Trump-Biden Gerontocracy and the World Order
The Thursday hustle between an 81-year-old Biden and 78-year-old Trump validated the worst fears — America’s future and that of the world order is held hostage by geriatrics. Neither Biden nor Trump addressed global issues. The world order is unravelling. The 90-minute rant and ramble show was not the best advertisement for democracy. US allies are Trump-proofing their economies and their geopolitics. America must ponder if this is the best it can offer for what it defines as the leader of the free world.
Shankkar Aiyar | The Third Eye | The New Indian Express | 30 Jun 2024
They say age is just a number. Not if you are in politics. This April, at a conference in Washington, Gordon Brown, the former chancellor and prime minister of the UK now in his early seventies, introduced himself as someone too old for European politics and too young to be an American politician. The point made only half in jest triggered some laughs and the hiss of resigned sighs.
On Thursday, the sighs of dismay were amplified as they resonated across the United States and the world as folks watched an 81-year-old in a face-off with a 78-year-old in the first presidential debate. The Thursday hustle between Joseph Robinette Biden and Donald J Trump was a validation of the worst fears — America’s future and that of the world order was now hostage to one-upmanship in the race of geriatrics.
The 90-minute spectacle of rant and ramble was scarcely a debate and hardly presidential. Juvenile jibes chased coarse charges of the unverifiable variety. Try this for flavour. At one point Trump chided Biden, “Let’s not act like children”; Biden retorted, “You are a child”. As Biden stuttered and stumbled over words and thoughts, Trump paraded personal victimhood with superlative self-certification.
Fact-checkers had a field day — apparently, Trump had 30 lies while Biden had nine. Each called the other the worst president. Trump coined a new epithet as he called Biden a “bad Palestinian”. Biden paid in kind, saying Trump had the morals of an “alley cat”. Issues worrying folks, ranging from inflation and immigration to abortion, from tariffs to taxes, got cluster-bombed by puerile name-calling. Trump was coherent in marketing his claims and lies, while Biden was incoherent in presenting his facts.
Post the debate, the spin doctors went into overdrive. Trump Republicans rushed to declare victory since the ex-president didn’t go rogue. Biden found comfort in orchestrated applause at an event where the banners said, “Let’s go, Joe.” Kamala Harris stepped in to argue the contest was about 40 months, and not 90 minutes. The calls asking Biden to step down have been countered — for now — by Barack Obama, but the angst is real.
It was verily an exposition of the state of American politics reflected in candidature. Trump faces multiple cases, has been impeached and was recently convicted in a felony case. Biden carries the legacy of u-turns and must bear the burden of his son Hunter Biden’s actions and recent conviction. It is true that both Trump and Biden are being chosen by the process. It is equally true that this is a rematch people do not want — an ABC poll shows 59 percent of voters believe both Biden and Trump are too old, and a Pew report states nearly half the voters would like the candidates on the ballot changed.
Yet, people in the world’s oldest democracy must suffer a no-choice race. The fact that neither candidate moved the needle on undecided voters underlines the pathos. In one of his last interviews, Henry Kissinger worried about the state of American politics and the extreme theory of ‘America first’. The choice of contestants is worrying allies in Europe and Asia. Biden’s brand of protectionism, the stalling of Nippon Steel’s takeover of US Steel and Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on all imports are manifestations.
History is witness to the split-screen American hypocrisy in the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and in the rushed abandonment of Afghanistan. In February 2021, Biden declared, “America is back” — but US influence is waning. In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, an Israeli prime minister has ignored and defied a US president and leaders in West Asia shied away from meeting Biden in Jordan. The ‘what if’ question about China’s move on Taiwan is blowing in the wind.
The US has conveniently switched from its evangelism of the power of example, quoted by Biden in his November 2020 acceptance speech, to practise the example of power. Whether it is through tariffs or treaties, allies in the western hemisphere are crafting policies to Trump-proof their economies and geopolitics. Elsewhere, those wedded to the idea of strategic autonomy — for instance, India and some other emerging economies — would no doubt seek to double down on maintaining neutrality.
Soon after the debate, a news anchor asked in dismay, “How did we get here?” The question morphs into viral memes on the other side of the world. Minutes after the debate, X owner Elon Musk tweeted, “Tonight was a clear victory … for memes.” One of the memes had Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un laughing on a conference call. In the real world, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman in the Kremlin, mocked with a cryptic line, “Putin didn’t set his alarm to watch the debate.” Farther east, the Chinese media found “the debate was very entertaining”.
There is no doubt the rules-based world order is unravelling. China and Russia, collaborators in the propagation of a competing new world order, were front and centre in the questions on geopolitics. Did candidates Trump and Biden debate and deliver answers on geopolitics, on the use of disruptive technology, on the climate crisis? The answer is a deafening NO.
Neither the choice of candidates nor the debate served as a beacon of inspiration for the concept of democracy. The question American people and politicians must ponder over is if this is the best the United States of America can present for what they proudly define as ‘leader of the free world’!
Shankkar Aiyar, political economy analyst, is author of ‘Accidental India’, ‘Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India’s 12-Digit Revolution’ and ‘The Gated Republic –India’s Public Policy Failures and Private Solutions’.
You can email him at shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @ShankkarAiyar. This column was first published here. His previous columns can be found here.