Being president of the USA is the most important job in the world, bar none. No other position of power compares in terms of the consequences for everyone and everything on planet Earth. The occupant can have a profound effect on our security, health, environment, living standards and even the progress of humanity. The Iran war is the most current example of that. Thousands have already died, or been badly injured. Infrastructure is being destroyed daily, people in the region are suffering displacement and terror, economies across the globe are grinding to a halt, oil supplies are struggling, and the price has doubled in the past five weeks.
Of course, every conflict has consequences, but normally one side at least determines that whatever they are, they're worth paying, either to ensure the survival of a nation or because the political or economic rewards justify it.
But Trump appears to have started a war with no thoughts on the consequences beyond being able to declare victory after a few days of aerial bombardment. That didn’t happen and was never likely to. After six weeks, the whole thing has now taken on a life of its own, and the ‘ceasefire’ is really nothing more than an attempt at building an off-ramp to let Trump escape his own pointless war without too much embarrassment. He has lost control.
The breakdown of the peace talks in Islamabad after just one day should come as no surprise. The Iranians are driven by faith and ideology, while the US is relying on nothing more than the capricious instincts of a madman. To try to rationalise what he has done is a fruitless task. Failure is now guaranteed.
I suspect Trump will soon blame Benjamin Netanyahu. Watch out for that relationship to fall apart.
The Americans face having to restart the war (and probably engage in war crimes) or concede that Iran has won a famous victory simply by remaining upright after the onslaught by the world's only real superpower. Their grip on the vital Straits of Hormuz has been confirmed for all to see. The markets will react poorly when they reopen tomorrow; the oil price will remain high and could even increase, and the prospect of serious fuel shortages and a worldwide recession looms. It is not a choice that Trump can take pleasure in.
How have we got here?
I listened to a Daily Beast podcast recently where the author and Trump biographer Michael Wolff was speaking about Melania and Jeffrey Epstein, and he mentioned the seven months he spent as a fly-on-the-wall in the Trump White House at the start of his first term in 2017. He was trying to understand what was going on as the administration sought to find its feet, and he was even cautiously optimistic that Trump might actually do some good.
But it wasn’t obvious to Wolff that Trump had a coherent plan - or even any plan at all.
At one point (Wolff tells this story about 7 minutes into the podcast) he called up a man named Sam Nunberg, who had been Trump’s first appointed political adviser from 2011 and had worked for him over four periods (being fired three times), the final one ending in August 2015 as the presidential campaign got underway with Trump as the Republican's chosen candidate.
Wolff asked for Nunberg’s thoughts about the thinking or lack of it behind Trump’s rather erratic policymaking and his rapid hiring and firing. Nunberg stopped him mid question:
“You don’t get it, do you. He’s an idiot.”
This was a few months before Trump’s first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, is alleged to have described his boss as “a moron.” And it brings to mind the words of HL Mencken in the Baltimore Sun in 1920: “As democracy is perfected, the office [of president] represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move towards a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
In his second term, after 250 years of the Republic, Trump has finally revealed himself to be that moron. Nunberg has confirmed it.
The sorry truth his presidency has revealed is that the US Constitution is not fit for purpose. Primarily because the president is chosen not by those closest to him or her, who know the candidate's abilities and faults, but by 70 million or so completely gullible voters based on an avalanche of TV and social media ads.
When Trump finally goes down the sewer of history, serious people will need to rethink the checks and balances the Founding Fathers put in place at the end of the eighteenth century to prevent another nutjob from seizing power in the way that Trump did with the stunning simplicity of a steam hammer.
The president should be selected by Senators and Representatives in the same way that British Prime Ministers are, with only a vote of no confidence by MPs between them and political oblivion. This wouldn't totally prevent another Trump-like candidate, but it would make it far more difficult and much easier to get rid of him.
Next, the practice of presidents making political appointments to the Supreme Court, where justices serve for life, should end. It would go a long way toward removing bias in their decisions and strengthening the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive.
Thirdly, the absence of national rules for voting is madness. Most democracies urge the maximum participation in elections (in Australia voting is compulsory), something the Republican party seems convinced is a plot to ensure victory for Democrats. In the US, every state has different, highly complex rules, wide open to voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Finally, Citizens United, a 2010 Supreme Court ruling which, since 2010, allows corporations and businesses to behave as if they were persons and spend unlimited amounts of money influencing elections, should be reversed. It is poisoning America's political system, perpetuating influence-peddling by very wealthy men like Elon Musk, who don't think twice about dropping a hundred million dollars or so on an election, and increasing income inequality.
Trump's two terms should be seen as an aberration, but it will take some serious work in future to make sure that it was. America cannot afford another idiot.
