The giant pygmy race

You don't have to be terribly bright to be US president, but basic grasp of social niceties is essential requirement

President Barack Obama was characteristically professorial when he recently described some of the potential candidates, jostling to be his successor, as “undignified”. He was referring to those candidates coming forward from the Republican Party, and it is difficult to disagree with Mr Obama. Leading a scrofulous pack by some way is that master of the comb-over hairstyle, Donald Trump. Mr Trump is famous for many things, none of them being modesty or intellectual heft. He has recently insulted Mexican immigrants and an American war hero (and fellow Republican) John McCain — neither of which have dented his poll ratings. Also in the race is Mike Huckabee who has probably alienated every Jewish voter there is in America with his remarks about Mr Obama’s foreign policy and the nuclear deal with Iran. Other candidates come nowhere near Mr Trump or Mr Huckabee for monstrous insensitivity, but they are not far behind. Potential candidates on the Democrat side are largely limited to the deeply polarising Hilary Clinton — who is hated and loved in equal measure and who has never uttered an ill-considered word — not in public, at least.

These are early days in the presidential race, and how many of the current crop of candidates is going to survive the primaries remains to be seen, but there is an inescapable conclusion — the Republican Party is attracting people whose qualities fall far outside of the spectrum usually inhabited by American presidents. You do not have to be terribly bright to be an American president, but a basic grasp of social niceties is an essential requirement. A degree of gravitas, or at least an illusion thereof, is equally desirable. At this stage of the game, Republican supporters are choosing potential candidates who appeal to the lowest common denominator, the giant pygmies steeped in wealth and privilege that roam the murky uplands of the American right-wing. They speak to and for an electorate that has seen itself shrivelled in the last decade, and which has developed a powerful sense of victimhood. We watch with interest and not a little trepidation.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 31^st,  2015.

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