Saturday February 24, while world leaders, including president Biden, were busy expressing support to Ukraine on the second anniversary of Russia’s continuing war of aggression, in the American state of South Carolina politicians and voters had different priorities. They were busy campaigning and voting in the Republican primaries to choose their candidate in the forthcoming presidential election scheduled for November 5.
Results came in quickly. As expected, Donald Trump won by a 20 percent margin over his sole challenger. Nikki Haley is a conservative but non-sectarian Republican governor of South Carolina, who was well-liked by voters who had re-elected her for a second term, and with a reputation of competence; when president, Trump had rewarded her by appointing her U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Sympathies in politics, in particular with Trump, are notoriously fickle. Without even bothering to mention Ms. Haley, after South Carolina results were known, the Trump campaign issued a one-sentence communique in typical disrespectful Trumpian form. “The primary ends tonight, and it is time to turn to the general election so we can defeat Crooked Joe”.
Such is the style of the Donald Trump 2.0 campaign. Provoke Biden. Sound an alarm on whatever he does and stick to the script. This is the approach that Trump was using in his victory speech in South Carolina and in earlier appearances addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in a Washington suburb. Reading prepared remarks off a teleprompter, even if on occasion rambling through his favorite jibes to seek empathy from the crowds.
“We’re going to be up here on Nov. 5 and we’re going to look at Joe Biden…we’re going to say, Joe, you’re fired”, he repeated, reprising his signature send-off on the TV reality show “The Apprentice”.
The trouble however, is that the irrepressible persona of “Trump the agitator”, with his chaotic style, while highly successful when “preaching to the converts”, and when securing – as it did with his motley task force of 80 million-plus MAGA followers – a hostile takeover of the old style Republican Party, now risks alienating the better-educated moderate middle class conservatives voters, as well as the dissatisfied Democrats, the floating voters and the abstainers, whose support is essential to win.
In other words, despite his chokehold on the Great Old Party and his incendiary rhetoric, and even if he will never admit it, an unhinged and aging Donald Trump even confronted with a visibly tired opponent like President Biden, is now in some danger of losing political traction.
USA Today, the lowbrow daily that acts as a sort of barometer of Middle America, soon after the South Carolina was putting out a feeler in a crude headline: “Biden’s toast. Trump’s unhinged. How about a third party ticket led by Nikki Haley?” Admittedly the former US ambassador to the UN against Trump had lost by a large margin, and she gallantly congratulated the winner. But she had achieved a respectable 40 percent of the vote. And with defiance, and to the great annoyance of Trump, she had said: “I am not a woman who quits. The race goes on”.
Reality is complicated. Three party races that split the electorate typically require a billionaire with very deep pockets, and an organization that cannot be created from zero in a matter of months. The last time that the experiment was attempted by Ross Perot, the result was Democrat Bill Clinton’s surprise victory in 1992, against the respected and competent Republican president H. W. Bush, the architect of the US-USSR summit. The Ross Perot Reform Party siphoned off nearly 20 million votes from both parties. Then sank without a trace.
Still totally fanciful, but statistically possible in theory, would be another alternative. A poll by the Marquette Law School recently found that, in a general election against President Biden, Nikki Haley would blow him out of the water by 16 points (58-42%). The statistical exercise, explained in a tongue-in-cheek note by the university, “was rigorously conducted for purely academic purposes”. Try and explain that to the perennially suntanned Mr. Trump who is carefully hiding his senescence under a spectacular leonine orange mane, and to the wispy octogenarian with pilot sunglasses who is looking forward to spending another term in the White House.
In reality, the current American obsession with the “mental acuity” of political leaders (a polite phrase to avoid rude words such as “old age” or “dementia”) is pure canard now raised in the U.S. for self-serving political aims. Clearly, the issue of advanced age and declining vitality is an important one for both Biden and Trump, as it is for any public figure. But it’s not the most important one. Gerontocracy is a problem that has always existed in all societies, both democratic and dictatorial ones. Far more fundamental than the biological age of rulers are the issues–just to name a few–of effective governance, class mobility, good education and healthcare, security and non-politicized justice.
