How did a donkey win biggest prize of all?

AMERICAN presidential elections are traditionally like a race between thoroughbreds. But this year, it was more like a contest between a thoroughbred and a donkey – and the donkey won.

As outgoing President Barack Obama said repeatedly during the campaign, the choice was between the most qualified person to run for President in generations, in Hillary Clinton, and the least qualified – Donald Trump.

It was a choice between Clinton, a woman of proven experience and ability to be leader of the free world, and Trump, a man whose resumé consisted of a chequered career as a businessman and a reality television star who blurred the line between fact and fiction.

I should declare straight away an interest in all this. A long-standing supporter of the Democrats, I spent my holiday this year working during the US primaries to get Hillary Clinton elected as the Democrats’ presidential hopeful.

She was clearly someone who had the right temperament to be the next President and, more importantly, commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces.

As a former First Lady, a two-term Senator and the Secretary of State, Clinton offered a wealth of experience to deal with the issues facing America, both abroad and at home, from day one.

The contrast with Trump was almost comic, with his campaign speeches showing he was

‘The campaign showed he was out of his depth’

totally out of his depth. Put simply, Trump is temperamentally unfit to be President.

As Hillary herself said, if he can be provoked by critics into posting outrageous tweets at 3am, then one shudders to think how he will react to criticism as President when the nuclear button will be at his fingertips.

Equally worrying is his lack of a grasp of facts as well as the outright lies that he propagated in his campaign speeches, particularly regarding FBI involvement in the Clinton email saga.

Trump may not choose to accept it but the FBI cleared Clinton of any criminal wrongdoing.

Then there is the man’s appalling attitude to women. He regards them as objects to be rated on a scale of one to ten, calling some of them pigs and slobs. And as for Trump’s approach to minorities, he seems to be essentially against them while his avowed support of using torture for suspected terrorists is a crude sop to racial and religious fears.

The President-Elect’s economic policy is based on generous tax cuts for the rich, which is hardly surprising as he would benefit, but provides little help for the struggling middle classes. And when it comes to the difficult and delicate area of foreign policy, which has a direct bearing on Britain, his ill-thought-out approach is akin to a bull in a china shop. It may play well in rural America but God help the rest of us.

Of course, we are where we are and the American people have made their decision.

We will have to live with their verdict because the decisions taken by the President of the US affects us in Britain almost as much as they do the Americans.

It is just such a shame they chose a buffoon to be the next resident of the Oval Office. I can’t help thinking: God help us all.