This week’s revelations about the two presidential
candidates – the leaked tape of Trump’s comments
about women and the leaked contents of Hillary’s speeches to Wall Street groups
- doesn’t really change anyone’s opinion
about either of them. Trump is an arrogant,
sexist entrepreneur and Hillary is an arrogant, deceitful politician – that is
hardly new news. We have two badly
flawed candidates, or as a British friend put it to me recently, ”the evil of
two lessers”. Whichever one we elect
will be despised by half the electorate, and only grudgingly supported by most
of the remaining voters. This hardly
makes for a mandate of any sort.
Of far more concern, really, is the increased aggressiveness
of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as well as a number of other despots around the world.
Not since the presidency of Jimmy Carter
have the world’s bullies felt they had such a free hand. President Obama may
have though he was being measured and thoughtful, but his opponents see him as
weak and indecisive – probably from the moment Assad stepped over Obama’s “red
line” on chemical weapons in Syria and Obama failed to follow through on this
theat. Now in the final lame-duck months of his term they are testing him
mercilessly, and he is looking pretty ineffective.
Matthew Continetti has a thoughtful article in today’s Washington Free Beacon; The Guns of October.
He argues that this is a dangerous time.
It is worth reading this in the light of the upcoming election. Hillary will probably be elected; she is a
cold war warrior by nature anyway, and in addition will be out to prove a woman
can be as tough as a man. Besides, she
really hates Putin, not least because he is obviously meddling in the US
election against her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a dangerous faceoff
with Russia early in her term.
All of which is to say that this ugly election is probably
only the beginning of a difficult decade or more for America. Hillary may live to rue the day she was elected.
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