A most unappetising choice

Did Kamala Harris once pay her bills when at law school by working at McDonald’s? The fate of much of mankind may depend on how US citizens answer that overwhelming question. Many think she was lying; this induced Donald Trump to make a carefully choreographed appearance at one of the company’s drive-through outlets in Pennsylvania where he served Big Macs to selected customers and chatted respectfully to people posing as fellow staff-members. Trump evidently enjoyed the experience which predictably outraged his critics who knew that his aim was to stress that, while he is a genuine man of the people with suitably plebeian tastes, Kamala is a phoney who was raised in a privileged family of academics and knows nothing about the problems faced by ordinary folk.

Is this sort of thing what democracy is now all about? It would certainly seem so. Candidates win elections by convincing voters that they share their concerns and can be trusted to do whatever it takes to make their lives better. They have to look “authentic,” as Trump managed to do when he flipped burgers for a few minutes. Unfortunately for Kamala, and for her Democrat backers who have invested over a billion dollars in her campaign, that is something she is not good at. Unlike most other professional politicians, she is unable to waffle in a persuasive manner when asked difficult questions. Instead, she peers at her word-prompter and, if it does not provide her with anything useful, burbles on about her allegedly middle-class, almost lower-class, upbringing, and her admiration for what she insists is a uniquely North American willingness to dream ambitious dreams.

Authenticity is greatly overvalued. Trump may be everything he makes himself out to be, but that does not mean he possesses the talents or the temperament needed to be a good, or even a mediocre but fairly harmless president, of the most powerful nation on earth. If he wins the November 5 election, the United States will presumably see a repeat on steroids of his previous stint in the White House. He is clearly in a vengeful mood, as are his numerous foes who can be relied on to do their utmost to ensure that he fails to achieve any of his objectives even if some meet with their approval. The thuggish autocrats ruling Russia and North Korea, the hard men in charge of China and the viscerally anti-Western Iranian theocrats must be rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect. 

Would a Kamala presidency be less alarming than another four years of Trump? If her performance to date is anything to go by, she is an empty vessel who would never have got anywhere near the place she currently occupies had it not been for a series of accidents. Joe Biden, who was already sinking into his dotage when running for president over four years ago, picked her as his running-mate because he knew she would be unable to overshadow him. And, after the Democrats belatedly came to the conclusion that it would be suicidal for them to let him try to get re-elected, they lined up behind Kamala because they feared that staging a snap internal election would have disastrous consequences for a party that is split down the middle between aggressively woke identitarians who are keen on Hamas and more sober-minded conservatives. With the possible exception of Biden, they did not expect her to be such a poor candidate. “Cringe-worthy” is a word many who hate Trump are using to describe her campaign appearances. 

Some think that Kamala is at heart a far-leftist who, once in office, would quickly drive out the moderates who dominate the Biden administration, replacing them with firebrands who are hostile towards Israel and enthusiastic about novelties involving sexual orientations, racial distinctions and the like. Perhaps she would, but it is also possible that she would prefer to leave things more or less as they are and let cautious technocrats who have had long experience in high office have their way.

There can be little doubt that Trump, a man who enjoys breaking things, would be what one might call a strong president, while Kamala would be a very weak one who would have to rely on others who, like over 90 percent of those who have held posts in her vice-presidential staff, would find her extremely hard to get along with. The choice, then, is between a blustering egotist who has come to represent tens of millions of North Americans who resent the preachy “coastal elites” whose members often openly despise supposedly unenlightened working folk who dislike being told what to do by politicians, and an almost comically vacuous lady who, to the bewilderment of many, has somehow succeeded in climbing to near the top of what Benjamin Disraeli once called the greasy pole. 

The relative power of the US is shrinking, as is the authority of the “rules-based international order,” so the world could certainly do with a “strong” president in the White House, a man or woman who would be capable of putting tyrants big and small in their place and cunning enough to do it without detonating any catastrophic wars. Trump evidently believes that he is capable of doing just that, but the widespread conviction that he is a loose cannon would make it hard for him to achieve much even if he did surprise everyone by calming down and behaving in a statesmanlike fashion.

As for Kamala, she clearly lacks the qualities that would be needed for her to become a plausible “leader of the free word.” While Trump’s mere presence would strike fear into the hearts of his country’s enemies because they know he could react violently if they dared to provoke him, Kamala’s would have the opposite effect. From the very beginning of her still hypothetical presidency, people such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, plus their numerous running dogs, would try to take advantage of the perceived weakness of what, despite everything, continues to be the most powerful country in the world. 

No matter who wins the presidential elections, he or she will find it desperately hard to narrow the gaps between the large groups, whether ethic or social, that are competing for power, cultural influence and money in the United States, let alone persuade the many who take it for granted that the West has shot its bolt and is in full retreat, that it would be somewhat premature for them to start celebrating its demise.