Donald Trump, the defeat of the president that divided the United States
Four years of Donald Trump are enough. Or at least that is what the majority of Americans seem to have thought, who have decided not to grant a second term to their most eccentric, reckless, uncomfortable and above all divisive president, the leader who has not hesitated to take advantage of internal gaps who travel the country for their own benefit and who leaves behind a social divide even greater than when he acceded to the most powerful position on the planet.
Trump, who was already a famous figure in the United States before running for the White House - as a businessman, New York social celebrity and television star - was born into politics as a nemesis of Barack Obama, the country's first Afro-American president, but also the most cultured and inspiring in decades, even though his presidency, like all others, suffers from numerous chiaroscuro.
Like his predecessor, Trump is tremendously charismatic, albeit in a completely different way from Obama: more casual and lame, flatter, and more accessible to large numbers of Americans who were suspicious of the rise of minorities, the loss of of jobs in industrial cities and in the countryside, the accumulation of wealth in the large cities of both coasts, the apparent indifference of politicians of all stripes. And that they greatly enjoyed his spectacular rallies, where he promised to "make America Great Again" and fire Obama, as in his TV contest.
Because every candidate always tries to sell a change to the voters with respect to the above, but Trump built his political path as an amendment to the entire Obama presidency and encouraged the anger of all those who felt displaced, especially among the sectors. more conservatives who had grown up in the fire of the Tea Party's populist nationalism.
Against established norms
That construction has something of imposture, because Trump is a very genuine product of New York, a city that for those sectors represents the worst of the United States. Not only is he a millionaire, but he graduated from one of the best business schools in the country and began his career from his father's company, although he gave him the flight that he later achieved; He made it great, and that is what he planned to do with the country.
Ultimately, Trump encouraged the growing unrest of about half of his fellow citizens to defeat the other half. And that is what he has continued to do once in office, with a permanent electoral campaign in which everything that did not fit his story was always discredited: "Fake news."
Along the way, he has broken countless norms and taboos established by a couple of centuries of consolidated democracy - he has been the first president with no political or military experience prior to office - which has eroded even institutions as robust as those of the United States. Perhaps the best example, and the most serious, has been his recent attempt to stop the electoral count before counting all the votes, alleging an alleged electoral fraud on which he has not presented any evidence.
In any case, there was a moment when it seemed that Trump could do and say what he wanted without consequences - "He could shoot people on Fifth Avenue and he would not lose votes," he went on to say in the 2016 election campaign - although the Time has ended up making it clear that there is always a bill to pay: the national channels, which have gotten so much juice from their statements in these years, decided to cut off their intervention when they saw that they tried to undermine confidence in the country's electoral system.
A chaotic mandate with few concrete achievements
His mandate, immersed in these ups and downs, has oscillated between the chaotic, as shown by the many collaborators who have fallen from his side, some after a few weeks in the White House and many pouring serious criticism against him - read the former National Security Advisor , John Bolton-, and the inconsistent, with numerous political gestures, but few concrete achievements.
To his credit, he undoubtedly knew how to prolong the greatest cycle of economic growth in recent United States history, which has brought unemployment to a minimum in the last half century and reduced the poverty rate, even at the cost of increasing debt. and the trade deficit. His tax reform and the tax cut fueled the upward dynamics, until it was curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic.
In the must, perhaps the most significant thing is the weight loss in the world of the United States, which has given up piloting the fight against climate change by abandoning the Paris Agreement and has undermined the strength of organizations as essential as NATO, the World Trade Organization or the World Health Organization, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
His most lasting legacy will undoubtedly be the three conservative judges who have upheld the Supreme Court, expanding a majority that can last for decades and thus shape the life of the country. But also the confrontation with China, the great alternative power to the United States, opening what is already beginning to be called the Second Cold War.
An even more divided society
He will also go down in history as the third president to be impeached in Congress, in his case for the so-called Russian plot to influence the 2016 elections, although he was exonerated by the Senate, with a Republican majority, after a week of sessions and without going to declare.
That failed impeachment is perhaps the epitome of the social polarization that Trump has infused into American political and social life, which has reached almost everything from the American football league - his confrontation with the players who knelt during the anthem. To protest against racism was sounded - even the fight against the worst pandemic in more than a century: in the United States, wearing a mask aligns you with the Democrats, while not wearing it identifies you with the Republicans. And that he has started a new way of doing politics, which seeks more confrontation than collaboration.
The result is that Americans live further away from one another, locked in competing worldviews. A study by the Pew Research Center prepared before the elections reveals that 39% of Trump supporters say they have no Democratic friends and another 38% only a few, while among Biden supporters, 42% say they have no friends on the other side and 35%, a few. Which implies that three out of four Americans have few or no friends who are not of the same political choice.
That divergence is not only Trump's responsibility - the figures were somewhat lower four years ago, but already worrying - even though as president he has exacerbated the divisions to asphyxiating limits. It is the basis of his success, but also of his failure in trying to be re-elected, by causing an enormous mobilization of both sides - Bloomberg estimates that the turnout will range between 68.6% and 72.1%, the highest since 1900 - who got him out of the White House. It remains to be seen for how long, since his environment has already slipped that he does not rule out running for a second term in 2024, already 78 years old. Who knows, maybe Trump will be around for a while.
