Donald Trump is unfit to be US President, writes Christopher Pyne
Donald Trump is unfit to be the US President, writes Christopher Pyne. Having spent four years creating division, he’s now simply making things worse.
Opinion
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Donald Trump does not have the emotional equipment to be President of the United States of America.
We need look no further than the train wreck this week has been in America to be convinced.
The protests across the major cities of the US this week were sparked by the death of George Floyd while being restrained by four policeman, one of whom placed his knee on Floyd’s neck for long enough to asphyxiate him. It was a tragedy.
The Black Lives Matter campaign was right to highlight the injustice of Floyd’s death. They were right to demonstrate peacefully in support of Floyd, his family and African-Americans.
It is a great pity that what should have been a peaceful demonstration about an important issue turned into scenes of uncontrolled mob behaviour – looting, assaults, killing, property destruction and wanton violence against law enforcement officers and protesters.
Lawlessness is never acceptable. The law applies to all, no matter how distraught a person might be or how unfair a situation might feel.
One thing I know for sure – President Trump is precisely the wrong man to deal with such a crisis.
Trump has spent the past four years sowing division. America is reaping the harvest.
Trump’s modus operandi is to insult, offend and denigrate anyone he perceives as an opponent.
He wasn’t capable of simply engaging Hillary Clinton, his Democrat rival in 2016, on the issues.
He felt the need to wind his support base up to the point of hating Clinton. He encouraged those who attended his rallies to chant “lock her up”.
It didn’t matter that she has never been charged with anything. He whipped up the mob to the point that they felt it wasn’t enough to just beat Clinton, they had to destroy her.
Once he was elected, I assumed the circus would dissipate and he would get on with governing in a methodical and intelligent way. It didn’t happen.
At the end of his first year as President, I read Bob Woodward’s book about the Trump Administration called Fear.
Woodward wrote All the President’s Men that exposed the criminality at the heart of the Nixon Administration and has since written many books that have been critically acclaimed. He is no tin foil hat-wearing leftie conspiracy theorist. I was horrified.
It revealed a White House that could only be described as dysfunctional at best, dangerous at worst.
The pattern of that first year has never altered. It is a story of routine sackings, juvenile insults by tweet, over-inflated ego and unpredictability.
Trump seems incapable of recognising that not everyone you deal with has to agree with you all the time to be adding value. In fact, the opposite is true – ideas need to be contested and held up to scrutiny for good government to follow.
The number of significant figures in the Trump Administration to be sacked in the past three years is too numerous to chronicle here.
The more famous have been the Attorney-General, several White House Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisers and Secretaries of Departments (our equivalent of Cabinet Ministers). It seems few of these unfortunate people who wanted to serve their country could be allowed to depart with dignity. They were roundly condemned by Trump, often by tweet in the most insulting professional terms.
One of those I got to know quite well as a Cabinet Minister was Jim Mattis, the US Secretary of Defence.
Mattis is a highly regarded professional soldier. He held command in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider Persian Gulf.
He was Trump’s Defence Secretary for two years. It crossed over with my service in the defence portfolio. Last week, Mattis said: “Donald Trump is the first President in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people … Instead he tries to divide us … We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
He is absolutely right. Of course, this remarkable yet undeniable sentiment was met with a barrage of denigration from President Trump on Twitter.
Who governs through Twitter? Not mature leaders.
The problem for Trump’s offensive tweets is that they have become tedious, predictable and ineffective.
Before COVID-19, Trump could rightly point to deft handling of the economy as his principal achievement. Now in an election year, the economy in America is tanking, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been among the least successful in the world and his immaturity as the leader of the free world has been laid bare.
Trump has spent four years dividing America between those for him and those against him. His Presidency resembles a 24-hour rave party. He bears a share of the responsibility for what has happened this last week in the riots across the United States.
As a student of American politics, I can’t remember a President who has put almost no premium on uniting the country and pouring balm on troubled waters.
Even Presidents who were elected in controversy or delicate points in American history set out to calm the nation – Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George W Bush. Not Trump.
Despite the low expectations of a Joe Biden Presidency, neither America nor the rest of the world can afford another four years of a Trump Administration.
A weak United States puts us all at risk. A strong United States is too important for Australia and the rest of our like-minded friends around the world to allow to falter further.