CONNECTIONS October 2016 issue 17 The Presidency
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<strong>CONNECTIONS</strong> Issue # <strong>17</strong><br />
<strong>The</strong> third reason to be wary is the demands<br />
of office. No problem comes to the<br />
president unless it is fiendishly complicated.<br />
Yet Mr Trump has shown no evidence that<br />
he has the mastery of detail or sustained<br />
concentration that the Oval Office<br />
demands. He could delegate (as Reagan<br />
famously did), but his campaign team<br />
depended to an unusual degree on his<br />
family and on political misfits. He has<br />
thrived on the idea that his experience in<br />
business will make him a master negotiator<br />
in politics. Yet if a deal falls apart there is<br />
always another skyscraper to buy or<br />
another golf course to build; by contrast, a<br />
failure to agree with Vladimir Putin about<br />
Russia’s actions leaves nobody to turn to.<br />
Nowhere will judgment and experience be<br />
more exposed than over the control of<br />
America’s nuclear arsenal—which, in a<br />
crisis, falls to him and him alone.<br />
<strong>The</strong> election of Mr Trump is a rebuff to all<br />
liberals, including this newspaper. <strong>The</strong> open<br />
markets and classically liberal democracy<br />
that we defend, and which had seemed to<br />
be affirmed in 1989, have been rejected by<br />
the electorate first in Britain and now in<br />
America. France, Italy and other European<br />
countries may well follow. It is clear that<br />
popular support for the Western order<br />
depended more on rapid growth and the<br />
galvanising effect of the Soviet threat than<br />
on intellectual conviction. Recently Western<br />
democracies have done too little to spread<br />
the benefits of prosperity. Politicians and<br />
pundits took the acquiescence of the<br />
disillusioned for granted. As Mr Trump<br />
prepares to enter the White House, the<br />
long, hard job of winning the argument for<br />
liberal internationalism begins anew.<br />
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<strong>The</strong> pendulum swings out<br />
<strong>The</strong> genius of America’s constitution is to<br />
limit the harm one president can do. We<br />
hope Mr Trump proves our doubts<br />
groundless or that, if he fails, a better<br />
president will be along in four years. <strong>The</strong><br />
danger with popular anger, though, is that<br />
disillusion with Mr Trump will only add to<br />
the discontent that put him there in the first<br />
place. If so, his failure would pave the way<br />
for someone even more bent on breaking<br />
the system.<br />
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