07 September 2017
Beware the Loon
And a review of Mr Trump’s progress
by J.R. Thomas
There may be a few of our readers who were devotees of “Educating Archie”, that wonderful 1950’s show on the wireless, starring Archie Andrews and his assistant Peter Brough. In one of them the incomparable Hattie Jacques appears as Mrs Fawkes, troubled by her schoolboy son Guy, who keeps blowing things up in his bedroom (cue for muffled explosions) to his mother’s puzzlement.
The time seems to have arrived for a remake with Kim Jung Un as young Fawkes, the naughty boy with the urge to make big bangs. But who will play his perplexed mother (“Guy; stop that! Do your homework”); should it be Xi Jinping, President of China? or The Donald, leader of the free world (as nobody seems to call him)? One further possibility put forward by central casting is Vladimir Putin, obviously a devotee of modern parenthood, who said at the weekend that Mr Kim must be “appropriately dealt with”. Cold beans for supper and no television for a week, that sounds like.
Mr Trump has certainly had an interesting summer. He was wrong footed in the Charlottesville riots for handing out abuse to extremists on both sides (just the neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists would have sufficed), wrong footed in Houston Texas where he turned up to dispense concern and largesse but was accused of being in the way (and Mrs T of being too well dressed), and is currently hot footed in the increasingly alarming affairs of North Korea. Mr Trump must think he can do nothing right.
But none of this especially matters compared with the activities of Kim ‘Guy’ Un, whose strategy is difficult to understand. To put it politely. Quite why a small poverty stricken country should be spending a large proportion of its national resources on nuclear weapons and missiles to convey them elsewhere is a mystery which lies entirely within the mind of its Beloved Leader. Why his military leaders, who presumably are only too well aware as to how this might work out, do not strap Mr Kim onto their next missile testing flight is another mystery. And quite what can be done to calm things down seems as perplexing as any other aspect of all this.
But the general attitude of the world is akin to that of a crowd to a wild eyed loon with a knife – they keep a wide distance away, do not catch his eye, and make vague noises. This has been taken to extremes in the case of the new administration of South Korea, who prior to the latest test were calling for talks and diplomatic pressure. Mr Trump called this “appeasement” and said (rather in the manner of that chap always leaning on the end of the bar in your local pub) “they only understand one thing”. The admonished politicians in Seoul are now conducting military exercises of their own close to the border zone, which may not be quite what Donald had in mind.
It may be that Mr Kim finds all this very amusing, watching the world cough nervously and not catch his eye, whilst he causes seismic shocks on an enormous scale and fires missiles over Japan. (The Japanese are also looking the other way, whistling nervously). But he may be reckoning without Mr Trump, who is well equipped with military hardware and military advice – three generals in his cabinet, do not forget. Mr Trump seems to be playing Mr Kim at his own game – not by firing missiles over his head but by issuing blood curdling threats. Threats on which he can without question deliver, but the question is, would he? Or is he too playing the wild eyed role, in the hope Mr Kim will give up and start, say, a North Korean electric car industry, to undermine the USA economy by more subtle means? Or is Mr Trump directing his toying with the red button at President Xi? In reality North K is more of a problem to China than it is to the USA, assuming the US could bring down any missile fired (at say, Seattle) over the Pacific. But trouble in North Korea would be in danger of spilling into China’s back yard. Mr Xi certainly does not want nuclear missile strikes next door, nor North Korean refugees flooding across the border, nor Chinese investments and debts written off. Even regime change can present concerns of instability and civil war. But Mr Xi and Mr Trump have at least one thing in common – they do not want anything that is bad for business. That might make Mr Xi more inclined to interfere next door – and Mr Trump inclined not to do more than shout and gesticulate.
But The Donald needs some sort of victory somewhere. His ratings in the polls are holding fairly steady – but at a low level – around 34% of voters saying they would vote for him, if given the opportunity. (That is marginally better than M. Macron.) But so far Donald has nothing to chalk up as a success, let alone swamps drained or walls built. Talking of which; the first stage of funding that Wall got through the House just before the summer recess, but it looks as though Federal aid for the reconstruction of Gulf Coast Texas post Hurricane Harvey might divert the money. So, presuming the Mexicans are still not going to stump up, not even much progress there.
And a very key test is coming up. Within the next couple of weeks Congress must pass a funding bill for the next year, to enable the normal business of government to carry on. Without that, large sections of the federal system will start to shut down and the wage bills will not be paid. This to a Brit may sound appalling beyond belief, but funding brinkmanship of this not sort is not infrequent; the last one, averted within 24 hours of a shut-down, was in October 2015. Some of this is just bargaining, as members of Congress try to get their pet projects funded. Some is muscle flexing; with Congress taking its dollar’s worth of humiliation of a President, usually of the opposite party.
Which brings us to the growing tension between the Republican Party and its President. Naturally, the Democrats hate Mr Trump and think of him as a dangerous right wing demagogue. But the Republicans are also beginning to distance themselves from a President who increasingly they find distasteful, heading an administration which does not abide by those Reaganite ideals which the Republicans hold so dear – crisp, minimal, and lean.
There is much muttering that President Trump will not run his full term; that he finds the whole business of government frustrating and too much hard work, with all those giant ego’s fighting for power rather than getting on with the job. Various scenarios are been put together as to what happens at the next Presidential election – or earlier. Mike Pence, the vice President, is carefully saying little and travelling the world. The Republican Party is slowly tiptoeing away from the President. But this might all change if Mr Trump can get his tax reform bill through Congress. Politicians will forgive much to a leader who is a winner. Donald’s aim is to lower tax whilst increasing government spending. The idea of this is that the former creates the growth that deals with the after effects of the latter; perhaps, maybe, let’s hope. But what most Republican politicians are calculating is that cutting tax will be very popular with voters and create a wave of support just in time for the 2018 mid-term elections.
So, if China will kindly do something about its noisy neighbour or Mr Kim’s generals finally do; and the US economy continues strong; and the tax bill gets through Congress; and no strange memos from Vladimir to Donald turn up; and with a bit of luck (always useful), Mr Trump may yet be thinking about forming a Committee to Re-elect the President, around about this time next year. Stranger things have happened.
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