my opinion one of the strongest American characteristics is that of love of self. It comes down to their focus internally – a fact supported by an extraordinary statistic. Threequarters of Americans surveyed believe the Bible teaches, “God helps those who help themselves”. In fact, Ben Franklin uttered this phrase and the wisdom is not Biblical, it’s counter-Biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbour.

Another astonishing statistic about the United States: a recent Gallup Poll revealed that 53% of Americans are actually creationists, i.e. they think the creation myth in the Bible is literally true! As Sam Harris said in his book Letter to a Christian Nation, “Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of earth, more than half of our neighbours believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago.” In America, if it were put to a vote, notions of “intelligent design” (that cutely repackaged, and misleading, terminology now used by the creationists) would defeat the science of biology by nearly three to one!

Canada and France top the charts of countries wanting religion and government kept separate. However only 55 percent of Americans (compared to 71 percent of Canadians“completely agree” that religion and government should be kept separate.

We share a long border on this huge continent. President John Kennedy understood the dynamics with his perspective. In a March 17, 1961 speech before the Canadian Parliament he said that we share a continent where “geography has made us neighbours, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies”. However, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau highlights his take in that often-repeated quote, “Living next to the United States is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

We do get somewhat sensitive to this elephant to our south as size can lever situations dramatically e.g. the 2008 sub prime mortgage debacle, the softwood lumber situation, the Great Lakes water challenges, Arctic sovereignty, etc. Still today, the U.S. after publicly challenging our sovereignty in 1971 by announcing, without so much as a by-your-leave to Canada, that the American supertanker SS Manhattan would make a trip through the Northwest Passage, conspicuously refuses to ask permission to enter Canadian territory. Ironically, the U.S. is, for the moment, the only serious threat to our Arctic sovereignty (as well as Russia) and at the very same time it is our defender of last resort.

There is a fiercely ideological, well-financed and media-savvy U.S. right-wing. The most obvious of the right-wing media outlets is Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News TV. Fox has allowed those on the margins to move into the mainstream. Murdoch’s tabloid tastes have allowed the public discourse to dissolve into a “puerile, polarized junkfest”. Thank goodness Canada hasn’t yet descended so low (partly because we have the CBC and partly because our conservative commentators are in no way comparable to the Limbaughs, Becks and O’Reillys.)

Fox worries about the country going “socialist”. It’s a paranoid style of politics, epitomized by the 1950’s witch-hunt against Communists inside the U.S. government-led Republican senator Joseph McCarthy. When Obama was President his agenda enraged this segment.

This highly polarized political system has delivered the largest government debt in human history. It has shifted the country from being the largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation. Yearly deficits now surpass one trillion dollars and they are facing big unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. America is militarily stretched around the world and no party has the courage to curb defense spending. Any serious analyst of the American fiscal dilemma knows that the deficit/debt challenge can only be met by higher taxes and reduced government spending. Neither can command a political majority.

Really America has not been successful in any significant way these past few decades in promoting democratization around the world. It also wasn’t successful in lining up support for the Iraq war. Then there is this much broader feeling of anti-Americanism throughout the world, that the United States is just too powerful and has to be cut down in size. (Trump connection: One thing Trump can be credited with is trying to reduce the export of democracy U.S. version to other countries by withdrawing troops from the world stage, Afghanistan in particular. However he hasn’t gone the next step and simply provided support to the groups in those countries that
want to move in that direction.)

Despite our complaints with Canadian media, it is far less sensationalistic and fatuously flag-waving than that south of the border. I lived through the interminable Richard Nixon situation in the early seventies and many other examples exist: the Monika Lewinsky, Bill Clinton and Terry Schiavo sagas, the O.J. Simpson trial coverage, CNN’s minute-by-biased minute of “live with breaking news” coverage of the Iraq war, the death and maudlin funeral of Michael Jackson, the transgressions of Tiger Woods, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (and now the almost total consuming of media outlets in the COVID-19 pandemic). All this underlies how ingrained the public loves the narrative of catastrophe.

The above of course is not a balanced view. It takes little into account of the protection the United States gives to Canada militarily, the beautiful and varied country and the usually friendly often effusive citizens who have great amour-propre regarding their place in a nation that has been so mighty, successful and influential in the world.

America is key to our economic prosperity. And for all its flaws, it remains the best hope for encouraging democracy abroad. We are not a great power and likely will not become one Post the Second World War, Europe (and along with it, Canada) owes a tremendous amount to the United States as a result of the Marshall Plan. Rather than reducing Europe to an imperial dependency it restored her as a major trading partner. As Tony Judt stated in his monumental book Postwar: a History of Europe Since 1945, the “pall of fear hanging over Europe in 1947 was preparing the continent to fall, like a ripe fruit, into Stalin’s hands”. We were protected by Washington then, now and now I expect on into the future.

(Trump connection: Republicans might cringe to hear this but your last president, Barack Obama, presented an ability to rise above old American prejudices and exhibit a broad global viewpoint more so than one based on narrow domestic biases. As Andrew Martin said in the Globe and Mail, “He is a moderate who favours conciliation over confrontation. He is…a multilateralist and a multiculturalist. He pursues nuclear disarmament and a health care system like ours. He stands up against climate-change deniers. And he is not blinded by any sense of American superiority or muscle-flexing Manifest Destiny or fatuous conceit that he is carrying out the will of God.”)