01 September 2016
All Well
The policy void at the heart of the US campaign
by J.R. Thomas
Mr Trump’s doctor says that he has never met a man of Mr Trump’s age (that’s 70, folks) in such good health. Mrs Clinton says that she is vigorously fit and enjoying every minute of her campaign. Anybody who thinks that that might be sufficient to close off that part of the debate was instantly proven wrong, the Clinton camp saying that the doctor’s report read as if Mr Trump had written it himself (and hinting that he had), and the Trump camp alleging another Hillary lie and that she is seriously ailing. Both of the candidates have refused to release their health records so nobody knows anything on this matter except what they each say, and they are both honourable people…. The Shaw Sheet pretends no medical expertise but observes that, for contenders among the oldest to run for Presidential office, both candidates do look well on it.
Maybe that’s because verbal abuse is good for the circulation. There can have been no election, at least since the nineteenth century, in which so much and such vitriolic personal mud was flung. Any discussion of policies seems to be simply limited to alleging that the other side have none. That does appear to be largely true, quite possibly because trying to set some out may offend one or other group of voters; so policies are really limited to the most general statements or downright platitudes. The most concrete statements – literally – relate to that wall which Mr Trump says he will build along the Mexican border to stop illegal Mexican immigration to the United States. He continues to be for it, Mrs Clinton profoundly against it. Interestingly though, Mr Trump has started to making slightly more cautious noises about when and how the wall will go up, and how it will be paid for (quite apart from where all the concrete will come from to build 1,989 miles of wall).
Here we might just divert into further analysis of this building project. Or at least into the politics of it. Nearly 600 miles of border, mostly in the most populous areas, is already security fenced, and the USA Senate has authorised a further 100 miles of fencing, though at present it is not funded nor will President Obama authorise the funding. (Whatever else he wants to be remembered for, it is not a fence). Mrs Clinton, though against a longer wall, seems not to be against the existing fence. She is not suggesting changing the existing guarding arrangements – which involve 20,000 border agents and a mass of low technology (trucks and helicopters) and high technology (all sorts of listening and watching equipment). Here are some interesting statistics: about half a million Mexicans try to enter the US each year; more than half of them are detected and prevented; and, of the 200,000 or so who do enter, most in due course go back home. So that leaves about 80,000 illegally staying in the US. The numbers have been dropping for several years.
Enough fencing. The Democrats and the GOP both continue to fight off distractions which are increasingly giving the contest (67 days to the election if you read this on the day of issue) an air of utter unreality. The poll figures have barely moved – Mrs C continues to be between 4% and 8% ahead.
Hillary is still struggling with her email problem; those that have been released do rather give the impression that a lot of state business was been conducted over her private server, and senior FBI officials, who cleared the lady although saying effectively that she had sailed very close to the mark of what was permissible, are looking increasingly grim faced on the whole subject (these emails are being released via Wikileaks so may indeed be different to what the FBI came across). What is said to be bothering her campaign team even more is that Wikileaks are threatening to release another 15,000 or so; what is in those, other than cheerful ones to grandchildren and chiding ones to Bill, only Hillary knows. Her best hope is that either there is not much in them, and the press will be bored and move on; or that Wikileaks may decide not to release them in case by doing so they let Donald into the Oval Office.
In any case Mrs C has a new problem, the bizarre behaviour of Anthony Weiner, husband to her closest aide Huma Abedin. Mr Weiner has been caught behaving bizarrely (check the details elsewhere; but truly bizarre), now for a third time; and Ms Abedin has finally left him. Though this is causing much excitement in the campaign camps, Ms Abedin has come out of it all rather well – forgiving her man on the first two occasions and now reluctantly deciding that enough is enough. A semi-saintly wife indeed, and very deserving of all our sympathy. And cynically maybe, distracting from the fact that she has long acted as Mrs Clinton’s gatekeeper, and has been letting through the gate some persons whom one would expect a Presidential candidate not to want to meet – even if they were very generous donors to the Clinton Foundation, the family charitable trust. You might think that this is a good time to move the fight on to cooking up some substantive policies that the voters can relate to; if only to distract from all the dirty campaign washing hanging out for public edification.
But the Trump team has been equally useless in the campaign kitchen. This time it is a case of an ever revolving brigade of chefs, all with different ideas as to what cuisines to serve up. We will pass over those that have been and gone and focus on the most recent, and most powerful, arrival, Stephen Bannon. Mr Bannon got rich working for Goldman Sachs on Wall Street; he is a living breathing version of what Gordon Gecko could have become if he had gone into politics. Mr Bannon is chairman of what he has made the leading right-wing on-line news media, Breibart News; a wheeler dealer in all sorts of business and political situations; and a devoted Trump supporter who has now seized the ultimate Trump political prize going, the chief executiveship of the Trump presidential campaign. Mr Bannon is certainly able, but his reputation is that he is very aggressive. In a campaign team that is recently put together, that has failed to gel and that has suffered endless leavings and change, it remains to be seen quite how Mr Bannon will get everybody cooperating and pointing in the same direction. He has two months to win the election, and too little money in the kitty. But if he pulls it off… .
One immediate obstacle to him pulling it off is that Mr Trump has also appointed a new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, a longtime Republican strategist, who replaces Paul Manafort, flushed away last month by his Ukrainian history. Already Ms Conway and Mr Bannon have clashed as to who is doing what and indeed as to who is actually in charge. But both do seem to be convincing The Donald that he needs to get some policies set out, especially on the economy where his vague views on putting up trade barriers (more walls) are going down very badly with large American corporates. Word is we are now going to hear more about low taxes on business, more about infrastructure renewal, more about deregulation and freeing up American business to do business. His new campaign team has panels of businessmen formulating policy ideas and these are to be rolled out in the next week. And the team also want to show Donald for the nice guy he is, and stress that his wit and humour has been misunderstood. And more attention to women, to ethnic minorities, to the disabled.
In this he will be catching up from a long way behind with Hillary, who is a master of the hug, the friendly handshake, the winking acknowledgment of folks in the audience. At this rate we will be back to kissing babies and joshing with the seniors in the sunset homes. With all this and a policy debate too, could 2016 yet turn into a traditional election campaign?
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