By Gavin St Pier
THE next time you criticise the quality and capacity of your local elected officials, you might want to ponder that it’s extraordinary that, with a population of close to 350 million, the US political system has proven itself so challenged in sifting its pool of potential leadership candidates. Until this week, the best it could produce was two wholly unsuited for election. The one holding the job is clearly demonstrating cognitive decline, while the one who wants the job back is a convicted fraudster and a sexual predator.
An electoral contest between two unsuitable, aged candidates would attract little interest anywhere else. But competing for this particular office always supercharges media and global interest in the outcome. Is the US election the most important geopolitical event in the world at the moment? Does it trump – pun intended – the Ukraine-Russia war, the Israeli occupation of Gaza or the civil-war-driven humanitarian disasters in Sudan, Yemen and Myanmar? Does it warrant the absolute dominance of all our media and social-media channels? Will the outcome make a jot of difference to us in the Channel Islands?
Keep in mind, too, that pretty much as soon as this presidential election is over, the whole political and media machine will move on to speculating about the next one in 2028. All the more so if Trump is re-elected, as he will be constitutionally barred from seeking a third term; he will immediately be labelled “lame duck”, with key players in the Republican Party jockeying to succeed him.
As the “leader of the free world” is deemed to be the person occupying the highest elected office in the world’s largest economy with the most powerful military, it may reasonably be argued that his or her identity may impact pretty much every global problem or conflict. The story is objectively newsworthy. Given what makes “news” is far more about who and how that news is generated, then by injecting several billion dollars into the electoral process, the vested interests in the outcome guarantee that the story is going to become a globally dominant event. As if there weren’t enough reasons for the US election circus to dominate our media feeds, some would-be assassin’s bullets made the intended target, Donald Trump, the luckiest man in the world that Saturday and the victim, Corey Comperatore, the unluckiest man.
The US election may feel like a distant and mad event with excessive coverage, but whoever serves in the Oval Office now or in the foreseeable future will have an impact upon all of us. The health of the US economy drives the world economy. Their trade policy, whether open or protectionist, will change global trade patterns. Their climate transition policy will determine how quickly the planet heats and will, literally, change our future weather. Their foreign policies will affect multiple conflict zones around the world – as a consequence of which an unknown number of soldiers and civilians will live or die. All that is quite apart from having access to the strike codes for a nuclear force capable of wiping out all human life around the globe.
Faced with these overwhelming consequences, it would be a reasonable response to switch off entirely – or at least focus on those things we can influence and control. In that context, there is other fallout from US politics that does bleed across to our own. Political language and behaviours are global currency, too. During Trump’s first term his careless, harsh, angry tone and language replaced Obama’s careful, gentle and emollient choice of words. For example, the word “woke” quickly moved from meaning being aware of social inequalities to become a pejorative term for political correctness. Recognising what was previously accepted as a given fact that some sections of society, whether by sex, race, colour or sexuality, simply do have it a little harder than others, is now readily dismissed as “identity politics”.
JD Vance, Trump’s pick for Vice-President, called Kamala Harris a childless cat woman; together with Trump’s reference to her as a “socialist woman” – the second word being an unnecessary descriptor – shows that misogyny is very much alive in their campaign.
We may not be able to control US-Russian relations, but we do not have to normalise behaviour and language that appears to have become normalised elsewhere, whether that’s Trump’s colourful language and criminal conduct or Boris Johnson’s lying. Decency and character ought still to matter in politics. It is the responsibility of all of us, in or out of politics, to call out and root out language and behaviour that should not be accepted in public life.
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Gavin St Pier is a Guernsey politician. He previously served as the President of the island’s Policy and Resources Committee.
