Trump - a would-be president without precedent?

Once upon a time there was a US presidential candidate who scared the wits out of his opponents by being a champion of the common man, vowing in his campaign to get rid of the corrupt elites in Washington. A famous hero, he at first won the election by the slimmest of margins, and yet was cheated (according to some) out of the prize by a decision in Congress staged by his enemies.

No, this fairy tale is not about the man you may have been thinking of.

It wasn't Al Gore either, he lost his presidency in the US Supreme Court. The man I am referring to went on to win the US presidency twice more - and no, it wasn't FDR either (he won four times). After the Inauguration of the hero of this story, the White House held an open-house reception, to which a huge crowd arrived, celebrating Andrew Jackson's victory. The drunken crowd overflowed the building and brought general chaos, to the point where furniture was broken and porcelain smashed, and the newly elected President had to escape by a side exit. That was the election of 1828. The victor, the 7^th US President, was also the founder of the Democratic party.

Hence, despite the disparate party labels, Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump could in some respects be said to be parallel cases, especially in their appeal to people who have felt «betrayed by the system», in the rough crowds both have had supporting them, and in the uncompromising way they both have related to minorities. Jackson pursued the policy of moving entire nations of Native Americans beyond the Mississippi; Trump has promised to ship 11 million illegal immigrants out of the country.

As for party labels, Trump's link to the Republican party is pretty tenuous and not very convincing to many Republicans of longer standing. Is he, then, a closet «populist»? The question is rather tricky, partly due to Trump's inconsistent statements over time, partly because populism is not a consensual term, which also has its special, more concrete meaning in the US, linked to the Populist Party of a century or so ago. The Economist considered the question in an article this summer and concluded Trump's politics was not populism, but rather «[a]n unpleasant but often politically successful mix of populism, nativism and xenophobia, delivered with a dollop of cynicism.” (The Economist, July 4th, 2016) (Nativism, in the sense of giving preference to those born in the country as against foreigners.)

All told, it may be an insult to Andrew Jackson, who at his election was already an experienced politician, a lawyer and a general – a proven military hero - to compare him to a TV personality and real-estate mogul like Donald Trump, an unproven politician who has repeatedly demonstrated himself to be simply a self-obsessed braggard.

A Spanish Government - Now?

Wake up, folks. The sleepy, drawn-out process of forming a government in Spain is coming to a climax - sort of – mañana! By October 31 Spain must either have a new government, or another general election will be called to take place in two months' time. It will be the unprecedented third election in a row, so far two of them without a government being formed.

Two parliamentary elections (December 2015 and June 2016) have led to no government at all. Spaniards are known to be stubborn, if not mulish, but there is more to it than that. (See also my blog this spring, “A Spaniard is never wrong”.) The previous government of the conservative Partido Popular under Mariano Rajoy (2011-2015) has continued to serve as caretaker government. Two failed attempts to form a government during the year have instead led to the internal collapse of the main opposition party, the Socialist and Workers' Party (PSOE).

After 300 days without an elected government, having a government seems to make little difference. But in reality the Spanish political system has been going through a deep crisis. Barely visible before this year, it has only shown up for real since the last ordinary election. The crisis is due to changes in the main systemic features. Since 1996 Spain has usually been considered a two-party system, alternating between governments of the socialists and the conservatives. Now this picture is fading.

What has buttressed the two main parties' position has been corruption, at all levels of government. (See my blog in July 2013.) Funds siphoned by way of kickbacks from the national government, from the regional and provincial governments and from the municipal governments have kept large numbers of people in a comfortable situation, tying their fate for the long term to that of the party, even if only as sympathizers. Apparently the PP is the grandest culprit, judging from the number of court cases completed or currently underway, but the PSOE is also in the game. Since Spanish politics, the banks and the courts are also intertwined through political appointments, the system is very difficult to uproot.

On top of this, Spain has an extensive regime of immunity from prosecution for elected and publicly appointed officials. This system of keeping politicos free from prosecution has reached a scale apparently unknown in the rest of Europe. We are talking about thousands of public servants. Any thought of combatting corruption and reforming the system will therefore run into massive resistance. Hence the core of each of the two main parties is unlikely to collapse or yield to reform.

The consequences have come out during this year's skirmishing for a new government. On the left the PSOE saw its ranks decimated by the departure of its left wing, which went on to form a new party, Podemos. With its base in protest movements against the government's austerity program, Podemos now even surpasses the mother party in certain polls. One of its key demands is the conduct of referenda on independence for Catalonia and whatever other region demands it. This, of course, is anathema to most other Spanish political parties outside Catalonia.

On the center-right the country's leading party since 2011, the Partido Popular, failed to gain a majority in the elections last December and June, though it was the biggest party both times. The PP has been suffering from a serious loss of support, much due to its entanglement in corruption. The conservatives have also been hurt by the formation of a new center-liberal party, Ciudadanos, which demands “clean hands” in government.

These two new breakaway parties (Podemos and Ciudadanos) have created a situation where their closest political kin are at the same time their bitterest rivals, perhaps most obvious in the case of the PSOE. This has made coalition-building exceedingly difficult. Hard feelings have also led to unwise and endless emotional sparrings in public instead of sitting down in private for serious talks. When negotiations have taken place, a main feature has been the internal debates in the PSOE about what positions to take. The party leader until October 1st, Pedro Sanchez, has had to negotiate – more or less in public - both inward and outward.

Sanchez insisted on neither supporting Rajoy's attempts at forming a government, nor facilitating them by abstaining in Congress. His stance on these points was so unyielding that it earned him the nick-name “Pedro no-no”. As PSOE failed itself at their only attempt to form a government (in March), the sensible way forward to at least get some government in place, would be to yield to Rajoy and abstain. Even the grand old man of Spanish socialism, Felipe Gonzalez, said so publicly later in the spring. But Pedro no-no never yielded, and this may have become his bane. Presiding over two electoral losses and seeing his polls declining, he was increasingly ripe for his critics to harvest. That happened on October 1^st. It was an astounding political event, for a major political party to oust its leader in the midst of a coalition-forming process.

The PSOE “abstentionists“ (centrists) appear to have taken command of the party for now, presumably to be confirmed in a top party meeting on Sunday October 23^rd. Internal party resistance is still evident in some quarters. Voting in the Congress will then take place on the [26^th and] 27^th, and should Mr. Rajoy fail again at that time the King will announce new elections on Saturday October 29^th.

In a hopeful sign Ciudadanos has managed to make a deal with PP on fighting corruption, to support it in the next attempt to form a government. That deal was made on the occasion of Rajoy's most recent attempt to govern (in August), and is likely to stand in the next attempt as well.

If Rajoy and PP pass the investiture vote, they will be living from hand to mouth thereafter. The budget will have to be passed and all manner of cabinet appointments will need support from the enemies on the other side. Support from Ciudadanos will not be enough. Spain has had minority governments before, but never as weak as this.

Brexit - An Earthshaking Geopolitical Change in Europe

The decision of the British voters by 52 to 48 per cent to leave the European Union must be rated the biggest change in European affairs since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reunification of Germany. Over the course of the next two years Britain and the EU will thrash out an agreement over the terms of the British departure. Until then Britain will continue to be a member of the EU just as before, except with the consequences of the knowledge that this will all soon come to an end.

The reason this decision is so momentous is of course the political weight of Britain, owing to her financial and economic strength, her historical role as a leading European champion of freedom, and her achievement over the past 50 years of turning her global empire of yesterday, via a sometimes shaky process of retraction, into a liberal, multicultural showcase of working democracy. In European trade the UK has long been a leader for countries previously joined with Britain in EFTA, several of which followed her into the European Community and later the EU. In security affairs the UK is the European anchor of the North Atlantic Alliance.

Taken together these factors all mean that subtracting the UK from the EU makes the remaining 27 union members that much weaker, both economically and strategically. In geopolitical terms, there will - in sum - be that much less determination from the European side facing Russia under Mr. Putin's provocative leadership, and also less clout for the EU in global trade negotiations, such as the transatlantic negotiations ongoing.

 There is all the more reason to follow closely the way the coming process of divorce is carried out, as mismanagement can easily lead to worse consequences. One of the most serious of such possibilities is the dislodgement of Scotland from the UK in a renewed referendum for independence, since both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted heavily in the Brexit referendum to remain in the EU. Such exits would leave the UK drastically weakened, as the game of British dominoes could play itself out in amazing ways.

Electoral season 2016

What an electoral season! With Trump and Brexit all over the news, who would have noticed that the Spanish parliamentary elections of last December utterly failed to produce a government? Only the Spaniards. As I predicted in my previous blog, an inbred cultural blinder to the role of mutual concessions would hamper coalition formation. And it certainly did. New elections had to be called. Now one can already see the signs of another failure in the campaign for the repeat elections on June 26, as party leaders hammer each other with insults that will be hard to retract, once the voters have had their say. As in last December, no party is likely to be even near a majority in Spain.

Of course, while the Spanish will be forced to compromise, in the US there is no need to. At least this is Donald Trump’s obvious bet. As outside observers, we Europeans have been watching with fascination how nearly half of the US electorate appear to have gone collectively mad in the Republican primaries. Trumpomania rules. What we have seen in the US this spring demonstrates why the ancient Greeks were so sceptical of democracy. It even gives the resistance to democracy of today’s Chinese government a sheen of respectability. Mr Putin and Mr. Erdogan could equally claim to be in good company, as is Mr. Urban and his Polish colleagues. Trumpism is populism at its most incoherent, demagogic and dangerous.

At this point the obligatory re-run of the Spanish elections on June 26 is pushed aside even in the Spanish news by the Brexit thriller, to take place three days before. In the British case, as in the US and Spanish ones, the preferred strategy seems to be to go all out with over-the-top argumentation.

Going for the extreme has been this spring’s theme whether in the US primaries, the Spanish parliamentaries or the British referendum. Exaggeration works! We have now seen how this entices a mentally deranged person to stab and shoot to death a parliamentarian he disagrees with. Another crucial limit has been breached.

We can see the politics of a hundred years ago in the mirror.

A Spaniard is Never Wrong

When I first arrived in Spain to live, I soon encountered an unexpected phenomenon in public offices and many shops: a disinterest in customers or clients and a stubborn refusal to admit error, both of which are clearly dysfunctional to the conduct of daily business. One of my first sketches for a blog had the headline you see above. But then I thought, let's cool it. We all have our quirks. And many foreigners coming to Spain are quite overbearing. I laid that blog on ice.

Still, these impressions on my part assumed that those Spanish habits were only directed at foreigners. Later I realized I was wrong. The post-election circus of January-February surrounding the formation of a new national government is revealing of just these tendencies. The insistence on being right and holding their own line is not just a way of facing foreigners; it is how Spaniards treat each other, at least in public affairs.

Two words in Spanish may illustrate. First, equivocarse, "being wrong". Spanish is a language kind to people in the wrong. It assumes that a person who acts contrary to rules or logic is not wrong, he or she only mistakes one thing for another, or does something poorly, or misunderstands. To be wrong in a more direct sense is not part of the picture. If a Spaniard acts contrary to rules or logic, it is not because he fails to grasp, to understand things, or because he intentionally breaks the rules. Doing so would assume he is either stupid or criminal. The prevalence of this kind of attitude smooths relations at all social levels, at least for those who understand what's going on. It may also serve to hide the truth from others, who don't really get it.

Not surprisingly, therefore, there is no direct translation. The Spanish word for being wrong is «equivocarse», quite close to the English word equivocate. You know what that word means in English; it signals ambiguity, to speak with double meaning. In French it connotes uncertainty, dubiousness, misunderstanding. In the Spanish language «equivocarse» is the nearest one can come to saying someone is in error. In my Spanish-Spanish Diccionario de Bolsillo the verb «errar» (Eng.: to err) is defined as «equivocarse». But there can be no doubt the etymology is about "two or more equal calls", two voices, two meanings. Nothing about error.

What is the broader significance of this? It shows a cultural reluctance to admit error, to refuse to take the bull by the horns (sic!), or to confront error with a correction. Errors are not really errors, just mishaps. Corruption is not really corruption, it is rather just something that oils the machinery of public affairs. Nothing wrong with that, is there? In general the soft tone of equivocarse may be irritating, or sometimes even charming. Nevertheless, in public administration and politics it can cause complications.

Next word: «compromiso». Unless you know the language you might think it means compromise, but in a timely article in El Pais, John Carlin points out that the idea of arriving at agreement by making mutual concessions is foreign to Spanish political culture. The word compromise evidently has no direct translation into Spanish.

(See "Una palabra elemental que no existe en español", El Pais, January18, 2016.).

Now, clearly there are other expressions in Spanish that convey that meaning, for example "transigir" (to make concessions). That goes as well for being wrong, "equivocarse". My point is, though, that compromise and equivocate are words familiar in the political discourse of other European languages, but their meaning in Spanish is shifted to something else. The underlying tendency in their Spanish sense is to avoid losing face if you fail. Barring that, stick to your guns and press others to concede.

This tendency of inflexibility is reflected in the actions of the major party leaders in Spanish politics after the elections of December 20. They stick to their "red lines" (irrevocable positions) despite knowing well that nobody else will accept them. With open eyes, and the deadline fast approaching for deciding on new elections, they are heading for the precipice. New elections. As if that will save them.

Catalonia: The End of Artur Mas, but Hardly the End of the Independence Movement

(Updated after new developments late on January 9.)

Spain still has no government after the elections on December 20, only a caretaker cabinet awaiting a difficult coalition formation. That is nothing. Catalonia has not had a government since the regional elections on September 27, only a caretaker one led by Artur Mas, with 47% in his favor the presumptive winner of those elections. Three months after the elections Mr. Mas has been unable to find sufficient support for his investiture.  Parties supporting his pet cause of independence for Catalonia have won a majority of seats in the Catalonian assembly. So why has Mr. Mas not been installed as president?

The reason clearly is the person of Artur Mas himself, whose candidacy for another term (his third) as President of Catalonia is divisive, and not at all accepted by a small group of "independentistas" on the left, whose votes are needed to confirm him. Not to forget, Mas is not acceptable either to the remaining half of the Catalonian assembly, who also reject the goal of independence. Autonomy, yes, but not sovereignty.

The persistent failure of Mr. Mas to garner more convincing support for his independence project is visible in his election results. Not that 50% in 2010, or 47% in 2015, is trifling. But an earthshaking change like independence, to break loose from a democratic country like Spain, which has granted a wide range of autonomy privileges to Catalonia and other regions, would seem to require a much stronger basis than just 50% popular support. It might also require a wiser leader, one able to see that his own person has become a stumbling block for the broader political goal.

As you read this, on Sunday, January 10 the deadline arrived for presenting a candidate for President and a government for Catalonia. At the very last moment, on the eve of the deadline, Artur Mas finally stepped aside, so that - according to his statement - new elections would not have to be called. The replacement candidate for the office of President, Carles Puigdemont, mayor of Girona, was subsequently elected at the inaugural session on January 10.

At long last, a small sign of stabilization for Catalonia, whose future has also become a serious snag in the talks for a new national governing coalition. Still, not too much can be expected even with a new Catalonian president. The same push for Catalonian independence will continue. 

Its support is perniciously entrenched among the new socialists in Podemos, whose 69 representatives in the new national Congress of Deputies number more than 20 who are not elected on the pure Podemos ticket, but on regional joint lists between Podemos and local, smaller independentista parties, most of them in Catalonia, but several seats also in Valencia and Galicia. These splinter parties are literally "blackmailing" Podemos at the national level into supporting their demand for a Catalonian referendum. Implicitly the Galicians and Valencians also have independence for their own region as their goal. This way the secessionist movement in Spain is becoming like a network of cells spreading from a center in Catalonia to the national level where the demand for referenda on independence is currently choking every attempted coalition.

Spanish politics has seen trouble brewing over several years, though the absolute majority of the Partido Popular made the unrest seem inconsequential. Now stability suddenly seems far off.