If South Africa’s recent municipal elections have demonstrated one thing, it is that an apparently unassailable establishment can be threatened by a combination of economic trouble, distrust of government, and the unpopularity of party leaders. Change doesn’t come overnight, but it sure came sooner than most people predicted, with the ANC at historically low support levels at 54% of the national vote. It remains in outright control of only three of South Africa’s eight metropolitan municipalities, two of which are the only metros with populations below a million people.
In the US presidential election, conditions are in some ways similar. The economy has been sputtering along on three cylinders, government is bigger and more corrupt than ever, and the anti-establishment insurgency on both right and left have rocked the political landscape, only to produce the two most disliked characters ever to run for president in the United States. The most recent polls, despite a post-convention bounce, give Clinton a more than 10% unfavourable rating, with more than half the US, 53% disapproving of her and only 43% having a favourable opinion. Trump fares even worse, with a 27% disparity between favourable ratings of 34% and unfavourable ratings of 61%. In recent history, no Democratic nominee has ever had a net unfavourable rating, and of the two Republicans who have – Mitt Romney in 2012 and the George HW Bush in 1992 – neither won the presidency.
Much of the mainstream media – including this paper, which has referred to Donald Trump in needlessly personal, partisan terms as “the orange menace” guilty of “buffoonery” – appears to be siding with Hillary Clinton, either on the shallow grounds that she is the first female nominee of a major party, or on the pragmatic grounds that she is an experienced politician and better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. While denouncing Trump as a dangerous and inexperienced candidate, they express at most abject resignation at the inevitability of a Clinton presidency, as reflected in US opinion polls.
But for all Trump’s well-documented inadequacies as a crass reality TV billionaire who appeals to people’s baser instincts with brazen appeals to xenophobia and economic protectionism, Clinton is a pathological liar and imperious egoist who represents the worst of the crony-capitalist establishment that is so unpopular on both the left and the right.
The view that choosing between Clinton and Trump is a choice of the lesser of two evils is well founded.
Trump cuts a radical, populist figure who threatens to tear his own party apart. He shoots from the hip, and plays fast and loose with facts. While he might not have Clinton’s reputation for lying, he is far from honest. He supported the war in Iraq in 2002 and 2003, which isn’t in itself worth a disqualification for the presidency, but he now claims that he was one of the earliest opponents of that war.
He once claimed to have spoken with Russian president Vladimir Putin and that the two had a close relationship. When this seemed more like a liability, when it appeared Russia may have been involved in a hack that exposed scandalous email correspondence from the Democratic National Committee, he reversed course, saying that there was no relationship after all. This seems to be true: Trump has never met or spoken with Putin, after all.
When asked in a debate whether he called for a 45% tariff on Chinese imports, he said, “That’s wrong. They were wrong. It’s the New York Times, they are always wrong.” Admittedly, the New York Times is not the most impartial of newspapers and it is often wrong, but it promptly released an audio recording in which Trump called for exactly such a tariff. He also overstated the US trade deficit with both Japan and China by a third.
Mostly, however, Trump exaggerates and boasts. He acts like a second-hand car salesman in selling himself, as has always been his character.
Much more alarming than his boastful, bombastic attitude are his positions on the issues. He is strongly against immigration, and strongly in favour of domestic protectionism. This will not only raise prices for American consumers, but negatively affect the entire world economy. He’s in favour of low taxes, which is a plus, but he also advocates spending a lot more on the military and foreign intervention. He has chosen a vice president who represents the religious right, equivocates on gay rights, and is in favour of continuing the war on drugs.
Clinton has a worse record on honesty than Trump. Perhaps her most famous lie is the claim about going to Bosnia in 1996. “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base,” she told the media.
The Washington Post thoroughly dismantled that claim. There was no sniper fire. Instead of running to the vehicles, she met a large welcoming committee, which included an eight-year-old girl who presented her with a poem and a kiss.
She blows with the political winds on issues such as gay marriage, which is not unreasonable for a politician to do, but she tends to go on to deny that she ever changed her mind. She first claimed that her private e-mail server did not contain any classified e-mails, which was false, and then claimed that the FBI director, James Comey, declared her to have been truthful about it. He had said the exact opposite. A liar who lies about lies is a liar indeed.
She told the families of the victims of the embassy attack in Benghazi that the violence was the result of Muslim anger about an offensive video posted online. In fact she was well aware that it was a planned terrorist attack that had nothing to do with any video.
She was offended when Donald Trump accused her of playing the “woman card”, but that is exactly what she has done, on
many occasions.
She has often defended international trade deals, only to turn against them later. A