Politics

The Albanese government may tout its solid economic achievements but it must remember what decided the election in the United States: the disconnect between the data and the lived experience of most Americans.

People want competent government and, to cut through all the rhetoric and political posturing, elections come down to a choice as to who is better able and most likely to deliver it. Populist governments always fall in the end, when their performance fails to match the rhetoric. I believe this is what is ahead for Donald Trump.

Parliament’s last sitting fortnight of the year is off to a depressing start for anyone deluded enough to think our politicians put national interests ahead of their own. The over-riding preoccupation of the temporary residents in the big house on Capital Hill is who will get to run the place in six months’ time.

Trump’s resurrection demonstrates the insufficiency of reason, which often lacks the psychological carrying power needed to effect far-reaching reforms and take people with them. I doubt that Trump has read Sigmund Freud, or even heard of him, but he demonstrates Freud’s insight about the id, the power of instinctive sub-rational factors in decision-making.

When democracy loses its intimacy, when it can no longer be understood at the level of a whisper or a smile, then democracy descends into vulgarity and contempt ... The obscenity is baked in.

Labor and Liberal strategists are poring over Donald Trump’s thumping win in the United States presidential election for what they can copy and what they must avoid in the run-up to Australia’s poll.

We remain at it, expending hectares of newsprint, years of broadcasting, an untold number of electrons, reporting, analysing and commenting on political policy in detail or detailing the lack of detail, yet missing the big picture: it’s not really about detail anymore.

Newly re-elected United States president Donald Trump has made it clear he intends to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement again, and a top priority of his administration will be to ‘drill, baby, drill’ for more oil and gas. This couldn’t have come at a worse time, in light of the urgency of the climate challenge and with COP29 under way in the former Soviet petrostate of Azerbaijan.

The real point, as far as the government is concerned, is the Dutton opposition’s refusal to support the bulk of the government’s cost-of-living relief measures. The choice is stark – either support Labor’s targeted spending and the relief it pays for, or the Liberals’ unspecified austerity.

The presidential campaign in the United States was the most divisive, destructive, distracted and chaotic ever. It was driven by lies, misinformation, fake news and polls, hate speech and vilification, and many attempts at voter suppression. The campaign has sliced and diced American society and foreshadowed the most dangerous and uncertain global environment since World War II.