2020 race: Can Trump bend US to his will?

Donald Trump shares the moment with Mike Pence after the Vice-President’s speech on the third night of the Republican National Convention in Baltimore, Maryland.Picture: AFP

There are only a couple of months to go before Donald Trump finds out if he is serving a second term. To achieve that goal he will need to repeat his performance of last time around when he won a majority of the Electoral College despite Hillary Clinton receiving three million more votes than him. For many voters, Hillary was a hated figure. She was the nasty Clinton and lacked both the warmth of her husband and the capacity he had to portray that warmth. Joe Biden does have the advantage this time in that nobody really dislikes him personally and, apart from the odd flirtations with hair sniffing, he presents as the harmless old bloke from whom you might buy a used car.

Biden can never inspire or excite, and therein lies the really big question mark about his campaign. Will Democrat voters turn out on the day for him? While many Democrats will turn out in a bid to oust Trump, many may not be enough. You can bet the trade unions will be conducting a massive operation to get their voters to the polling booths. They will personally pick up older voters and drive them to and from polling stations in their hundreds of thousands. With their membership continuing to fall, the unions can’t afford another four years of Republican domination.

Jimmy Carter was able to grab the reins of government in America with just on 20 per cent of the vote. In my eyes and, sadly for Carter, in the eyes of millions of Americans, the narrowness of his victory robbed his presidency of legitimacy. He then compounded that problem by installing his Georgian mafia throughout the civil service. Neither he nor they were up to the job. They simply never got what Washington was all about. Carter lacked Trump’s toughness. If Trump doesn’t understand something or someone, he will bend it or them to his will. That is something Carter could never do. Carter seemed like a really good bloke and that is an accusation you never hear made about Trump.

The one great political plus in Trump’s armoury is his ability to identify with ordinary working families. He is able to split the vote in constituencies that traditionally support Democrat candidates. What’s more, he gets away with telling lies, and has done so time and time again. Americans seem to give him more leeway with the truth than they have ever given any politician who came before him.

As a businessman he has had a somewhat chequered career. He was born into wealth and managed to maintain and then increase the family’s holdings. Real estate is his one great business strength, as his failures in casino investments would attest. Buying the Plaza Hotel early in his career gave him access to some very powerful people. That hotel will always hold a special place in the hierarchy of places to go in the Big Apple. In 1994 I had breakfast with Trump when he joined me and the producer of Sixty Minutes America. He was charming and deferential to the power of the media. No doubt that was part of the learning curve for him on the way to becoming a master media manipulator.

On the other hand, it is not so easy to understand Boris Johnston’s appeal to working-class voters. Perhaps that comes after years of having an opposition leader like Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left fool who believed that Britons would warm to a policy like privatising all primary schools. Corbyn’s negative legacy will take some time to be forgotten. Just why the left keep pushing agendas rejected time and time again by the voters is anyone’s guess. If you keep bashing your head against a brick wall hoping the wall will collapse, you are doomed to a life of headaches and Aspros.

Johnson is not a born toff. He speaks educated English but doesn’t “put on the Ritz” when he speaks. With his hair going in all directions at once he seems benign. He will not scare the horses and appears to be making a reasonable fist of it all.

The British people are becoming increasingly resentful towards the boatpeople who are crossing the Channel every day. The French do not appear to be insulted that these people see their country as a mere transit stop on the way to their desired destination. The British social security system is second to none in Europe and every North African knows it.

A day of reckoning is at hand in Europe. With France, Italy and Spain all hopelessly in debt, with absolutely no chance of repaying it, we appear to be content to sit and wait for a crisis that has the potential to overwhelm us. The incongruity of the US being so far in debt to China is, I hope, not lost on our minds because it is truly significant. I am not sure if power follows money or the reverse but the relationship between the two is very close indeed. China has proven itself to be a master builder of soft power. With its hold over American debt, it has made itself an even more important player in world politics. As Tom Cruise said: “Show me the money!”

Where Australia must exercise extreme caution is in our universities, where Chinese agents are forever active. Big-money deals with China make universities financially sound and signing them too eagerly is fraught with danger. Academic freedom is not just a phrase or a catchcry. It is a basic principle in higher education in particular. The Chinese are quite happy to throw money at our universities. If vigilance is the price of freedom, now is the time to keep our eyes well and truly open.