Obama’s rainbow arc of history runs into Trump’s white wall
January 22, 2017, 12:49 pm 
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Protesters gather around a fire they built in the street as they make themselves heard following the inauguration of President Donald Trump on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. Earlier today Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP
by Rajan Philips
"All men are created equal," rang Thomas Jefferson’s opening line of the Declaration of Independence. But the reality was different in America as elsewhere. Even textually, women were excluded. Native Americans were extinguished, African Americans were enslaved, and the majority of the population were exploited. The American political experience, as opposed to the American dream, has been the long struggle to make America more inclusive and "a more perfect union" – its constitutional ideal. The struggle for inclusion, diversity and equality came in historical waves, with ebbs and flows, successes and setbacks. In the long arc of history - that saw the ending of slavery (Lincoln), the espousal of Progressivism (Theodore Roosevelt), the enabling of women’s vote in 1920 after 70 years of suffragist struggle, the execution of the Fair Deal (Franklin Roosevelt), the enactment of Civil Rights legislation (Johnson), and three decades (1953-1986) of landmark Supreme Court rulings - the 2008 election of Barak Hussein Obama as the country’s first African American President was a special, shining moment.
The election of Donald Trump as America’s 45th President, on the other hand, has been seen by many as a repudiation of Obama’s presidency and its legacy by the American electorate. The true picture is not so black and white. Obama is leaving office with an extraordinarily high favourable rating among the American people, while the new President is the least popular incoming president in modern history. As well, in the November election, Trump lost the popular vote by quite a margin to Hillary Clinton, who ran as Obama’s successor. In the nation’s capital, that Trump called the swamp and threatened to drain, only 4% voted for Trump. Trump’s victory came as a shock not just to others, but to Trump himself, his family and his campaign team.
While there is no question about the legitimacy of his victory, there is also no question that patently racist and misogynist individuals and groups in America are now boldly extracting legitimacy and visibility from Trump’s victory for their own agendas. At the same time, a good number of Trump’s white voters have their own legitimate complaints of being ignored and excluded by what they see as the elitist culture of inclusion, diversity and political correctness, while being left out in the economic lurch as a result of globalization.
It is not so much the victory of Donald Trump that has upset many people, as the style and tone of his campaign and his continuing avowal of his more controversial campaign slogans. The tone continued in his short inaugural address on Friday. The man could not switch from the campaign mode and rise to the inaugural occasion. The ceremony was grand as usual, but the speech was all anger and no joy. The message was petulant and dark. The country has been dragged through "carnage" for decades, he contended, implicating all his predecessors, four of whom were on stage as he spoke. "The American carnage stops right here and right now", Trump declared. The Messiah has arrived.
Take heed, rest of the world. From now on "it’s going to be America first." Its borders will be protected not only for security but also for prosperity. There will be two simple rules: "Buy American and Hire American." Under Trump, "America will start winning again, winning like never before." There will be a new alliance of "the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth".
Trump and Obama’s Legacy
Is Trump’s election a revolution? Not at all, even though The Economist in its New Year special opined that "Revolution will be in the air in 2017" in the wake of Trump and Brexit victories in 2016, and listed, for historical embellishment, the string of revolutionary anniversaries coming up in 2017: the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia; 150 years since the publication of Marx’s Capital Volume I; 50 years after the death of Che Guvera; and, reaching farther into the past, the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 theses and the start of the Protestant Reformation. It is hard to imagine that hundred years from now Trump could be remembered along with Lenin, Marx, Che and Luther. What matters is where will Trump and America be in four years? Where will that leave the world?
The truth is neither Trump nor anyone else in America quite know the answer. When he was a candidate, people either did not believe he would win or hoped that victory would make the man different. That was also President Obama’s hopeful prediction – the office will tone him down. The transition has shown no evidence of toning down. He continues to be tweeter-happy, driving everyone crazy with his 3:00 AM tweets (afternoon in China). The first billionaire businessman to directly become president, Trump has broken all traditions regarding declaration of assets and avoidance of conflicts of interest.
He brazenly declared at his first and only press conference after election, that only two months ago he learnt that the president is above any conflict of interest requirement (except he cannot receive "emoluments" from foreign governments under the constitution), and that he could "easily run his business and the government at the same time," but wouldn’t take advantage of it. His stock answer is that the American people knew what they were getting when they elected him.
The media, the pundits and the Republicans who hammered the Clintons about potential conflicts between the non-profit Clinton Foundation and a Hillary Clinton presidency, are now left speechless and helpless at the brazenness of a career businessman. The irony is that stringent conflict-of-interest rules apply to Trump’s billionaire cabinet picks, but they do not apply to the president. The Congress may pass new legislation to rein in at least future presidents, but Trump could veto them while in office. There is also speculation about security coverage for Trump’s business properties around the world. Do they come within the purview of presidential security?
In domestic policy Trump’s focus will be on jobs. He has declared that he would be the "biggest job creator that God created." He has more than a point in railing against trade agreements under which American manufacturers, perhaps more than in any other country, relocate plants to countries with lower wages and lesser environmental regulations but ship back their products to the American market. In the upshot, American workers lose jobs but consumers pay much less for their purchases. That has been the story of globalization, at least in America. Job losses and job creations have evened out, but consumers are paying less. Along with trade, automation and the turn to alternative energy sources have also led to old jobs being lost and new jobs created.
The social consequences, however, are starkly out of balance because those who lose their jobs in manufacturing and traditional energy sectors are not the ones who are re-employed in the new jobs created in hi-tech, service, and sustainable energy sectors. Bill Clinton was perhaps the first politician to recognize this imbalance and warn factory workers that their jobs were not coming back. But he vowed that he would work through government programs to help retrain workers losing jobs for new employment in other sectors. The reality is that the government neglected them, at least in proportion to what was done to bail out Wall Street miscreants who, driven by greed, plunged America and the world into an unnecessary financial crisis.
In 2008, President Obama inherited an economy that was in tatters and he is leaving behind a fully restored economy for his successor. Obama also, despite Republican opposition, bailed out the major auto manufactures, saving thousands of jobs and boosting the economy. But that was not enough to redress workers who are still unemployed after losing their jobs due to factory closures. They had voted for Obama twice in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, but switched to Trump in protest in the November election, giving him the edge in these states and in the electoral-college vote tally.
Trump deployed his marketing genius in targeting these segments of voters with a cynically crafted political message that stoked their anger, fears and frustrations. The message was not only about jobs; it was also about America’s culture wars over the environment, immigration, women’s right to choose and sexual orientation. Hardly the model for morality, Trump cast himself as the new defender of the unborn foetus. He will face plenty of unforeseen problems in trying to expand the economy through protectionism and tax reductions, as he is finding out in fulfilling his promise to repeal and replace President Obama’s national health care plan. Dubbed ‘Obamacare’ by the Republicans, its major beneficiaries also include Trump voters who do not want to lose their health care benefits. But his main fights will be on the cultural terrain, and that is where he may have to contend with more than the shadow of his predecessor.
It is remarkable that already his major cabinet appointees have contradicted Trump on almost every one of his controversial campaign slogans. Notwithstanding Trump’s assertions to the contrary, incoming Secretaries have said that America must and will abide by the Paris Accord on Climate Change; climate change is not a Chinese hoax; there will be no ban on Muslims; and torture of prisoners will not be permitted as it is against the law. While he will fill the vacant Supreme Court position with a nominee acceptable to the Republican right, there is no guarantee that a fully constituted court will deliver judgements in conformance with presidential expectations. As President Truman has remarked, almost always the opposite happens. Given the contentious divisions in the country, the court may well choose to stay with previous court rulings on women’s rights and sexual orientation rather than breaking from them.
A Hillary Clinton victory may have seen Obama quietly and happily easing out of politics. The Trump win would seem to have given Obama a reason to speak out if, as he has indicated, America’s core values are at stake. He would, for example, step in if children of immigrants born in America are to be deported. He will have plenty of support for all the major American cities have vowed to fight any deportation attempt by the new Administration. The state of California that massively voted for Hillary Clinton, is publicly beefing up its legal team for potential legal fights against the Federal Government on immigration, the environment, health care, and women’s rights. A second area of concern for Obama is the suppression of voting rights of African Americans and immigrants. America’s problem, he said during his many farewell musings, is not illegal voting but the prevention of legal voters from exercising their right.
Even though his foreign policy has been criticized as weak and ineffective, the world, perhaps with the exception of Russia, will miss Obama more than it welcomes Trump. True to form, Trump has been threatening to upend practically everything the West has built as world order after the Second World War. He considers Russia an ally in the fight against Islam, and he would take on China, which the West has been cultivating as a counter to Russia. He has called into question the reason for NATO’s existence and has dismissed the dissolution of the European Union as irrelevant to the US. He has praised Vladimir Putin and insulted Angela Merkel. Trump’s positions are most hurtful at home to the Republicans, who have been the traditional bulwarks of anti-Russian bellicosity, free markets, free trade, and anti-public investments on infrastructure of any kind.
Even those who are critical of the Obama Presidency have said that they will miss the Obama first family in the White House – their conduct, comportment and compassion. Given his age, President Trump is entering the White House with perhaps the largest first family in history. He is officially validating an extended first family in a society where nuclear family is the norm. He has no qualms about overlapping boundaries between the Administration and the family and its businesses. His son-in-law will be the designated emissary to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He will somehow broker peace even after the US Embassy is moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as the President father-in-law has promised to do. Americans may deserve to be governed by the presidents they elect. But after two hundred years of its experience in unbroken constitutional democracy, others are bewildered at the choice America has made.
