Trump v Biden: a tragic choice for a West urgently in need of leadership

This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter for Reaction subscribers. To receive it by email, subscribe to Reaction here.

One of the problems with a leader crying “fake news” is that when he needs voters to believe he is still conscious, still functioning and not about to become incapacitated or worse only four weeks and three days from a general election day, no-one sensible will believe a word from those speaking on his behalf. Trump was the prime mover in creating the distrustful climate that makes it extremely tough to sift truth from fakery when it comes to the man himself. Now, his charge that everything unflattering is the product of journalistic malice comes back to bite him.

How ill is Trump? Hardly anyone knows, and even those who do aren’t doing a convincing job of explaining. On Saturday afternoon, the President’s doctors briefed reporters that Trump is – in essence – fine with Covid-19. He had been moved to to the Walter Reed Medical Centre on Friday after testing positive.

Then his chief of staff briefed reporters “off the record” that the situation was more serious. His “vital signs” has not been good and the next 48 hours would dictate whether there is a path to a full recovery. Yikes.

Then Trump’s Twitter account fired up:

“Doctors, Nurses and ALL at the GREAT Walter Reed Medical Center, and others from likewise incredible institutions who have joined them, are AMAZING!!!Tremendous progress has been made over the last 6 months in fighting this PLAGUE. With their help, I am feeling well!”

Was that really Trump tweeting? Is the television news addict watching it all unfold on TV from his hospital bed? During Saturday we were in darkly-comical Death of Stalin territory. That film chronicles the attempts of the Soviet dictator’s terrified subordinates to work out what to do about public messaging when the ogre has gone to the Russian People’s great tractor manufacturing production facility in the sky.

On Saturday evening, Trump appeared in a strange video. He looked jaded and perhaps thinner, although he spoke clearly. Presumably a powerful cocktail of drugs had been administered.

There is doubt even on the question of when the President contracted the virus and when he knew he had it. Did he travel to the televised debate this week suspecting or knowing that he was positive? Few of the Trump party wore masks when seated indoors at the debate, sitting a few metres from the candidates. Now many of the Trump team have tested positive.

For many Americans, this weekend’s hospital drama will be a painful and worrying spectacle. A US President is not only a political leader, he is the head of state and via the dignity of office his person is supposed to embody the country, community, constitution and flag. Yet even in illness, when anyone with any humanity wishes him a recovery, Trump and his team somehow contrive to turn it into a soap opera.

For the rest us looking in – from Europe and other parts of the world – it is hardly encouraging either. The US presidency, sitting at the head of world’s leading economy and (for now) military, is supposed to mean something.

Indeed, with that in mind it is particularly difficult being a pro-American Atlanticist right now, when the choice is Trump or Biden. Tuesday evening’s excruciating televised debate between the pair was like watching a Las Vegas Rat Pack routine reenacted by grumpy, aggressive and confused seniors who have forgotten all the jokes.

For all Trump’s flaws (I’m being polite, he is ill) he has long been able to rattle out a one-liner, rat-a-tat-tat style, fingers-poppin’, like a comic just arrived in Vegas from Atlantic City via Queens NYC. Or a property developer having a row over the late delivery of a consignment of concrete with a “wise-guy” contractor (soon, mysteriously, never to be seen again).

You can hate Trump, and plenty people do, but lines like “because you’d be in jail” to Hillary were delivered with perfect comic timing. When he recently wished Prince Harry the best of luck with Meghan “because he’s gonna need it” that was funny. No way round it. That he can imitate Sinatra ribbing Dean Martin explained part of his appeal to American seniors in 2016, as a reminder of a land before political correctness. The Rat Pack went wrong in the end too and the routine lost its appeal, just like Trump’s, of course.

This time, in the TV debate, Trump didn’t even have a hint of that barbed wit. He was just an angry man shouting gibberish in-between burbling about how great he is.

Half way through watching a rerun the next morning, I was hit again by the enormity of the tragedy that this is the terrible choice at a moment of grave crisis, just when the West desperately needs leadership to handle a resurgent tech-totalitarian China that is already boasting of having secured a vaccine and returned its economy to growth.

We are highly unlikely to get that leadership for the next four years with either of these candidates. The best that can hoped for is that improvement happens somehow by accident or because the winner appoints good people who know what they are doing and lets them get on with it.

Some of the most interesting sections in Rage – Bob Woodward’s new account of the Trump tenure – involve tantalising glimpses of Trump flirting with that idea and then rejecting it.

When he appoints the brilliant Jim Mattis, the Marine general and bibliophile, as his defence secretary, he summons him to a meeting with the Trump clan at one of his golf course club houses.

Trump lays into NATO, the American-inspired defence pact. Mattis responds politely and firmly. He explains that NATO is a great achievement that has kept the peace and underpinned Western prosperity. It’s great value for money. Mattis thinks – like so many before him – that he has reached an understanding with the so-called billionaire property developer. Little more than a year later, Mattis could not stand the craziness in the Trump administration and resigned.

If Biden is the winner on 3 November, it is possible that he will make good appointments and trust those with the great offices, or be too confused to present any challenge.

The widespread hope in Europe is that a Biden victory will, for all the candidate’s imperfections, reintroduce diplomatic norms and restore the Obama-era, pre-populist, liberal order.

I’m highly sceptical about how effective or meaningful this will be – beyond creating a fuzzy Obama-lite feeling for a month or two, amid relief that Trump is gone.

After inauguration they’ll rush first to Merkel’s side to emphasise post-populism and the rules-based order. This will provide a great photo-op but the modern, defanged, pacifist Germany, while being a great country and culture, is of limited use use when – God forbid – any fighting starts or when shared intelligence is needed. How long before the Bidenites realise this?

As Politico’s Matt Karnitschnig put it this weekend on Twitter, responding to a typical Chatham House publication hymning German diplomacy: “One might also argue Germany can do all three (be economically successful, while being politically inclusive and championing multilateralism) because it runs a huge trade surplus, maintains quasi equidistance on tough geopolitical q’s (5G/Russia) and hides under the skirts of the US on security. Recent history suggests the course isn’t sustainable.”

Or the Biden team may go first to Macron, who has been making great efforts to present himself as the gateway to Europe and the defence of French, sorry, Western civilisation. Fine, but France and the UK are indivisible on defence now thanks to the treaties of the last decade and close cooperation that has melded our forces together in operational terms alongside NATO. Working with the French means working with the Brits.

Number 10’s recent behind the scenes experience is not encouraging, for anyone who wants a strong Western alliance with Britain playing a role. Biden slammed the Brits over Brexit and the threat to the Good Friday Agreement in patronising terms. We Brits don’t need reminding that thousands were killed on UK soil as a result of a murderous IRA campaign, quite a lot of the carnage paid for with American fundraising contributions.

The Number 10 view of that encounter was that the Bidenites behind the scenes came off as a bunch of arrogant, John Kerry-style, entitled Dems.

Their hope is that once the Bidenites rediscover how close the relationship is – in the daily intelligence briefing and in NATO discussions – then things will readjust after a few months. Britain is the main partner of the US in Five Eyes, the  intelligence-sharing agreement with Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Let’s see.

A strengthening of the West around Five Eyes, with the addition of the pivotal partner Japan, in alliance with associated powers such as France, is what Western leaders should be aiming for to protect against Chinese cyber and territorial expansion.

I can’t see Biden having the vision or ability to do it, and we know little of the instincts of his Vice President pick, Kamala Harris, other than that she is “woke” and standard issue ultra-liberal California. Perhaps she will undergo a magical transformation into a Harry Truman figure if elevated to the highest office? Democrat Truman saw what Communism was really about and established the defence of the West after the Second World War. A similar reconstruction of alliances is needed to contain China. I am not holding my breath for Harris to get this.

Until such a development, a divided West faces a deepening challenge from a totalitarian and assertive China that is keen to exploit its advantage as the rising great power and its grip on countries that took its loans.

Xi is emerging smiling from the crisis, boasting of vaccines and renewed growth. We can’t really know the truth of it, because his is a tech-totalitarian state that now allows very little foreign reporting. Its media is literally fake news. But Beijing grows ever more more confidant while we are stuck waiting to see how the worst contest in the modern era – between a stricken Trump and a confused Biden – resolves itself next month.