USA Presidential Election Viewed from across the Atlantic

The recent general election in the UK illustrates to me at least, how important it is for a  democratic nation to have a fair and clear system for electing their governments. Thus after 14 years of the Tories there is now in this country a Labour Party  government with a huge majority. The change of government was completed essentially with handshakes between the two leaders.   Rishi Sunak the former PM, moved out of  Downing Street as Sir Keir Starmer moved in as our new PM. Television essentially depicted the exchange in parliamentary places by the now new PM and leader of the opposition. All completed within a long week end.

The system in the USA is very different. Their current President is  leader of their left wing Democratic Party.He is older than I and sadly seems to be becoming putting it mildly, rather less coherent, as is not uncommon with age. However, since drafting this blog-post, President Biden has stood down as a candidate for the forthcoming USA presidential election in favour of Kamala Harris.

The USA  Democratic Party  seems akin to the UK Labour Party. The USA Republican Party on the other hand, seems politically right of the  UK right wing Reform Party. The USA Republican leader, former president Donald Trump, has been found guilty of the criminal offence of falsifying business records, yet he seems to be thriving with voters despite there being other civil and criminal claims against him.

In the UK, the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was given a  caution for breaching Covid-19 lockdown rules by holding an office work party, and eventually he had to stand down, though Rishi Sunak too broke the Covid-19 rules but that  was apparently not held against him.

However, in the UK even if a man like Donald Trump  was allowed to run in a general election again as the leader of a political party, he  would in my view be unlikely to succeed in becoming Prime Minister not least because of his criminal conviction and other claims against him.

So, looking  further at President Biden in the USA and his  likely successor as leader of the politically left wing Democratic Party, the Democrats appear to be selecting Kamala Harris to succeed President Biden and to lead that party in the forthcoming race to become President of the USA. Millions of dollars are already flowing into the Democrats’ bank coffers, to support her. 

President Biden has not in my humble opinion, been a successful president. His effectively unilateral decision, that is with little if any prior meaningful consultation with USA's allies, to withdraw from Afghanistan, followed by the quick retreat of the USA and allies from that war torn country, must have been disastrous for the female half of the population there. In fact, the appalling treatment of women in Afghanistan, was essentially in my view the justification for the West invading that country though that was never given as the reason.

Whilst the West was present  in Afghanistan, the lot of the female half of the population seemed to improve. Schools accepted women and girls who were then able to gain reasonable employment and perhaps even become graduates. I appreciate that the reasons for the invasion by the West were not so very different from those of the  Soviet Union whose own previous invasion was  also  unsuccessful, but the benefits for women and girls there during the Western occupation, were rather more apparent. That the USA’s President Biden presided over the West’s precipitate and tragic retreat  was very sad with women there now unable at least openly, to be fully educated and gainfully employed.

Domestically, President Biden has ‘put America first’ with huge borrowings to support the USA  economy going well beyond Covid-19 borrowings by the world at large. Import taxes, state subsidies and oil exports, have resulted in a booming economy which few in the West can emulate though American borrowings are also huge.

One the other hand President Biden has supported  Ukraine following Russia’s appalling invasion of that country, whereas Donald Trump at this stage, seems to have little enthusiasm for continuing that support.

President Biden like President Trump and indeed the European Union, is adding to world trade protectionism which in my view will eventually make us all poorer.

I wonder if huge countries like China, Russia, the USA and indeed the EU, are as beneficial for their inhabitants and the world generally, as they would be if they all became separate  smaller nations?