From his perch next door in nearby Canada, Conrad Black writes very readable political analysis of the U.S. presidential election for the
National Post, which he once owned. Some choice bits:
Donald Trump, having sewn up the Archie Bunker vote, the roughly 40 per cent of Americans who hate political correctness, dislike government on principle, own firearms, and have a generally macho view of America, tempered in policy terms by isolationist tendencies; has deposited that vast following, which he richly entertained through the primaries, on the electoral scale. And now he has set out to give enough of the mainstream a comfort level that he is not, himself, temperamentally or stylistically unsuited to the great office he seeks, to tip the balance for him. It is working, as the polls are now about even. However it ends, this is the final stage of a tactical progress of great virtuosity.
The public will not stand any longer for the chronic misgovernment produced by the Bushes, Clintons and Obama, each begetting the next. (snip) Turning the rascals out didn’t produce better rascals. Trump was the only person on offer who wasn’t complicit in any of it.
Trump raised the Republican vote in the primaries by 60 per cent. In many swing-states, such as Indiana, his vote equalled that of Clinton and Bernie Sanders combined.(snip)Trump is now the only person in American history to gain complete control of a major political party from the outside without being a cabinet officer selected by his predecessor or a prominent general.
If the next president, Trump or Clinton, is not more successful than anyone in that office since Ronald Reagan, the far right or the far left is going to take over the most powerful government in the world in four years.
About the two national conventions, Black writes:
The Democrats had a complacent orgy of continuity and the Republicans a celebration of complete change.
And he concludes:
For eight straight terms, from 1981 to 2013, either a Bush or a Clinton was president, vice-president or secretary of State, and both families put up candidates for their parties’ presidential nominations this year. There has never been anything remotely like such a co-regency in U.S. history, and it is not based on spectacularly good performance in office. Change must come.
