Last June, in a speech that crystallized the new populist streak in modern politics, UK Independence party leader Nigel Farage chided Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for their weak grasp of the new reality. “Little people” had rejected “big politics” he said; now it was time for “a grown-up and sensible attitude to how we negotiate a different relationship.” Unable to resist further goading, he added: “I know that virtually none of you have never done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade, or indeed ever created a job.”
When the speech was broadcast on television, one Eurocrat could be seen covering his face with his hand. The Guardian found out that it was Vytenis Andriukaitis, the Lithuanian EU commissioner for health and food safety. Andriukaitis spent the first six years of his life in a Soviet gulag in the Arctic, where his father, a diplomat, had been interned. In addition to a lengthy political career, he had degrees in medicine and history and had worked as a cardiac surgeon for almost 20 years. He was also a co-author of Lithuania’s constitution.
In a short blog post about his reaction to Farage’s speech, Andriukaitis explained that he understood British humour and “was and still am fully with all the British people” but he was concerned at the opportunism of the new nationalists. He accused them of spreading “toxic untruths” and warned that the British MP Jo Cox had been killed “because of people instigating hate, chauvinism and phobias … brutal forces infecting our democracies, destroying sentiment of security and values that we hold so dearly in Europe.”
Further scrutiny of Farage’s record as an MEP showed that during 17 years he had authored no opinions or reports as a rapporteur or shadow rapporteur, nor amended any. With three questions, two resolutions and no written declarations to his name, he was hardly in a position to berate other MEPs for not having a “real job.” In fact only four of the other 751 MEPs had a worse attendance record.
Something similar is happening in Washington as the Trump administration completes its norm-shattering transition. The recent confirmation hearings have revealed that Trump’s nominees have the same contemptuous anti-institutional instincts as Farage and his ilk. Betsy DeVos, for instance, the proposed Education Secretary, had no idea of the difference between measuring students’ proficiency rather than their growth – one of the most basic distinctions in US education policy. She was also, apparently, unaware that the Individuals With Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) is a federal law and that compliance with it was not up to the discretion of individual states. Asked whether guns should be in schools she referred to a school in Wyoming and said “I would imagine that there is probably a gun in the schools to protect from potential grizzlies.” To date the new administration has announced just 30 of the 690 executive branch appointments that require Senate confirmation. None have yet been confirmed.
The new President enters office with record disapproval ratings. His decision to attack Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the US Civil Rights movement, shows that he does not choose his battles wisely. It is one thing to upend Washington’s expectations on a populist platform of radical change, but quite another – as Barack Obama learned at great cost – to work with the people who are allegedly responsible for these dysfunctions. President Trump has made much of his business background, but his core organization employs fewer than 100 people, the federal government employs nearly two million. President Obama, who spent extremely long hours studying legislative fine print struggled, at the best of times, to keep pace with Washington’s political machine. Trump has neither the temperament, experience nor intellect to match his predecessor in this way – let alone delve into the daunting complexities of foreign policy – but he enters office with comparable promises: to end business as usual, to drain the political swamp, and perhaps most importantly, to give the downtrodden white working class their due by bringing back jobs and making the country “great again.”
Trump’s victory over the GOP establishment was almost as impressive as his victory in the general election. In a prescient analysis of the Trump candidacy, Andrew Sullivan wrote last year that he “intuitively grasped the vanishing authority of American political and media elites” especially the exasperation within the Rust and Bible belts with “political correctness” or what “might be better described as the newly rigid progressive passion for racial and sexual equality of outcome, rather than the liberal aspiration to mere equality of opportunity.” Weeks before Trump became the GOP nominee, Sullivan warned that “the vital and valid lesson of the Trump phenomenon is that if the elites cannot govern by compromise, someone outside will eventually try to govern by popular passion and brute force.”
As Donald Trump begins what seems destined to be a contentious and divisive presidency, he must take some comfort in the fact that he has always managed to have the last laugh in his political life. Belittled throughout his campaign, he nevertheless proved to be a far better judge of American public opinion than the political mavens who dismissed him. What should concern him, however, is the political karma of the “toxic untruths” that led to the sudden unravelling of the Brexit after its triumph over the British establishment.
The British are still coming to terms with the details of their divorce from Europe and the American public will soon have a similar moment of truth. For behind the swingeing dismissals of Obamacare and the chauvinism and xenophobia of the Birther movement that Trump gleefully championed, there was genuine envy of how much Obama managed to achieve. Entering office after a huge financial crisis, during eight embattled years he somehow managed to cut unemployment in half, reduce the deficit by two-thirds, provide healthcare for 20 million previously uninsured citizens and to shift the country towards clean energy; he also introduced policies that brought high-school dropout rates and teen pregnancy to their lowest levels ever. These are not small achievements. In the weeks and months ahead the new president and his administration, like many before them, will discover how much easier it is to mock the status quo than to take charge of the political machinery that produced it and bring about meaningful change.
