Most of us claim to be nice people. We work hard, we give to charity, we love our families, we don’t cheat, we pay our taxes, we are kind, we respect teachers, we don’t jump red lights, we respect other faiths, we read to children, we believe in democracy, we cheer free speech, and we hate Donald Trump. We think all nice people do all these things.
Many such nice people in America—there are nice people in America, too—are now in a spot. Just like nice people don’t know how to tell their kids about cheating spouses, hookers and paid sex, they don’t know how to tell their kids about Donald Trump.
Trump, in their eyes, too, has been doing things what nice people shouldn’t be doing. He behaves boorishly, he tells lies, breaks laws, sleeps with hookers and does all things that genteel people don’t do. Then how did nice people elect him?
Liberals elsewhere in the world are also flummoxed. They all hate Trump, worry about American democracy, and wonder what will befall the free world under this boor.
Indeed, Trump is a boor. Even those Indians who adored him were convinced so, after that Sunday morning call four years ago wherein he threatened Narendra Modi with “retaliation” if Modi didn’t send supplies of the Covid drug hydroxychloroquine. That sounded more like a loan recovery man than the leader of the free world.
But then, Americans have come a long way since the days of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, they have had great presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt since, but had their share of boors and bullies, too—a Harry Truman who atom-bombed Japan, a Dick Nixon who rigged an election, called Indira Gandhi a witch and sent warships to bully us, a Ron Reagan who used to act in B-grade films and lied on the Iran-Contra deal, and a George W. Bush who invaded Iraq for no reason.
But look at them more dispassionately, and we’d see that these Ron-Dick-and-Harry types did more good to America than did some nice guys like Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama or Joe Biden.
First, look at the records of these ‘gentlemen’. Carter brokered between Israel and Egypt but got shamed by the mullahs of Iran. Obama talked big, bagged a peace Nobel for himself, but did nothing in 10 years except kill a mountain rat who was hiding in a Pakistani hideout. Biden ran away from Afghanistan like a coward, leaving the land to the Taliban whom Americans had fought for 20 years. These ‘men of vision’ earned more shame than glory for America.
Now look at the scoundrels. Truman ended a tiring war quickly, rebuilt a bombed-out Europe, and created a free world for America to defend. Nixon effected the greatest tectonic shift in Cold War politics by reaching out to China, and even showed a visionary trait by proclaiming the Guam doctrine. Reagan asserted the moral supremacy of the west, undermined the Soviet empire and won the Cold War. And the bully Bush gave us Indians the nuclear deal.
Who knows what Trump would or wouldn’t do? In his first term he made a surprise reach-out to North Korea, never before tried by any western leader, and hammered out the till-then unthinkable Abraham Accords between the Jews and the Sunni Arabs. And who knows, in his second term he wouldn’t pull it off with pal Putin over Ukraine?
We may not like them, but these boors led America as a great power should be led, or how the voters in a great power wanted to be led. We can stand up to them and yet prevail as Indira did to Nixon, if we have the grit and the will. Strength will respect strength.
prasannan@theweek.in