A must read….Some choice pars from Paul Kelly in today’s Australian. He nails the Brexit, Trump, Hanson phenomenon. All three created by and the handiwork of the political class on both the left and right who have deserted their respective bases and stopped listening to the people they are supposed to represent. Result: the people stopped listening to and voting for the traditional parties..
“…The Clinton-Trump presidential contest with its bizarre indulgences, its freak-show exhibitionism and its insights into how a great nation can lose its internal balance, moral fibre and strategic anchor has already done serious harm to America’s standing as a global leader and alliance partner.
It is folly to think the damage begins only if Donald Trump wins the presidency. Damage has already been done with Trump a genuine contender for the Oval Office. The great disruption in US politics has no parallel since World War II, despite the immense dramas since that time.
The heart of the problem lies not just in Trump’s unacceptability; it lies in the complex malaise in American life that has elevated Trump to this stage, wrecking the Republican Party in the process.
The phenomenon on display is the crisis gripping much of the Western world — domestic unhappiness, division and traumas are spilling into the political systems with a lethal impact that, in turn, undermines Western foreign and security policies.
The opponents of the West — China, Russia and Iran — can smell the weakness and dysfunction and understand its depth since its origins lie in the hearts of the people. This is a potentially epoch-changing event. Its manifestations are not limited to any one country but are pervasive in the US and Europe. Such problems are not the preserve of any single political party but constitute a failure of both Left and Right political traditions, the progressive and conservative forces alike have failed to find policy answers in the current age. It is a genuine crisis of the Western political system and reflects the tribulations of these societies and the decline in faith and collective self-esteem.
The people are angry. That anger has many sources but perhaps the greatest is policy failure by elites.
What are the policy failures? Try sustained weak economic growth grinding down living standards, a breakdown in an equitable sharing of the benefits of prosperity and alarm about the inability of the state to deliver border protection, a core test of sovereignty.
Despite differences, these failures belong to both the Left and Right. The Left has sunk into an obsession with identity politics, nostalgia for big government and higher taxes as the answer and a deluded but selective dream of global citizenship.
The Right, unable to sell free market economics, debased the idea, was irresponsible in distributing the dividends of prosperity and relied on a mantra of individual freedom that was bankrupt when it was unable to sponsor policies to deliver a better society.
The core ideas and framework that sustained the West since 1945 are being brought into question. The forces of disruption are multifaceted and unpredictable. Yet they are unlikely to disappear quickly. This means ongoing domestic tribulations fuelling an uncertain and ineffective future for the West.
In Britain, the extraordinary feature of the Brexit vote was that the governing Tory party split fundamentally on the core question of national destiny. This destroyed the chances of prime minister David Cameron persuading the nation to stick with the status quo.
Every assumption of the Tory establishment was shattered — that Britain was about centrist politics, that people would not take a plunge into the economic dark and that the middle class would secure the existing order. The public tore up the rule book, in the process putting Britain into a world of strategic uncertainty…” Crisis of confidence that spawned Trump and Brexit
FULL COLUMN BELOW
“…The Clinton-Trump presidential contest with its bizarre indulgences, its freak-show exhibitionism and its insights into how a great nation can lose its internal balance, moral fibre and strategic anchor has already done serious harm to America’s standing as a global leader and alliance partner.
It is folly to think the damage begins only if Donald Trump wins the presidency. Damage has already been done with Trump a genuine contender for the Oval Office. The great disruption in US politics has no parallel since World War II, despite the immense dramas since that time.
This is because Trump negates the underlying assumptions on which America’s global role is based — acceptance of its responsibility as the indispensable power, promoter of a liberal world order, champion of an alliance system in Europe and Asia that has defied tyranny and underwritten prosperity. The record is littered with US failures as well as successes, but they come within a known strategic framework.
Trump threatens to cancel that with his erratic blend of racism, protectionism, misogyny, belligerence and policy recklessness. He is, as former US defence secretary Robert Gates says, unfit for the office. Indeed, he is unfit either as president or commander-in-chief.
The heart of the problem lies not just in Trump’s unacceptability; it lies in the complex malaise in American life that has elevated Trump to this stage, wrecking the Republican Party in the process.
The phenomenon on display is the crisis gripping much of the Western world — domestic unhappiness, division and traumas are spilling into the political systems with a lethal impact that, in turn, undermines Western foreign and security policies.
The opponents of the West — China, Russia and Iran — can smell the weakness and dysfunction and understand its depth since its origins lie in the hearts of the people. This is a potentially epoch-changing event. Its manifestations are not limited to any one country but are pervasive in the US and Europe. Such problems are not the preserve of any single political party but constitute a failure of both Left and Right political traditions, the progressive and conservative forces alike have failed to find policy answers in the current age. It is a genuine crisis of the Western political system and reflects the tribulations of these societies and the decline in faith and collective self-esteem.
The people are angry. That anger has many sources but perhaps the greatest is policy failure by elites.
What are the policy failures? Try sustained weak economic growth grinding down living standards, a breakdown in an equitable sharing of the benefits of prosperity and alarm about the inability of the state to deliver border protection, a core test of sovereignty.
Despite differences, these failures belong to both the Left and Right. The Left has sunk into an obsession with identity politics, nostalgia for big government and higher taxes as the answer and a deluded but selective dream of global citizenship.
The Right, unable to sell free market economics, debased the idea, was irresponsible in distributing the dividends of prosperity and relied on a mantra of individual freedom that was bankrupt when it was unable to sponsor policies to deliver a better society.
American analyst Charles Murray, in his 2012 book Coming Apart, was a prophet of the malaise with his argument that white America was becoming two separate societies based on differences in religion, income, education and family. This is now playing out in the political system.
The three epic examples of domestic dysfunction that drive potentially defining changes in the global order are: Trump’s contempt for the US alliance system and global responsibilities; the surge of protectionism crippling the cause of free trade that will possibly terminate the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal; and the Brexit vote that reverses not just 40 years of British involvement in the EU but is a body blow to the tarnished European project.
The core ideas and framework that sustained the West since 1945 are being brought into question. The forces of disruption are multifaceted and unpredictable. Yet they are unlikely to disappear quickly. This means ongoing domestic tribulations fuelling an uncertain and ineffective future for the West.
In Britain, the extraordinary feature of the Brexit vote was that the governing Tory party split fundamentally on the core question of national destiny. This destroyed the chances of prime minister David Cameron persuading the nation to stick with the status quo.
Every assumption of the Tory establishment was shattered — that Britain was about centrist politics, that people would not take a plunge into the economic dark and that the middle class would secure the existing order. The public tore up the rule book, in the process putting Britain into a world of strategic uncertainty.
What of the Labour Party? Its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, ran dead and became more discredited with 80 per cent of his parliamentary party wanting to depose him. What happened to Corbyn? He had a great victory, re-elected with 62 per cent of the membership vote, confirming a crisis for British Labour.
It is a classic trap in the current Western malaise — the activist takeover of a party in the cause of a leftist ideology that abandons the middle ground and any electoral hope. The story in both Tory and Labour parties is that the centre could not hold. The failed policies from the elites for too long and pent-up anger from the public seeded the politics of polarisation.
The US story is a similar narrative but different plot. The Republican Party has imploded, ruined in the primaries when Trump, an astonishing and clever populist, exposed its decaying policy beliefs and a faithless rank and file, consumed by a sense of betrayal, chose rebellion.
Meanwhile the Democrats flirted the entire way with Bernie Sanders, their version of leftist activism, before making Hillary Clinton its candidate.
Both Trump and Clinton run on a left-wing trade protectionist agenda. The cause of free trade has rarely been as weak in the postwar period and the case for free markets and market-based reform is similarly weak. The result will diminish further global growth and deepen public anxiety in the West. Every sign is that US politics will sink the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that President Barack Obama has presented as an essential, part of his pivot to Asia.
But if Trump is taken at face value — how else can he be assessed? — the greatest danger he poses is to the US alliance system with his cavalier unconcern for global realities, nostalgic brand of introspection and insistence that allies must just pay more. If Clinton wins she will face a huge task trying to persuade the world that Trumpism is dead.
The risk for the US is that this political trauma will cause its friends and allies to think it is weak in its resolve and willpower, and a risk as a senior alliance partner, provoking nations in the Asia-Pacific to act on such logic and take out strategic insurance with China, an event driven by the West’s domestic traumas…”