Week 26: Fighting Fire With Frailty
Week 26: Fighting Fire With Frailty
Returning to Sweden, and the enfeebled nature of American politics
After returning to Melbourne for a brief pitstop following my trip to Taiwan, I am now back in Sweden. For the past few years I have been dividing my time between Melbourne and the Swedish town of Kristianstad (plus six months in Iceland in 2021). The ability to do so is an enormous privilege, as is my employer’s flexibility with allowing me to do (thank you very much if you are reading).
While I have become more familiar with the practicalities of Sweden (although my Swedish is still rubbish), I haven’t used the opportunity to truly deepen my knowledge of the country’s politics and foreign policy. Or gain a good understanding of the economic interests of the town I’m living in. So that is something I wish to pursue over the next few months – reaching out to the local council, as well as academics and think tanks to get a better understanding of the country (and hopefully get some article ideas).
Alongside this, I hope to use the opportunity of being close to everything to seek ideas within Europe as well. For a Melburnian, this is an extraordinary luxury. There nearest international destinations for me are Auckland at 3.5 hours away, or Jakarta at a bit over 7. Being able to move around by train or ferry is incredible. As is not being physically ruined by changing countries.
I had wanted to be in the United Kingdom for this week’s election, as UK politics remains a great love of mine from having lived in London as a younger man (and I still gravitate towards the UK media). But unfortunately, Rishi Sunak called the election too early for me to organise it, so I’ll have to follow proceedings from Sweden. But I should have a lot to say about it next week regardless.
US Politics is Fragile, Not Just Biden
This week the all consuming story has been the age and frailty of Joe Biden. I hate the cynicism, negativity and relentless bad faith of modern politics, and so have tended to avoid engaging with this issue for fear of giving oxygen to a lot of the nastiness that has become public discourse. However, after Biden debate performance I do think there are some issues here that need serious contemplation.
The US presidential election is not solely about winning in November, it is also about governing for the four years from 2025. An 81 year old man is not going to be more spritely and lucid in 2029 than he is today. It is not cruel to consider this a concern.
Of course, there is the extraordinary problem of that US elections are no longer normal. As a compulsive liar and a man who only understands the world in terms of what he wants in the next five minutes, Donald Trump poses a threat to the US constitution and political structure. But also with his fondness for dictators, disdain for long-standing US policy, and hostility to rules and norms he is also a threat to countries that rely on these rules and norms. He presents an enormous opportunity to authoritarian and revisionist actors (as I’ve previously written, the alternative to the current rules and norms is almost definitely something WAY worse).
The Republican Party might like to claim that it is “tough on China”, but this is just great power chest-beating. As a party, the Republicans are transforming themselves into the same thing as the Chinese Communist Party. A Trump victory will consolidate and accelerate this authoritarianism. A Trump II White House will be less likely to defend international principles when its only principle will be loyalty to Trump.
That the world survived Trump I does not mean that it will survive Trump II. He will return to the White House more vengeful and erratic, and surrounded by vicious goons salivating to do his bidding. He knows what he needs to do now to enhance his personal power. Trump I was the test-run.
Trump is a central element in the radical, turbulent forces that have emerged globally. Forces that trade in fire, that lust for cruelty and chaos. And in their path stands a feeble 81 year old man. It feels weak. A straw house for the wolves to easily blow over.
Of course, Biden was able to defeat these forces once, however that doesn’t mean he’s the only person who it capable of doing it. And he’s clearly running out of natural time to be effective as this bulwark.
This is obviously giving everyone a lot of anxiety. There has been a media meltdown over the past few days after the debate. Although the Philadelphia Inquirer got to the point everyone seems to be overlooking:
“But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office. In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.”
Yet, both concerns can be true. And here I can’t help seeing this as a failure of America’s political system and structures. Parliamentary systems may often seem brutal in the way they replace party leaders (including sitting prime ministers), but they have a mechanism for protecting the system as a whole. If someone is unfit to be a party leader in the morning you can have a new one in place by the afternoon. The party has – and should have – far greater power than an individual politician.
This is the role of political parties. The Republican Party has made the choice to abdicate the responsibility of being a political party and submit itself to a single figure. The Democratic Party should not be doing the same. The reasons may be different – no-one is suggesting there is a sociopathic cult of personality around Biden – but the outcome is similar. A party incapable of being a party, believing that it is unable to change course.
John Ganz has written that this is a constitutional crisis – not in the threat to the document of the Constitution (although Trump is surely that), but as a threat to norms and the practice of politics. These require parties to seek renewal, and to also understand their civic duties. Of course, political parties are self-interested entities, but here – what is extraordinary – is that they are not even acting in their own interests.
Trump may have his devotees, but most people find him repulsive. Biden may have strong name recognition, but so does John F Kennedy. Name recognition isn’t supreme if you’re not fully functional (or at least closer to your prime). The system in its entirety has become sclerotic.
Given the state of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has an extra level of responsibility. One that it doesn’t seem to be fully grasping. With the US’s power comes global responsibility. Whether the US likes it or not. The country’s current extraordinary flailing ripples out across the oceans. The anxiety on display after the Biden vs Trump debate is one we outside the US have been feeling for a while. [Seriously, get your shit together]
There seems to be two self-reinforcing problems in the US at the moment. There’s a revolutionary fervour that has taken over not just the Republican Party but aspects of progressive politics as well. And secondly, this fervour is incapable of being responded and alleviated by the country’s political structures (including the media). This intensifies the fervour, which makes the system more incapable of responding. An inability to see Biden’s age coming is but one example of this.
The counter-argument to replacing Biden is that the political class knows absolutely nothing about how the broader public thinks. I’m sympathetic to this argument across most political issues. People with Arts degrees in general only know how to talk to people with Arts degrees. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. Biden is someone who has built significant public trust over numerous decades, and many people vote for who they think can best keep the ship afloat, not on steering the ship towards a specific favoured issue (and no-one reads policy documents). But a captain no longer capable of reading the compass is a new scenario we need to consider.