Biden team good for the region

As the spotlight shifts from Donald Trump’s downfall to Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th president of the United States of America, the hard questions begin on what the new Democrat administration means for the rest of the world. Early indications are that for Australia the winds of change will be mostly beneficial. As Adam Creighton reports in The Weekend Australian, those most familiar with Mr Biden and his appointments announced so far expect few surprises on the big issues of security, trade and international engagement. This includes the US relationship with China and its concerns about the increasingly assertive behaviour of Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

Australia’s former ambassador to Washington, Kim Beazley, says Biden is taking power with a traditional post-World War II American agenda, including dedication to liberal-democratic principles: positions Australia has never abandoned.

The message Australia needs to see from Mr Biden is that under his leadership the US will remain deeply engaged in global affairs. On security, a shift in priority from NATO to the Indo-Pacific would be a welcome signal of America’s commitment to our region. The expected appointment of Kurt Campbell to oversee US interests in Asia is a good sign. As Greg Sheridan reports, Campbell is smart, hawkish, tough, a superb operator, a deep thinker and Australia’s best friend in Washington. Given the turmoil that has engulfed US politics since the November election, and Mr Trump’s refusal to easily accept defeat, it will take some time for a clear picture to emerge of exactly what to expect.

Mr Trump has disgraced himself and done a disservice to his millions of supporters and US institutions with his determination to impede a smooth transfer of power since losing the election. We stand by our analysis this week that Mr Trump’s actions have been appalling but that it would be a mistake if Democrats were to lose sight of the forgotten-people syndrome that allowed him to build a support base of 70 million mainly ordinary Americans. We support the analysis of Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan that the assault on the capital by a fringe of Trump supporters, egged on by the President and his family, was a sin against history and that authorities should move with brute dispatch against members of the mob and their instigators.

While we agree the actions of Mr Trump were impeachable, it would have been preferable for everyone if Mr Trump had resigned and handed the last days of his presidency to his deputy, Mike Pence. This was never likely to be the case, but impeachment might prove a double-edged sword for Democrats. It is likely to burnish rather than diminish the image of Mr Trump in the eyes of his more strident supporters. And, if it progresses to a full Senate trial, impeachment threatens to overshadow Mr Biden’s task of delivering a stable and unifying government. As Paul Monk writes in Inquirer, might it not have been better, given the precipitous fall in Mr Trump’s popularity ratings, to leave him to the courts? Impeachment is a necessarily messy process. Mr Trump has become the first president to be impeached twice by the House of Representatives, but neither the first nor second decision has been confirmed in the Senate. While the Democrats will take control of both chambers, conviction in the Senate of his second impeachment requires a two-thirds majority, which is by no means assured. After January 20, the Senate will split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, meaning it will require 17 Republicans to break ranks and vote to convict Mr Trump. There is a further complication because Mr Trump will have left office before that process will begin and the US constitution is far from clear that private citizens can be tried in the Senate.

The actions of Mr Trump should not be trivialised, but what Mr Biden needs most is clear air to get on with the job. Handled correctly, Mr Biden has an opportunity to cement a legacy of transformation that Monk says can be judged against three key periods in American political history. The first is the failure of post-Civil War Reconstruction to entrench the civil rights of freed black slaves, followed by the Gilded Age of industrialisation. Next comes the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s sweeping New Deal initiatives; and finally, according to Monk, the Obama years, as recounted in the first volume of his memoir, A Promised Land (2020). To realise his legacy, Mr Biden’s key challenge will be to restrain the more extreme expectations of radical elements within his own party.