US voters sort the garbage for signs of real leadership

Dispiriting schoolyard gibes over “garbage” from both sides in the US presidential race in the closing stages of what has been a long and enervating campaign show what a dismal choice voters face in deciding between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. America deserves far better than it has been getting from both sides competing to lead the most powerful nation on Earth. So do its allies, including Australia, that look to it for sensible, coherent, forward-looking leadership to deal with the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Four years ago, as Wall Street Journal writer Gerard Baker has noted, Mr Trump was, like all defeated US presidents over the past 130 years, down and out, assured of a place only in the history books. His disgraceful, defeat-denying behaviour in his final two months in office was, if not constitutionally disbarring, at least politically disqualifying. When he sulkily left office on January 20, 2021, following the disgrace of January 6, his approval rating was 34 per cent, the lowest of any president since Jimmy Carter. That should have been the end of him politically. Yet, as Baker wrote, his fortunes have revived and the vote on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) is really a referendum on Mr Trump more than anything else. Another Trump victory, Baker writes, would represent “another go-around on the (this time revenge-flecked) grim, dark Trump carousel of mendacity, degradation and intimidation”.

Yet polls show the election to be on a knife edge and Democrats have only themselves to blame for his resurrection to the point where he has every chance of returning to the Oval Office. Much of this no doubt is due to the fact voters have drawn many of the same conclusions as The Wall Street Journal, which says Ms Harris has presented herself as new but, as far as policies and coalition go, represents more of the same, and not merely of the past four years. She is running for what essentially would be Barack Obama’s fourth term.

Much of what she offers to voters would be familiar to Australians. She wants to expand the entitlement state for elder and childcare, housing and a larger Affordable Care Act. Her proposed tax increases are nearly as extensive as Joe Biden’s, running past $US4 trillion ($6 trillion) across 10 years. She shows every sign of wanting to expand and accelerate the climate corporate welfare and mandates that distort investment at enormous taxpayer cost but have no benefit to global temperatures. While doubts persist about Mr Trump’s suitability for high office, the WSJ says voters also have cause to fear the bloody-mindedness of the modern left with its regulatory coercion, cultural imperialism, economic statism and desire to strip judicial independence.

Whoever wins is, rightly, a matter for US voters. But the size of the US economy and its weight in global affairs mean the outcome also will have big implications for other nations, including ours. Ms Harris is judged to be a lightweight who will quickly be tested by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. The best that can be said for Mr Trump is his unpredictability will keep other leaders, and voters, guessing what may come next. There are grave misgivings about Mr Trump’s isolationism and inexplicable admiration for some of the world’s worst despots. No less troubling is the lack of evidence of Ms Harris’s understanding, much less capacity to lead, at a time of deepening global crisis. If she were to turn out to be another Mr Obama, would she, like him, bend over backwards to appease Iran’s ayatollahs? And would she seek to put restraints on Israel as it is locked in a struggle for its survival against terrorism?

If Mr Trump does win, Democrats will have paid the price for their audacity when they claimed for more than a year that Mr Biden, despite his decline, was mentally fit to serve another term. The bottom line as D-Day in the race looms is that America deserves far better. So do America’s allies.