THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION – TWO VIEWS – TOM SWITZER

With the US Presidential election just weeks away, The Sydney Institute hosted a discussion on where it all was headed. Bruce Wolpe, Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the United States Studies Centre, joined Tom Switzer, Executive Director, Centre for Independent Studies to flesh out the polls and the personalities of the two presidential contestants – Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. In a year of unique surprises from the Democrats change of nominated candidate from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris to the near assassination of Donald Trump, the discussion concluded the race was too close to call.

THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION – TWO VIEWS

TOM SWITZER

Thank you, Bruce, and thanks to Gerard and Anne and Jacquelynne for inviting us back to The Sydney Institute.

As Bruce has demonstrated, all the available opinion polling evidence suggests Kamala Harris is either breaking even with, or narrowly ahead of, Donald Trump in the battleground states. But how reliable are the polls?

In 2016 and even 2020, polls massively understated Trump’s strengths. Indeed, at this stage during both elections, the Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden held commanding double-digit point leads over the Republican firebrand. Yet both elections were exceedingly close.

Ever heard the joke about Trump and the polls? Donald Trump is so far behind in the polls … it reminds one of the night … he won the Presidency. Then again, the polls before the November 2022 congressional midterm elections predicted a big Republican victory in the House of Representatives. They, too, were wrong.

Which reminds me of another joke about Trump and the polls: Latest Fox News election poll shows Trump way ahead … in all 87 states. So, who really knows what will happen on 5 November?

But one thing seems clear to me: this is the most volatile and unpredictable presidential election campaign since 1968 – with the race riots, war protests, political assassinations and burning of the cities. Witness the extraordinary twists and turns during the past few months:

• the pathetic debate performance of a sitting President;
• the near-assassination of a former president at a campaign rally;
• the sudden scratching of the incumbent President from the race;
• the sudden elevation of a Vice-President her own party had deemed a serious liability;
• the same VP suddenly pulling even or even slightly ahead in the presidential contest.
• a presidential debate, in which one of the candidates spread debunked claims of immigrants abducting and eating law-abiding pets.
• And now, lo and behold, this morning another attempted assassination of a presidential candidate outside his home.

To say again: this is the most volatile and unpredictable presidential contest since the late 1960s, which is to say before some of us here were even born!

Now, as Bruce reminded us, to win the White House a candidate needs to win over independents and undecideds in about seven key battleground states: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. The question is whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, notwithstanding their many flaws, can appeal to these swing voters.

Let’s start with Trump. The 78-year-old former president and reality television star taps into legitimate grievances about costs of living, lax border controls, identity politics and the direction of US foreign policy under neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists.

In my judgement – and this is a minority view among Western elites – Trump, and especially his running mate JD Vance, are right about the Ukraine crisis. NATO expansion provoked Russia to push back against Western encroachment in its sphere of influence, and the best policy now is to shut down the conflict and save lives.

If Washington and the West continue to aid and abet the Ukrainians – not to mention give Kiev western long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia – we will lead the outmanned and outgunned Ukrainians further down the primrose path.

We will just waste billions and billions of dollars and prolong the war. As a result, more Ukrainians will die, and the risk of nuclear war becomes ever more real.

But the problem with Trump, both with respect to Ukraine and other subjects, is that he rarely sets out policy details or arguments that explain issues beyond a slogan or abuse. And as last week’s debate reminded us, Trump’s polarising style of politics is profoundly off putting – especially to those undecideds, independents and even right-leaning suburban voters, who swing elections.

Bret Stephens, the award-winning columnist from The New York Times and a recent guest of the public policy research organisation I head, reflects the views of many Americans on the right intellectual spectrum when he laments that Trump has “done the most to reshape the Republican Party into something unrecognisable to someone like me, who grew up in Ronald Reagan’s shadow”.

In Stephens’s judgment, Trump’s main crime is to smash “the old conservative consensus,” to which Bret and I subscribe. That belief in “classically liberal ideals” like free trade, fiscal prudence and controlled but large-scale immigration, as well as some “classically conservative ones, like the necessity of moral character in political leadership and civility in public life”.

Remember Trump pledges a 10 per cent across-the-board tariff that is reminiscent of the trade protectionism that helped turn a great recession into the Great Depression in the 1930s. Remember, too, Trump’s support for a mass deportation of immigrant workers, who have been a source of American growth.

Then there is Trump’s character and temperament and, frankly, the downright weird and wacky company he keeps, including online conspiracists and election deniers – such as Laura Loomer – who has claimed, among other things, that the 11 September terror attacks were “an inside job” and that if Kamala Harris wins the election, “the White House will smell like curry” – a gibe against Harris’ Indian heritage. Why on earth would a presidential candidate listen to the likes of Laura Loomer? Is this who the next four years are going to feature?

But the problem here is deeper than Trump’s electoral prospects. This is the Wall Street Journal editorial page – for generations, the leading voice of American conservatives, which I’ve been reading virtually every day for nearly 30 years:

“A growing segment of the American right is populated by, and susceptible to, cranks and conspiracists.

“A movement that used to admire William F. Buckley Jr. and Thomas Sowell now elevates a pseudo-historian [Darryl Cooper, a Nazi apologist] who blames Winston Churchill for World War II and media personalities who sell falsehoods as a triumph for free speech.”

And the Journal concludes: “This isn’t an intellectual or political movement that is going to win converts, nor will it deserve them.”

Then there is Kamala Harris, the 59-year-old vice president and former California senator. The prospect of America having its first female president, who’s also mixed black and Indian, has energised millions – not just ethnic minorities but also the young and those who have never voted. Her surprisingly good performance at last week’s debate reminds one of the adage: that low expectations are a priceless political asset.

But Harris is also a San Francisco Democrat – a metropolitan sophisticate whose politics are fundamentally at odds with the thoughts and attitudes of Middle America – and she has chosen as her running mate Tim Waltz, a fellow left-winger from the left-wing state of Minnesota, which has not voted Republican since 1972.

The Democrat ticket promises more of the same regulation and subsidies of Joe Biden, plus tax increases of $5 trillion according to the WSJ – even as Harris tacks or changes her lines on various issues. Remember Harris, like the Democratic left, has supported many unpopular and frankly discredited policies – from decriminalising the border and defunding the police to banning fracking and advocating price controls.

For those who believe America’s greatest strength, from which the world benefits, is the can-do individualism that fuels its economy, Harris and Walz present a worrying prospect. What is also disturbing about Harris is her refusal to subject herself to serious media scrutiny. In the two months she has been the Democratic candidate, Harris has not faced one press conference. Nor has she subjected herself to a seriously tough interview with a senior journalist.

Can you imagine a new Australian or British prime minister or opposition leader shying away from the likes of David Speers on the ABC or Andrew Neil, previously at the BBC, or press conferences weeks out from an election? The Canberra and Westminster press galleries would rightly be agitated and angry. But you could be forgiven for thinking that the Washington press corps, typical of the US mainstream media, are covering for Harris.

According to Gerard Baker, a regular contributor to The Times and The Wall Street Journal, the American mainstream media may well do “what they nearly got away with doing for Biden the last few years and cover for someone evidently incapable of holding office”.

All this makes for an unhappy country and helps explain why the US electorate is deeply divided and why the race is a dead heat.

Finally, as for me personally – someone whose first real job was at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and who’s published more than 30 articles in the aforementioned Wall Street Journal opinion pages and who now heads one of Australia’s leading centre-right think tanks – what do I think?

Well, the Trump-Harris contest reminds me of the old Henry Kissinger joke about the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s: It’s too bad both sides can’t lose.