Good news: Trump won’t be around forever

The current turmoil caused by the Trump administration needs to be viewed in the context of the history of our neighbour to the south. Over more than 200 years of nationhood, the US has endured any number of stresses to its national fabric, both social and economic.

Perhaps its greatest challenge was slavery and the deep divisions it engendered. While slavery was an integral part of the economy of the southern states, it had a strong negative impact upon the region’s growth and diversity.

The northern states grew both economically and in population while the south remained almost stagnant, failing to develop a diverse economic base.

After slavery’s defeat in the very bloody civil war and during the Jim Crow era of “separate but equal” that followed, this disparity persisted. And racial tension is still an important factor in the nation’s life.

Another challenge was the establishment of a stable banking system.

Battles that began with Alexander Hamilton regarding the fiscal powers of the federal government reached an early crisis when Andrew Jackson failed to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States, an institution that had taken on a role of disciplining errant community banks.

Almost a century later, after a series of financial disasters that nearly destroyed the entire banking system, the Federal Reserve Bank was established. This gave the U.S. a real central bank, but regional pressures played a critical role in establishing 12 separate reserve banks together with a central office in Washington.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression and the ensuing battle between the Supreme Court and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal again tested the nation.

Isolationists tried to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War, although in the end, they joined with the Allies to defeat the Axis.

In more recent times, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, Nixon and Watergate, the financial meltdown of 2007-08 and the Congressional gridlock flowing from the rise of the Tea Party all tested American unity and prosperity.

Each time it faced division and conflict, the country has recovered, though perhaps not with the speed one would hope. Still it survived.

Are things now somehow different? Is the survival of the world’s oldest democracy in the age of Trump somehow unlikely?

President Donald Trump’s words and actions are unlike any of his predecessors. He seems fixated on achieving praise (an ephemeral benefit) and has a weak understanding of how government works and the separate but equal roles of the courts, the legislative and the executive branches.

He seems to believe he is exempt from adhering to the truth.

If you can’t trust the word of the American president, all sorts of relationships and norms degrade.

This does not mean, however, that Trump is free to do whatever he wants. The U.S. government is analogous to a giant ocean-going container ship: powerful but slow to respond to changes in direction or speed.

It is also capable of working to frustrate, resist and even to reverse the objectives that any president may have.

There is no doubt intemperate actions by Trump can seriously impact upon the prosperity and tranquillity of the U.S. and the world. The respect historically accorded to both his office and his government is teetering.

In the most extreme case, he could plunge his nation and the entire globe into a nuclear conflagration.

Assuming we escape this horrific fate, will Trump’s administration wipe out more than two centuries of living under the rule of law and a constitution that has, over time, been amended to deal with the great social, political and economic forces that buffeted the nation? I think not.

America’s friends and allies should remember that, as those who preceded Trump found, the electorate will either toss him out of office after four years or he will be subject to the constitutional limit of two terms.