Trump is not here to destroy democracy but to refresh it

To critics, Donald Trump is a symptom of democracy’s flaws and an existential threat to liberal democracy, treating Muslims as threats, women as sex objects and Mexican immigrants as rapists.

His uncouth, insulting and offensive speech and behaviour bring out the worst devils of our nature. His supporters validate Winston Churchill’s aphorism that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”.

He could inflict fatal damage on the conventions and etiquettes of democratic governance. David Remnick, The New Yorker’s editor, expressed this argument after the election, describing the result as an American tragedy: “a sickening … triumph for the forces of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny and racism”.

For Trump voters, the US government was corrupted into rule of, by and for the elite. The people rose in anger to reclaim it. In March in an article for The Japan Times that has proved unexpectedly prescient, I noted that Trump was channelling the frustrations of the forgotten heartland of hollowed-out Middle America with the promise to stick it to the snobs (elites) and scolds (political correctness warriors). Trump is neither a threat to democracy nor a symptom of its flaws but the people’s chosen instrument to refresh and regenerate democracy. Most citizens’ core demands are a decent job, affordable education for the kids, accessible healthcare for the family and a modest income to support life after retirement.

Trump captured the fact ordinary people, fed up with the elites’ contempt for them, were ready to return the compliment. Hillary Clinton failed to bridge the gap between her private persona — charming, witty, relaxed, loyal, remembering intimate personal details about members of her inner circle — with her untrustworthy and entitled public persona. The latter typified Churchill’s assessment of an opponent: possessing all the virtues many dislike and none of the vices they warm to.

If most Americans were racists, they would not have elected Barack Hussein Obama president twice. Were they mostly misogynists, Clinton would not have got more votes than Trump.

Clinton fatigue proved more crucial than misogyny: she was the embodiment of the wheeling and dealing, sponsor-controlled, insider politics that Trump railed against. In the end it came down to negative voting: whoever inspired more distrust and loathing would lose. Both major parties seemed determined to choose the only candidate who could lose to the other, and the Democrats proved better at this.

The political establishment, Republican and Democratic, was slow to spot what was happening and failed to respond in time with corrective measures. Fearful of terror attacks, voters responded to Trump’s call to suspend Muslim migration until they figured out what was happening. Worried about disappearing jobs, they rallied to his call to end free trade agreements that made the wealthy even richer but shipped their jobs overseas. Unable to cope with rising costs amid stagnant wages, they downgraded the urgency of climate change. Revolted by the politicians’ self-serving chumminess with lobbyists, they voted to drain the Washington swamp.

Progressive policy goals can no more be imposed on a reluctant population at home by uncompromising ideologues than democracy can be imposed abroad by neoconservative ideologues using helicopter gunships. The same danger exists in Australia with weaponisation of identity politics to polarise voters.

Recall the case of the Queensland University of Technology students. They were the only victims in the sorry saga, thrown out of a university facility for their race. Section 18C of the Racial ­Discrimination Act was the legal enabler which resulted in them paying “go away” money.

A university’s primary mandate should be to provide safe intellectual spaces to ask chal­lenging and uncomfortable ques­tions. The students’ Facebook posts raised reasonable and legitimate questions about whether historical discrimination against one group should be redressed by subjecting another group today to reverse discrimination. Section 18C was used to violate their rights as students, and the university and the Australian Human Rights Commission failed them badly.

It beggars belief that many politicians see no problem with section 18C and reject the call to review and tweak it. So do I, but I want it thrown right out, replaced by a law that bans incitement to racial hatred and violence but leaves the thought police to the repressive regimes of the world. Labor needs to retreat from its untenable stance of moral vanity and repeal 18C.

People have a deeply ingrained sense of fairness and systemic unfairness builds a powerful sense of grievance that only needs tapping by a populist demagogue to wreak political havoc. This includes multinational companies that earn billions in Australia but pay little tax. Instead of blindly rejecting the call for a royal commission into sharp banking practices, the government could work with Labor to protect legitimate commercial interests while still subjecting banks to a searching inquiry. And why should the government penalise me through taxes if private health funds fail to win my custom?

It also includes obscene salaries and privileges for politicians and public sector chief executives. For the metaphor of a tone-deaf and self-serving political elite, it would be hard to beat a minister who uses a government car to chauffeur family dogs.

In foreign policy, instability-fomenting wars of choice discredited the Washington policy elite and the media that act as cheerleaders.

Good intentions do not guarantee good policy outcomes in faraway lands: the swath of ungov­erned territories from Afghanistan through the Middle East to North Africa is graphic evidence of that. Saddam Hussein, Muammar ­Gaddafi and Hafez and Bashar al-Assad were the lids on their respective cauldrons of sectarian tensions that boil over into large-scale violence if the lid is removed.

Clinton was the candidate of choice for the war machine. Trump is saner in recognising the limits of US power.

The American political process of party primaries provides an outlet for public anger and frustration not available to Australians. If mainstream Australian politicians belittle, deride and dismiss popular beliefs and anxieties, they make the rise of populist demagogues inevitable. Australia awaits a champion to drain the Canberra swamp.

Ramesh Thakur is professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University.