(First published in The Dominion Post, April 29.)
You have to say this much for Donald Trump: no aspirant for
political office in America has created so much interest in distant New
Zealand.
In fact you’d probably have to go as far back as 1964, to the
contest between Lyndon Johnson and his arch-conservative Republican rival Barry
Goldwater, to find a US presidential election that aroused more interest worldwide.
Trump can take credit for that, if nothing else.
The difference with 1964, of course, is that he isn’t even
the candidate yet. The Republican convention that will choose the party’s
nominee is still three months away, but already Trump is the subject of
conversation around the water coolers (or would be, if our workplaces had water
coolers).
New Zealanders have watched the rise and rise of Trump with fascinated
loathing and horrified disbelief. Distaste for him cuts across the usual
political boundaries.
A recent UMR poll found that 82 per cent of National Party
voters would back Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over Trump. Even if it
came down to a choice between Trump and Clinton’s “socialist” rival Bernie
Sanders, National voters would support Sanders by a margin of 76 to 13 per
cent.
New Zealanders can’t understand why so many Americans seem
to love an uncouth sideshow barker. It tends to reinforce the common perception
that all Americans are crass and ignorant. But America wouldn’t be the world’s
strongest economic power, and the pacesetter in every field from technology
through to art and entertainment, if it were populated by idiots.
We tend to forget that voting in the presidential primaries
involves a relatively small number of people, and that Trump’s backing comes from
a disillusioned faction within that minority. Far more Americans dislike him
than like him.
A better picture of his standing among Americans generally
is provided by an NBC-WSJ poll earlier this month that showed only 24 per cent
of respondents gave him a positive rating compared with 65 per cent who saw him
in a negative light.
So Americans don’t want Trump. They don’t want Clinton
either, judging by the same poll which gave her a 56 per cent negative rating. Only
32 per cent liked her.
That leaves us with a puzzling question: how can a country
so rich in human capital deliver such a dispiriting set of candidates for the
most powerful office in the world?
You have to wonder whether we’re witnessing a failure of
democracy. It’s not working the way it’s supposed to.
Trump and Clinton are polar opposites politically, but in
their own way, each represents a democratic malfunction.
Clinton is the consummate political insider – a cold,
calculating, slippery, artful schmoozer. Polls show that Americans don’t trust
her, and neither should they. She can barely shut her closet door for all the skeletons
rattling around inside.
Trump, on the other hand, makes a virtue of being an outsider.
He feeds off a deep and widespread sense of alienation.
By posing as a man of the people, which he demonstrably is
not, he has harnessed resentment of the political elite. Unfortunately, not
being part of the political establishment doesn’t, by itself, give him
presidential credentials.
And what of the other contenders? There’s Sanders, whose pitiful
ignorance on crucial policy issues was shockingly exposed in a recent newspaper
interview. And then there’s Ted Cruz, a repugnant Texan fundamentalist who
manages, against the odds, to be even less attractive than Trump.
How has it come to this? How could American voters be faced
with a choice between candidates so few of them want?
And what happened to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt and John F Kennedy? All articulated noble visions for their
country, even if their personal lives – especially in the case of the alley-cat
JFK – didn’t always bear close scrutiny. But we’ve heard little in this
presidential campaign that has been either noble or visionary.
Democracy seems to be on its knees in Australia, too, where
the brazenly opportunistic Malcolm Turnbull seized power last year from a
wounded Tony Abbott and is now floundering in the polls himself, raising the
prospect of yet more political convulsions in a country that’s starting to make
Italy look like a model of stability.
There are common factors here. Democracy, supposedly the
property of the people, has been hijacked. Power now resides with elites, factions,
spin merchants, wealthy donors, lobbyists and politically partisan media
outlets.
It hasn’t happened here, at least not on the same scale –
but that’s not to say it won’t.
