Whatever happens, it will take more than promises to Make America Normal Again
As we approach 3 November, it seems that the whole world is holding its breath. No other political event attracts as much attention as an American presidential election. Even in the midst of an epidemic, the American political process retains its carnivalesque appeal. There is skulduggery and outrageous rhetoric. Donald Trump performs politics as reality TV. For those that way inclined, the flood of polling and electoral expertise are an irresistible draw.
But we don’t just follow for the show. We follow because our era is marked by the US’s status as the pre-eminent superpower. Historically speaking, this is a relatively recent state of affairs. For more than a century after independence, in 1776, the US was so marginal that the major powers did not even have full diplomatic representation in Washington DC. It was only in 1893 that the UK led the way in upgrading its legation to full-embassy status. In the July crisis of 1914 – the great diplomatic drama that triggered the first world war – tiny Serbia figured more prominently than the United States.
The first time that an American election clearly mattered to everyone was the re-election of Woodrow Wilson in 1916. American manpower, economic clout and Wilson’s novel diplomacy would decide the outcome of the first world war. Indeed, Europeans learned the hard way that it wasn’t just the presidential elections that mattered.
The US’s division of powers means that you have to follow congressional politics too. The Republican victory in the midterms of November 1918, days before the end of the war, jeopardised Wilson’s prospects of getting congressional approval for the Versailles peace deal and his beloved League of Nations. The great assembly of nations at Ver
sailles woke up to the fact that reliance on the US came with the risk that it would, in Wilson’s words, “break the heart of the world”.
If 1916 was decisive, that was even more true of Franklin Roosevelt’s third election in 1940. His victory opened the door to the giant aid package of lendlease. And, this time, after the victory over Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, what America delivered was not abandonment but tough love in the form of the Marshall plan and Nato. In 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis, Barack Obama’s election had a historic feel. The world desperately needed something better than George W Bush.
But Obama also exemplifies another reason that we care. On a good day, the US claims to stand for something more than just itself. And that ambition is infectious. The election of a black man in a nation that once rested so heavily on slavery was a transcendent symbol of hope. It was that promise that brought tens of thousands of young Germans to the streets of Berlin in July 2008 to cheer Obama, even before he was elected.
In living memory, the other president who sparked that kind of enthusiasm was JFK. His election set the tone for the 1960s. It was a sign that it was time for the men of the Edwardian age – the likes of Harold Macmillan, Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer – to move on. A younger generation, led by figures such as Willy Brandt and Harold Wilson, was waiting in the wings.
Short of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being elected, it is hard to imagine any American president causing a similar stir today. The US gerontocracy resembles the later, decrepit phase of the Soviet Union. The late supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in office at the age of 87. Nancy Pelosi is 80. At 74, Trump is a spring chicken. Hillary Clinton, 73, would have been the first woman president, but she was the establishment personified and on female leadership the US is far behind the global curve. Bernie Sanders, 79, is an American original, but as such it was never easy to see him firing truly global enthusiasm.
In 2020 we aren’t looking to the US for thrills. The overwhelming sensation is not of excitement but dread. All we ask is reassurance that America’s democracy is not entirely broken. Electing a normal human being, even if it is grandfatherly Joe Biden, who will turn 78 on 20 November, would be a step in the right direction.
But it is time to be honest with ourselves. The forces that Trump represents are not new. Wilson was a racist to the core. After Abraham Lincoln, the South would not vote Republican for a century. The Jim Crow South was the domestic political base that made FDR and Harry Truman into world leaders. McCarthyism was oppressive even by the standards of cold-war Europe. Even Trump at his crudest is echoed by the taped diatribes of Richard Nixon’s foul-mouthed prejudice.
As far as the health of US political institutions is concerned, what more warning did we need than the shambles of Bush-Gore in 2000, decided by a judicial branch packed with Republican-appointed judges? The chief problem today, the degeneration of the Republican party, has been decades in the making. In retrospect Sarah Palin’s nomination as John McCain’s running mate in 2008 appears less a bad joke than an ominous harbinger. In 2016 Trump was one of the less eccentric options on the Republican menu.
Since then we have witnessed a bonfire of constitutional propriety. This reached its height in June 2020 over the question of whether the army would be deployed to the streets of Washington DC. Anxious soundings were taken about the political allegiances of US military leaders. It is a relief to know that they tend to be less pro-Trump than the rank and file. But their reluctance to accept Trump’s orders is hardly reassuring as far as the integrity of the command chain is concerned.
America’s electoral machinery is very fragile and at risk of legal challenge. Every level of the state machine is dominated by partisan politicisation. Next week we may see polling booths flanked by gauntlets of armed militia, responding to Trump’s call to “stand back and stand by”. We have reached a point where NGOs such as the International Crisis Group and the Carter Center, which normally monitor elections in fragile democracies around the world, are focusing their attention on the United States. Turning the apparatus of electoral liberal certification on the US itself no doubt marks a historic crisis. But we should also recognise that the counterpart to Trump’s horror show is a liberal theatre of outrage.
Bingeing on a cocktail of Weimar noir and American gothic has been habit-forming. If Biden and the Democrats win, the first thing we will need to do is to sober up. Life without a daily jolt of fight-or-flight will be an adjustment, which comes with its own risks. Beware the new high of Biden’s promise to Make America Normal Again. After all, it was eight years of a very normal Obama presidency that set the stage for Trump’s victory. The essential question that comes after the 2020 election is this: can American politics change? If not, the world of the 21st century will be condemned to witness an increasingly morbid and dangerous spectacle.
• Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University