Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. BU Rob13/Gage. Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reservedThe White House race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is arguably the lowest-level US presidential competition since World War Two, or perhaps ever. Coarseness, gossip, blackmail, and personal attacks have completely replaced any debate on substantive issues, especially on foreign affairs.
Democratic politics now seems clouded in a kind of darkness. Political parties, which once were the link between voters and ‘high politics’, have long been declining in popularity. Yet on this occasion the crisis is clear to the naked eye. ‘The Donald’ has defeated all the more ‘official’ Republican candidates and has failed to obtain even the endorsement of some prominent party members, including the Bush family. The Republican Party had fielded a list of reasonably good candidates – Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush among others – but voters consistently preferred the unconventional Mr Trump.
‘The Donald’ is a reality-show transformed into politics; a performance, a fiction, which has become politics itself. His ‘postmodern’ traits have been often underlined, but after all Trump is not an entirely new ‘phenomenon’. Not so long ago we had Reagan and Schwarzenegger. The big difference is that this time ‘The Donald’ is not playing a role (the ‘cold warrior’, for example); he is simply playing himself, speaking whatever he wants, including lies, abusive statements, racial slurs, and so on. The tragedy – yes, we can call it a tragedy, for democracy – is that millions of Americans are inclined to choose Trump and even gloss over his lies mainly because they see Hillary Clinton as the embodiment of an establishment they deeply hate.
