Donald Trump has won the hard-fought election. He had been at it for more than a year. And there were doubts whether he would make it. But he did it, despite cases, verdicts of felony and America’s influential liberal media pinpointing every failing, every legal conviction against him, hoping against hope that through some legal stratagem some court would hold him ineligible to contest.
It did not happen. Trump ran the gauntlet, unmindful of liberal taunts. He claimed that he was not a Nazi, and that was the opposite of a Nazi. This time round, it was not just the non-college-going white working class in interior America who voted for him. The Latinos voted for him as well.
Trump’s victory and that of the Republicans in the Senate and in the Congress is a wake-up call to the Democrats. They have to recover from the stunning blow, gather their senses and wits, and fight back to regain the confidence of Americans. That they will though at this shocking moment, it seems that defeat is forever.
Trump has earned the right to revel in his triumph, but he has to sober down to govern America with its huge problems. The economy is doing well, and it is no thanks to him. So he has to be careful not to disturb the applecart as it were. He has to calibrate his proposed tariffs against Chinese imports with greater nuance. He should stop pretending that America must live in splendid isolation, and that it should not involve in others’ wars. It sounds so commonsensical.
The world is much too complicated. The wars would not end because America opts itself out from the arena. And the wars elsewhere are going to impact American life whether Trump and the Americans who voted for him like it or not.
The Republican-dominated Senate can tear up trade and security agreements with other countries but they should think much before they do so. It is to be hoped that this time round Trump is much better equipped to deal with the challenges at home and abroad. He must feel the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
Whether it is Trump or any other president cannot make America great again (MAGA) by keeping Americans out of the trouble-spots in the world. He needs good advisers who will explain to him that it is Republican presidents, the two Bushes, especially the younger one, who took America into Afghanistan and into Iraq. Democrat presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama just followed the George W Bush’s ideas, the axis of evil comprising Saddam-ruled Iraq, the Ayatollah-ruled Iran and Kim-ruled North Korea. Overthrowing the Saddam Hussein government in Baghdad did not end the problem of global terrorism.
On the economic front, Trump’s simplistic utopia of keeping all the manufacturing and all the businesses in America with friendly tax deals would not keep America at the top of the global economic league. It has to seek trade avenues beyond its borders even as it wants to keep out illegal immigrants.
Sooner than later, Trump and his advisers have to understand the causes of illegal immigration. They must see the hidden American hand in the political instability in other countries and the economic turmoil elsewhere. Most importantly, Trump cannot turn his face away from the crisis of climate change which is hitting Americans as much as it is hitting people in poorer countries. America has to be part of the international agreements to deal with the global problem. Trump cannot do what he did with the Paris climate agreement of 2015: walk out of it as he did in 2016 when became president. He has to perforce pay attention what is happening at COP29 in Baku.