True North Strong and.... liberal?

Much of the planet is still trying to sort out the meaning of President-elect Donald Trump. Indeed, if some viewed last June's Brexit vote was a nerve-wracking tremor symptomatic of Europe's slide into economic and political nationalism, Mr. Trump's election was a tectonic shift confirming it.

In late October (linked here), The Economist hailed Canada as a kind of lone outpost in defense of liberty and openness among liberal democracies; the country's young, energetic, and progressive Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau being the most obvious symbol. Indeed, Canada has a long multicultural tradition of tolerance, inclusiveness, and adherence to the rule of law. But of particular importance to a country of enormous geography (2nd largest land mass) and small population (just 35 million) has been the nation's openness to international trade.

Mr. Trudeau has doggedly pursued the completion of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Europe. It hasn't been smooth sailing. Indeed, the mere fact that Mr. Trudeau has pressed for CETA implementation-- an agreement initiated and largely negotiated by his predecessor-- is an implicit acknowledgement of the importance of open markets for Canadians.

However, Mr. Trudeau's DNA in defending openness is already being tested by Mr. Trump. It's a test that, in my view at least, Mr. Trudeau has already failed.

American Brexit

Like much of the planet, I have been struggling to wrap my mind around what transpired on November 8. In the dramatic finale to a profoundly dramatic and wild 2016 campaign, Donald Trump shocked everyone with a resounding Electoral College victory. A long period of recrimination has just begun.

I've devoted a lot of space in this blog to my anxieties about the 2016 campaign. In the days, weeks, months and (probably) years ahead, I'll be devoting a lot of time to more fully understanding the political earthquake that's just rocked the United States. Moreover, the important business of sorting through the implications has begun in earnest.

Yet, as I watched the returns well into Wednesday morning, the one recurring thought I had was that we were watching an American version of last summer's stunning referendum on British membership in the European Union (my post on that, here). In my mind, Tuesday's American Brexit is a blow to postwar liberalism equivalent to a warship being fatally torpedoed below the waterline. In some quarters, all of this will be celebrated as an appropriate
shake-up of the status quo. Uncertainty and chaos be damned, a changing of the guard was long over-due.

Perhaps. Fortunately liberalism is not a warship, but a set of ideas whose foundations and loudest purveyors were in need of a shake-up (something I've written about here). Buckle up, the shake-up has begun. The Economist, long a bastion of liberalism, made much the same argument in its reaction to Trump's election. I strongly recommend you read the whole piece (linked here). However, the last paragraph sums up our modern world perfectly. I've copied it below:

The election of Mr Trump is a rebuff to all liberals, including this newspaper. The open markets and classically liberal democracy that we defend, and which had seemed to be affirmed in 1989, have been rejected by the electorate first in Britain and now in America. France, Italy and other European countries may well follow. It is clear that popular support for the Western order depended more on rapid growth and the galvanising effect of the Soviet threat than on intellectual conviction. Recently Western democracies have done too little to spread the benefits of prosperity. Politicians and pundits took the acquiescence of the disillusioned for granted. As Mr Trump prepares to enter the White House, the long, hard job of winning the argument for liberal internationalism begins anew.

The Economist, Print Edition, November 12, 2016.

Peering into the November 9th Abyss...

One of the things I frequently ask my students to do on the first day of class every semester is to recall their moment of political consciousness; that point in their lives when they genuinely take note of the world around them. For me, it was 1979 and the Iranian Revolution and ensuing the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in early November of that year. On nearly every morning that followed for the balance of that crisis (444 days, in fact), I sat transfixed with my bowl of Wheaties in front of Good Morning America trying to sort out what was going on. 1979 turned into 1980 and the Presidential Election campaign that brought Ronald Reagan to the White House in January 1981. The American hostages were released the same day Reagan was sworn into office.

It was a ray of hope for a country that seemed to be on a losing streak; the economy best with "stagflation" (stagnant GDP growth coupled with high inflation), the ever-present threat of oil price shocks, uncertainty about America's place in the world, and the lingering effects of Watergate and the Nixon years.

The 2016 Presidential Election Campaign has been a different ball of wax. There have been tense, consequential, contests in the past, at least one of which (2008) actually generated a bit of euphoria. There year, there's no "Morning Again in America," no "It's the Economy, Stupid," no "Change We Can Believe In," nothing. Sadly, Trump's signature "Make America Great Again" has been underwritten almost entirely by a message of fear and loathing rather than hope and change.

No matter who wins, I am worried about what comes next. The next four years are going to be rough.