Trump runs out of trumps!
In its edition of 21 May, The Economist included in its section on the United States an article under the headline: “Whatever happened to Black Lives Matter?” The sub-heading read: “The group is still doing important work, but after Donald Trump became president liberal America stopped paying attention.”
The ink was barely dry on the piece before George Floyd was killed on 25 May.
Whatever about Black Lives Matter (BLM) as a movement or an organisation, the health of BLM as a cause is stronger than ever, underpinned by broad based support for three main contentions. First, confrontational, heavy-handed force is the default approach of police forces across the US to the maintenance of law and order. Second, this policy is applied in a visibly discriminatory way against people of colour. And third, individual police officers are rarely properly accountable through the courts for the misuse of force (though the municipalities that employ them are paying millions of dollars annually in civil damages to victims or their families arising from police violence).
President Trump responded with a diametrically opposite view. Instances of inappropriate police behaviour were a function of “a few bad apples” rather than any endemic or systematic malaise; and so-called BLM protests were riotous anarchy, plunder and thuggery loosed upon the world. In addition, the President asserted authority to harness military force to assist the civilian police in dealing with the protests.
Initial indications are that this was a serious misreading of the “mood of the room”.
First, the balance of evidence, reflected in the racial mix of protesters, the support of sporting and entertainment organisations including “iconic” individual public figures, the sympathy of municipal authorities and the general support of corporate America, suggests that the cause of radical reform of America’s policing is a mainstream one; certainly not universal, but even more certainly, no longer marginal. Second, serving and retired senior generals, including some who were previously prominent in his administration, have publicly repudiated the president’s militarisation of the issue. Third, the president’s poll ratings have continued to subside through June.
The manner of Mr. Floyd’s death comes close to defying belief. More typical but no less senseless was the killing of Rayshard Brooks in the car park of a fast food restaurant in Atlanta on the evening of 12 June. The events were captured on a combination of police body cameras and the restaurant’s own CCTV.
Two police officers responded to a complaint that Mr. Brooks was asleep in his car in a drive-through lane. He was unarmed. At the officers’ request, Mr. Brooks drove the car into a parking space. After a breathalyser test indicated Mr. Brooks as unfit to drive, one officer attempted to handcuff him. Mr. Brooks attempted to run. In the ensuing scuffle, he grabbed a Taser from one of the officers before running away again, pursued by the officers. After a few seconds, Mr. Brooks paused, turned and pointed the Taser at an officer, who fired his gun at Mr. Brooks, wounding him fatally. Tasers are officially classified as non-lethal weapons in the state of Georgia.
I can only speculate how a similar situation would be handled here in Ireland. But my guess would be that, after establishing the low level of threat, Gardai would enquire whether Mr. Brooks could call somebody to take him home or, indeed, possibly take him home themselves. What useful purpose was served by the attempt at arrest and detention?
Napoleon is reputed to have said: “I know he’s a good general, but is he lucky?” Until this year, President Trump was lucky enough that it didn’t matter too much whether he was any good. He won election in the first place by the finest of hair’s breadths. Despite a lacklustre performance, Mrs. Clinton won almost three million more votes and, if 5% of votes had not leaked to third party candidates of which a majority would almost certainly have gone to Mrs. Clinton, she would have won the key marginal states which delivered the election to Mr. Trump.
He inherited a benign economy from his predecessor which, by wisdom or instinct, he left to chug along, adding to its endogenous momentum only the stimuli of corporate tax cuts and benign neglect of the ballooning deficit. Although under little pressure to do otherwise, he has not allowed the US to become embroiled in foreign wars. He has thrown a few shapes around the global stage; waving sticks of various sizes and strengths at China, North Korea, NATO, the Middle East peace process and Venezuela, to vague effect; the only clear “win”, being the modest revision of NAFTA. The tax cutting legislation apart, he has no “landmark” legislation to his name, despite having Republican majorities in both the Senate and House through 2018. He failed to secure the legislative repeal of the so-called Obamacare legislation, although he has weakened it.
He has delivered for his supporters on judicial appointments, reduced immigration and economic deregulation, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreements and the Iran nuclear deal as well as the transfer of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all things that were entirely within his authority to do as president.
As measured by the political analysis website FiveThirtyEight, Mr. Trump’s disapproval rating has remained stubbornly above his approval rating since a fortnight after his inauguration in January 2017, a situation without precedent for any president in recent times.
COVID-19 was the first serious test of stewardship from which luck alone could not shield him. Paradoxically, it offered him an opportunity to set himself up for re-election. It is the clichéd norm for leaders’ poll ratings to rise in a time of serious national crisis. And President Trump’s did too initially. In the fortnight from mid-March, the enduring negative gap of around 10% between his disapproval and approval ratings diminished to less than 5%. For the first time since March 2017, his disapproval rating dipped slightly and briefly below 50%.
His disapproval rating now stands at 55% versus an approval rating of 41%. Joe Biden enjoys a 9% lead in opinion polls, including leads in more than enough marginal states to give him a comfortable victory on 3 November. Paddy Power were offering 11/10 against Mr. Biden in early April. They are offering 13/8 on today.
Mr. Trump has certainly mislaid his touch, if not lost it altogether. The empty seats in Tulsa at the week-end rally seem symbolic of an individual and administration chasing a game that is moving further away from them the harder they chase it, shouting louder to an audience that is listening less.
Here is another measure of how the wind is blowing. This was supposed to be the election in which allegations about the activities in Ukraine of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, were to damage his father’s candidacy as Mrs. Clinton’s famous email server spoiled hers. A “killer” book has already been published to provide the script.
This week, I googled “Hunter Biden book” to see how well that narrative was catching. The top results were not about Hunter Biden at all, but about the book being published this week by John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former National Security Advisor, which includes some juicy, wounding allegations about his boss. I had to scroll down quite a bit to find the first reference to Hunter Biden; an Amazon advert for the book, not a supposed news story.
Of course, it is too early to say whether the last three months have squeezed in a decade’s worth of significance or were just a passing phase. The election looks like Mr. Biden’s to lose, something he is capable of doing on his own behalf without any prodding from Mr. Trump. For the moment, though, adhering to another Napoleon dictum of not interrupting an enemy making many mistakes, is serving him well.
The economy may recover strongly rather than weakly. A treatment for or vaccine against COVID may be confirmed. Or, as yet unknown events may deliver Mr. Trump a break or two. After all, five months ago, COVID-19 looked like a little local event in Asia. One month ago, none of us had heard of George Floyd.
But, going into this election, Mr. Biden has the huge advantage of looking like the safer pair of hands. This week, The Economist editorialised unfavourably about Britain’s handling of the pandemic. It concluded with a reflection that might as easily be made about Donald Trump as Boris Johnson.
Mr Johnson got the top job because he is a brilliant campaigner and a charismatic entertainer with whom the Conservative Party fell in love. Beating the coronavirus calls for attention to detail, consistency and implementation, but they are not his forte.
The pandemic has many lessons for the government, which the inevitable public inquiry will surely clarify. Here is one for voters: when choosing a person or party to vote for, do not underestimate the importance of ordinary, decent competence.
Amen to that!
