Ganesh proclaims: ‘We will be living in Trumpland for decades’
Nov 03, 2024
Editor: Mr. Ganesh begins his essay with this ‘The paragraph that follows is the most reluctantly written of my career.’: what might The Reader make of this ‘confession’ of a sort? Could it be hyperbolic? Or just a feint?
Donald Trump qualifies as a titanic success in politics. And not because he got himself elected to the world’s highest office. Someone does that every leap year. It is because he achieved the hardest thing in government, which is to bind one’s successors. He moved the consensus on a big issue — trade — until the next president couldn’t go back, or didn’t want to. Hence the tariffs and subsidies of Bidenomics. Hence the spread of protectionism elsewhere in the world. Most leaders who change the “common sense of the age” need consecutive terms (Reagan) or a crisis (Thatcher) or both (FDR). Trump needed neither to turn an apostasy into an orthodoxy.
Whatever happens next week, we will be living in Trumpland for decades. Yes, I’ll manage, thanks. Besides some marginal trimming of restaurant wine lists, it is odd how little an era of global economic fragmentation incommodes a man. But “we” also encompasses the unknown millions who won’t now be elevated out of low income through trade, as so many Chinese were in the decades either side of the millennium. It includes the political class of Europe, too, which must decide whether to match the American fence. Trump could lose on Tuesday and still untie the west over time via his protectionist successors.
Editor: The Reader might wonder at focus on trade? Is its very remoteness from the usual Anti-Trump propaganda, that makes Ganesh’s essay so appealing? Ganesh just doesn’t shift his argument but expands it both exponentially, and prescriptively in the following.
Rather than mope, wonder how he did it. How does profound and lasting change happen? How does one leave a mark?
On YouTube, videos abound of Trump from the 1980s. He is measured, even soft-spoken, until the subject of trade comes up On YouTube, videos abound of Trump from the 1980s. He is measured, even soft-spoken, until the subject of trade comes up. At that point, a new edge enters the voice and a hint of a snarl contorts the face. Japan is the main target (“They come over here, they sell their cars, their VCRs”) but Kuwait gets some too. And this is on things like Oprah. In temporal terms, we are almost as far from this footage as it was from D-Day. But he still says the same things now about the same subject with the same vehemence.
Editor: Ganesh fails to see that Trump by nature, by design is rabble-rouser: he baits his audience with reports of bad actors.
Editor: Some Ganesh Snapshots:
This is almost all he cares about. (Immigration is a distant second.)
We can mock the primitivity of the economics.
The secret to leaving a legacy is monomania.
Editor: Bill Clinton, a sublime generalist: ornate Oxbridger dreck.
If there is a counter-Trump, it is Bill Clinton, a sublime generalist, his own wonk on most issues, an intelligent tinkerer of tax credits here and diplomatic relations there, but also one of the more forgettable two-term presidents.
Editor: Ganesh ignores the Clintons political romance with The Neo-Liberal Swindle that collapsed in 2007-2008!
In the end, Clinton just didn’t have a paramount obsession.
Editor: Ganesh uses Isaiah Berlin for almost a full paragraph. Although not mentioning the very elastic standards demonstrated by Berlin’s academic politicking!
‘Isaac and Isaiah: The Covert Punishment of a Cold War Heretic
by David Caute
Two high-voltage scholars engage in a bitter conflict in this irresistible tale of principle and politics in the Cold War years
Rancorous and highly public disagreements between Isaiah Berlin and Isaac Deutscher escalated to the point of cruel betrayal in the mid-1960s, yet surprisingly the details of the episode have escaped historians’ scrutiny. In this gripping account of the ideological clash between two of the most influential scholars of Cold War politics, David Caute uncovers a hidden story of passionate beliefs, unresolved antagonism, and the high cost of reprisal to both victim and perpetrator.
Though Deutscher (1907–1967) and Berlin (1909–1997) had much in common—each arrived in England in flight from totalitarian violence, quickly mastered English, and found entry into the Anglo-American intellectual world of the 1950s—Berlin became one of the presiding voices of Anglo-American liberalism, while Deutscher remained faithful to his Leninist heritage, resolutely defending Soviet conduct despite his rejection of Stalin’s tyranny. Caute combines vivid biographical detail with an acute analysis of the issues that divided these two icons of Cold War politics, and brings to light for the first time the full severity of Berlin’s action against Deutscher.
Editor: The final Ganesh paragraph is unsurprising, yet the very nature of Trump, since his Apprentice Circus, is his wayward attention span and volatility. Mr. Ganesh fails to even consider what role Elon Musk might play in the next Trump Administration!
Well, for a reason. It clarifies a lot. *Leaders glamorized as “change-makers” are often bores who grind away at one groove: rolling back the state, or joining the European project (Ted Heath was an immense hedgehog) or leaving it. Watch Trump fulminate about trade in the 1980s, and again 40 years later. The narrowness of his concerns would invite a chuckle, if they hadn’t prevailed.
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