Divided States

The Democrat convention said that America was trapped in a “season of darkness” and only Joe Biden could save it. The Republican convention, which ended this week, said Donald Trump had made America great again and Mr Biden would ruin it. The two parties accuse each other of spreading chaos, and from a distance many Britons might conclude that things started to fall apart when Mr Trump won in 2016 – and that Mr Biden represents a chance to turn the clock back to a simpler time.

This is naive. There were riots under Barack Obama, too – and Mr Trump won because the country wanted to break with the grey orthodoxy that Mr Biden represents. If Mr Trump does lose office in November, the problems currently dividing the nation will not disappear – not the police brutality, the racial division, the coronavirus, Chinese aggression or Iranian imperialism. Britain, meanwhile, will lose an ally on Brexit, because Mr Trump is the only world leader who enthusiastically supports it, an opportunity that Theresa May failed to exploit.

It is also the case, sadly, that some of the tensions in American politics are evident in our own – that what occurs across the Atlantic cannot be dismissed as exceptionalism. We face the same logistical and economic challenge; we, too, have had violent protests and criminal damage. The culture war, which seems to pit young against old, now even demands a debate over the lyrics of patriotic songs. America, as always, does things on a bigger scale than anyone else, but those who see America’s crisis as a “Trump problem” that can be easily solved with one election, are very much mistaken.