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If you really want to know how I feel today, go to Youtube and check out one of the performance videos for “American Tune.”  That pretty much says it all.

For about the last 16 months, we have been watching with a mixture of horror, disbelief, and mirth as Trump’s weaknesses–too numerous and glaring to count–have been paraded across our TV screens.  In the end, none of it mattered in the least.   Pious, conservative, rural Americans came to believe that an amoral, bombastic Manhattan billionaire was their tribune, they came out in force to support him, and that was that.

He will say the right things at first, because it is in his interests to do so.  The test will come when he runs into serious resistance, both at home and abroad.  Will he accept the limits put on his power by tradition, the Constitution, and good sense, or not?  We will see, but given his personality and indifference to the truth, there is no reason for optimism.

For those of you who voted for him on the ostensible basis that he is just a rougher version of a traditional Republican–a Romney in wolf’s clothing, if you like–you own him, so we had all better hope that you were right.  If not, the consequences of your decision have been described on numerous occasions in this blog, and I stand by my predictions, starting with the market crash that is already underway.

 

. . . .

What’s happened

Has happened.

What’s coming

Is already on its way

With a role for me to play.

And I don’t understand.

I’ll never understand.

But I’ll try to understand.

There’s nothing else I can do.

 

Fiona Apple, “Red Red Red.”

Fans of “Annie Hall” will remember the scene in the bookstore in which the character played by Woody Allen explains that life is divided into two categories: the horrible and the miserable.  The horrible, according to him, consists of dreadful deviations from the norm, like children with cancer and victims of natural disasters;  the miserable is everything else.  And so, as his line of reasoning goes, we should be grateful if we are merely miserable.

That is essentially how I feel about our choices tomorrow.

Hillary Clinton is not a miserable candidate.  She stands for continuity with policies that have brought us a 4.9 percent unemployment rate, the DJIA at 18,000, very low inflation, reasonable gas prices, and no large scale involvement in land wars anywhere in the world.  Her election will almost certainly be met with the usual tools of GOP vandalism, however:  government shutdowns; impeachment threats; frivolous investigations; debt crises; obstruction on nominations; and the like.  Add sporadic right-wing violence, talk of secession, and incessant complaints about a “rigged” system, and you have the next four years in front of you:  a reprise of 2011 and 2012, only worse.

And that, barring a split in the GOP, is the best case scenario.  The alternative is an ignorant, bumbling, would-be autocrat who will cause a market crash, threaten our liberties, start trade wars, destroy our reputation abroad, and seriously consider the use of nuclear weapons on a regular basis.  He promises “change,” but what we will get is chaos, pure and simple.

I will be watching the returns tomorrow with my heart in my mouth.  I am terrified of what a Trump presidency would mean for our country, and for the entire world.  Please choose misery over potential annihilation and vote for Clinton, for your sake and mine.

George W. Bush didn’t single-handedly cause the Great Recession; not even Alan Greenspan can take credit for that.  In the end, however, a party that believes that tax cuts and deregulation are the answers to everything clearly didn’t have a plausible response to the events of 2008.  The voters could see that, and responded accordingly.

I will address Obama’s legacy in a series of posts in December or January.  For the present, what really strikes me as being significant about 2008 is the beginning of the GOP’s descent into vandalism.  McCain’s program was actually mainstream and reasonable;  among other things, he supported cap-and-trade. By the end of the campaign, however, the crowds were ignoring him and baying for Palin.  The barbarians have been at the gates ever since.

Maureen Dowd hates the Clintons.  She’s disappointed in Obama.  She’s ambivalent about Trump;  on the one hand, she acknowledges that he looks like a menace to polite society, let alone American politics,  but on the other hand, she clearly thinks he’s a clever, charming rogue who would make a much better President than anything in his campaign would lead you to believe.

Think of him as a 21st Century version of Prince Hal in “Henry IV.”

The problem is that Trump is about fifty years too old to be Prince Hal.   In addition, when you combine his mistaken belief that he can run the country in the same manner he does his companies with his ignorance of policy and his inability to accept either defeat or criticism, you have a blundering tyrant–a man on golf cart– in the making.

An orange-haired version of Falstaff, perhaps.  Henry V at Agincourt, no.

The theory is that people who are too embarrassed to admit to pollsters that they’re voting for Trump will put him over the top.  Nothing about this election is normal, so I can’t dismiss this possibility out of hand, but one thing is for sure:  if you can’t bring yourself to admit that you plan to vote for someone, you probably need to reconsider your choice.

The election’s a few days away.

There isn’t much more I can say.

Will our choice be a nut?

My prediction’s no, but

I’d vote early and often, and pray.

My wife was watching “The Wolf of Wall Street” while I was intermittently suffering through the final game of the World Series on Wednesday.  I was struck by two things about the movie.  First of all, from a stylistic perspective, it was remarkably similar to the better “Goodfellas.”  Second, and perhaps more importantly, it reminded me a great deal of Donald Trump.

Trump doesn’t drink, and I have no reason to believe that he relies on drugs other than caffeine, but he is a product of the same kind of amoral, materialistic, self-promoting culture as the protagonists in the movie.  Like them, he invents stories and rips people off without the slightest sense of remorse.  Could we actually put this man in the White House?  It boggles the imagination.

If you’ve ever watched a singing competition on TV, you will know that the host is inevitably fond of saying that “the stakes have never been higher.”  In 2000, by contrast, it appeared that the stakes had never been lower; the country was at peace, and the economy was booming as a result of the tech bubble.  We were in the middle of a golden age.  We just weren’t aware of it, because everyone was fixated on Monica.

The 2000 elected pitted a Southerner running as the ambivalent heir to peace and prosperity against a frat boy from an illustrious family who essentially promised to let the good times roll.  He also told us that his foreign policy would be “humble.”  Guess how that one turned out.

Three comments about the contemporary relevance of 2000:

1. A year ago, I would have told you that Bush 43 was unique in that he could convincingly run both as an insider (his pedigree was impeccable) and an outsider (he clearly and genuinely despised parts of the establishment).  Today, the GOP nominee–the standard bearer for rural culture–lives in a high rise in Manhattan.  Go figure.
2.  The electoral map finally came into focus in 2000.  If a Southerner could not win a single Southern state, even his own, in a time of peace and prosperity, what hope was there for future Democratic candidates?
3.  He rarely talks about this directly, but if you listen carefully, Trump’s candidacy is as much a repudiation of Bush 43 as it is Obama.  The Bush family has every reason to vote against him.

I’m not an expert in UK constitutional law, but it is my understanding that the decision to require parliamentary action prior to the invocation of Article 50 is legally sound, and is likely to be sustained.  That raises some serious questions about what the government, and the opposition, should do next.

The Prime Minister has resisted calling an election even though she would be likely to win it with a substantially enlarged majority because she wants to avoid civil war within her party.  There is undoubtedly a majority against Brexit in Parliament today.  Would the opposition and the pro-EU members of the Conservative Party cooperate to bring down the government and force an election under these circumstances?  My guess is that the answer is no, but we will likely find out in a few months.

It’s hard to remember this today, but there was a time when the GOP was a moderate pro-business party that supported balanced budgets and civil rights and distrusted foreign military adventures.  Richard Nixon started the change by becoming a culture warrior of sorts and talking about “law and order,” but Gerald Ford, his successor, was a mainstream figure, so the evolution was not irreversible at that stage.  Then came Reagan, and everything changed.

Reagan brought swagger to the GOP.  He aligned himself conspicuously with the religious right, even though he didn’t actually do much for them.  His tax cuts were the first attempt to “starve the beast;”  in practice, they created huge deficits, but they did, in connection with actions by the Fed, create a boom which resonates in the memories of the public even today.

The GOP that we knew in the two decades prior to 2016 was a caricature version of Reagan which viewed tax cuts for the wealthy as the correct response to all economic conditions.  Today, we have a nominee who embodies swagger, mouths the party line on tax and spending cuts, and rejects Reagan’s optimism and belief in free trade.  The shining city on the hill has become a pile of rubble.  Mr. Sunshine has been replaced by Batman.

And so we have five days to go.

The waiting is painful, I know.

You’re given a voice

So please make a wise choice

And tell the strong man where to go.

If you find yourself with some free time on your hands, try imagining how American history would be different if Richard Nixon had been elected President in 1960.  Here are some of the questions; my responses are in parentheses.

1.  The Civil Rights Movement:  Would Nixon have embraced the movement? (He would have been ambivalent, but mostly negative).  If he had, what would it have meant for today’s politics?  (The two parties would be completely different). If not, what would it have meant for the movement?  (There would have been more violence, and real progress would have occurred only after the election of President Humphrey in 1968).

2.  Vietnam:  Would Nixon have been able to resist escalating in Vietnam?  (He would have been more sceptical about it, but no).  Would the Democrats have made the war a partisan issue in 1968?  (Absolutely).  Would the outcome of the war have been different?  (No)

3.  The Great Society:  Would Nixon have supported the Great Society?  (Absolutely not).  What would have happened with the Great Society legislation?  (President Humphrey and the Democrats would have pushed it through after the big Democratic victory in 1968).

4.  Cuba:  Would Khrushchev have tested Nixon the way he did Kennedy by putting missiles in Cuba?  (Probably not).  If he did, would Nixon have responded with Kennedy’s quarantine, or with air strikes?  (Air strikes).  Would nuclear war have ensued?   (No.  Khrushchev would never have risked annihilation over Cuba–it wasn’t a vital interest of the Soviet Union).

5.  Watergate and the 1970’s:  Would there have been a Watergate scandal, or anything like it?  (No).  What would that have meant to American politics in the 1970’s?  (No one would have ever heard of Jimmy Carter, and if Reagan ever got elected, it would have been in 1976, after President Humphrey’s two terms. Reagan consequently would have been President during the Iran crisis, and would have suffered the same political consequences.  The GOP and the conservative movement, as a result, would be completely different).

If you somehow think of American history as being an unbroken line, therefore, consider how different things might have been if a few thousand dead people in Cook County hadn’t voted for Kennedy.

There seems to be an emerging expert consensus in favor of my belief that there will be a worldwide market crash if Trump is elected, but most commentators appear to think that, as with Brexit, a recovery will follow in short order.  I’m less optimistic, because the analogy to the Brexit vote is flawed;  the UK plays a far smaller role in the world economy than does the US, and Theresa May is not a chaos agent.

To illustrate this, consider what will happen if people all over the world start pulling their money out of the markets and looking for a safe haven.  Under normal circumstances, that means US government securities.  What happens once we have elected someone who has openly mused about imposing haircuts on the owners of US government debt?  Will these really be viewed as safe investments anymore? Quite possibly not.

Investors will look next to China for stability and safe investment opportunities, but the Chinese economy isn’t designed for that kind of FDI, and the Chinese, in any event, have their own problems.  So where do you go after that?  Gold, perhaps?

The bottom line is that you might want to keep plenty of room in your mattress for your assets if Trump is elected.  There may be no better option.