Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump participates in a debate sponsored by Fox News at the Fox Theatre on March 3, 2016 in Detroit, Michigan. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. All rights reserved.The west’s largest democracy as it goes to the presidential polls confirms the overall feeling of exposure to democracy’s current malaise. Is the cause to be found in Donald Trump? We think that Trump’s popularity is a sign, rather than a source of the problem. A glance at the other candidates, both Republican and Democrat, clarifies the point.
US citizens seem disaffected by whatever has a flavour of ‘establishment’. In both camps those perceived as candidates of the ‘elite’ are having a hard time. Marco Rubio, the Republican Senator from Florida, garnering the support of important former candidates (among them, New York’s George Pataki) and billionaires like Oracle’s Larry Ellison, is often perceived as a ‘golden boy’ of Republican politics. However, he has performed rather poorly and limited experience (just five years as a Senator) does not help. His more experienced opponent, Chris Christie, who interrupted his speech in New Hampshire referring to Rubio’s ‘25-second memorized speech’, was basically right. Do people like Rubio, for all their rhetorical talent, know what they are talking about? How much do they know about specific issues in foreign or economic policy? Do they understand the problems of unemployed or underemployed Americans (or Europeans)? Of course these are some of democracy’s structural problems, but they are coming to the fore more clearly. Governing classes in the democratic west have lost quality.
It seems American citizens have had enough of Jeb Bush’s Texan family despite his being the most moderate member of his own ‘dynasty’ as a Governor in Florida promoting sensible environmental policies. John Kasich, Governor of Ohio and second in New Hampshire, is an experienced, soft-spoken, and intelligent ‘moderate’, but, despite his distance from Washington’s establishment, is perceived as ‘too political’ by current voters. What do US voters think about Hillary Clinton then? How big was her defeat in New Hampshire, which followed a modest performance in Iowa?
