Preview of President Donald Trump

Minor SNAFU or Major Insult?   Let's take a closer look at two incidents in Asia this week.

Some voters will like what they see in Donald Trump.  Others will be appalled.

The two themes of the 2016 campaign are revealed in the response to two incidents this week. It is not just campaign ad posturing.   The two campaigns are presenting two versions of what America needs.   Trump says that America needs a leader who is strong, who negotiates harder for America First, who demands respect.   Hillary says that America needs a leader who is reasonable and experienced and cautious enough to handle the dangerous arena of international trade, diplomacy, and great power politics.

The incidents.    There is some disagreement about the facts, the causes, the intention, but here is the interpretations as it played out in real time in Hangzhou, China.   What is undeniable is that the stairs that the US had arranged to be at the Hangzhou airport for President Obama to use to deplane Air Force One were not in place when he arrived.  The local Chinese officials had insisted that a local driver push them from where they were staged up to the airplane.  US security people insisted on a different driver, one who spoke enough English to take direction.  The disagreement took place among low and mid level personnel.  It didn't get resolved by the time the plane arrived.  Obama exited from the belly-door, which has built-in stairs, rather than from the traditional side of the plane.

Here's an article on it, along with a link to 25 seconds of Obams being handed a bouquet of flowers, accepting them, and walking to a car.  Click Here    The incident is extraordinarily trivial on the surface, but in the arena of signals of national respect it was important, and if for no other reason than that some people decided it was important.   There were news stories  around the world about China's flagrant disrespect and snubbing of the US.   Donald Trump weighed in.

In China the incident was played up in the state run media as an example of American arrogance and disrespect because American security people were trying to make rules telling China what to do in their own country.  How dare they!   "This is our country," a Chinese official was filmed saying when talking to a White House official.   That video clip got wide and approving play in China.   People there loved seeing a Chinese citizen telling off a White House staff person, defending Chinese sovereignty. 

Obama publicly shrugged it off as just a minor security mixup.   Did he just endure a snub, being forced to exit from the back of the plane?   Was this another example of America being dis-respected?

Donald Trump had an opinion:  "Did you see that?   They had other pictures of other leaders who are coming down the stairs with a beautiful red carpet. . . .  i've got to tell you, if that were me, I would say, 'You know what, folks, I respect you a lot but close the doors, let's get out of here. . . . '"

The Clinton campaign immediately responded that this was an example of Trump's unsuitable temperament.   He would have abandoned what turned out to be a productive meeting over a supposed and very trivial incident.  He is temperamentally unsuitable to be president, they said.

This was a point for Hillary, right?   Maybe not.    In this same trip the Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was quoted in reference to a planned meeting with President Obama.  Duterte anticipated that Obama might make reference to Duterte's telling his citizens that they should murder people they personally suspect being involved with drugs, which has resulted in some 1800 extra-judicial deaths.   The press reported that he "unleashed a profane diatribe" against Obama in anticipation of what Obama might say, calling Obama what translates to "son of a whore."   On learning of the outburst Obama cancelled the scheduled meeting.  

Trump commented it was an example of how comfortable foreigners are in disrespecting America.  "Terrible!," he tweeted.   It was Obama's fault, for not having insisted on being respected.

Hillary Supported Obama 

In the aftermath of the cancelled meeting, Duterte backpedaled and said he "regretted his comments came across as a personal insult to the president of the United States."   The media coverage of Obama was positive.   Hillary said Obama did exactly the right thing.  Taking offense at an apparent insult by a foreigner is almost always good politics in the home country.  It works in China.  It works here.

(A History Reminder to Readers:   America took possession of the Philippines after the Spanish-American war.   We spent an ugly decade there trying to pacify and end independence movements, including multiple forms of innovative torture.  Then Japan took it in 1941.  Then we took it back in 1945.  There was strong local anti-American feeling, which resulted in US naval ships leaving Subic Bay. Now, with China pressing outward, they want us back.   There is a lesson here:  Duterte did not make himself un-popular by declaring a war on drugs; it was popular at home.   He did not make himself un-popular by asserting Philippine pride standing up to the US; it was popular at home.   Our country first and sovereign works both ways.)

Two incidents, two responses by Obama.   In one case, Obama dismissed it as unimportant.   There was a productive meeting, a bilateral agreement with China on carbon, and when Obama got back onto his plane the correct America stairs were in place.   In the other case, the US cancelled a meeting with a key ally in the effort to block China's effort to claim the entirety of the South China Sea against territorial claims of the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia.   Would Obama have looked weak had he overlooked Détente?   He certainly would have been accused of it.   In any case, Obama's decision was to cancel the meeting.

We have a view of future President Trump.   The China trip was a major international summit.   Trump would have sent a powerful message to China and the world had Air Force One turned around and left the meeting.  It would have been a bombshell. (Headline:  Trump Cancels Meeting over Stair SNAFU.  Says 'America Demands Respect!'")

World capitals would know that this was a new era, one in which America is unpredictable and hyper-sensitive. It would put nations on edge and on guard.  They would walk on diplomatic eggshells.    America does not just seek things,  it would demand things.  America would be re-positioned as a country that demanded respect in every detail and that if President Trump is displeased or feels "dissed" that he will destroy months of preparation.

This kind of brinksmanship negotiation happens in American business.  It sends a powerful message when one side or another in a negotiation says they are offended by the offer and stomps out.  You can do this when you have options and you don't need the good will of the other side.   (Picture yourself in a negotiation to buy a home.  You make a lowball offer, the other side counters, you walk away.  Walking away is a strong move.  But it also forces the other side either to appear weak by reaching out with a new counter offer, or walking away themselves, no deal. If the seller really needs to sell to you, then it was maybe a smart move.  But it strongly motivates the seller to look to other options, and it makes coming back to you a matter of humiliation. )  

This kind of brinksmanship works better in business than it does in marriages, or family disputes, or when the participants have weapons of mass destruction, or any place where it is in the political or survival interest of the negotiator to be seen as never backing down.  Better to play chicken and maybe win than back down to certain humiliation --then defeat--at home 

Brietbart article:  the Pro-Trump view of it

So picture President Trump.  Some voters will relish the thought that President Trump will demand respect, making clear to the world that we are the tough guys, that he is concerned for American interests, not cooperation, and that we will blow up negotiations if we are unhappy.   (This is exactly what China accused the US in doing, since the American security people attempted to demand who would push stairs to the side of the plane.  They perceived it as an insult to China, disrespect to them, an outrage.)    The America-isn't-respected-enough meme has been out there since Obama was elected.   Mitt Romney's campaign book was titled "No Apology".   A criticism of Obama 4 years ago was that he nodded his head down when meeting a Saudi King; America shouldn't show respect, it should demand respect.  Trump continues this theme.  Conservative opinion is that Obama negotiates from weakness because he doesn't demand respect.  This is Trump's point.

U of Chicago Business School:  very dangerous

Some other voters will see it as a sign of junior high schoolyard posturing by testosterone-laden bullies eager to be king of the hill, itching for a fight, willing to risk the lives of their citizens over matters of trivial pride and honor.   Blow up a multilateral summit over whether stairs are pushed to a plane?  Really?   This is a continuation of the insult politics America has seen for a year: Lyin' Ted, Little Marco, Weak Jeb.  

Many voters will conclude if we act like an unreasonable bully we don't intimidate other countries into being submissive, we force them into being equally assertive and self protective.  
Countries don't respond to arms races by disarming.  They respond by militarizing.   Some voters think brinksmanship to be madness in a time of nuclear warheads.  We want allies not enemies.  Trump is dangerous. This is Hillary's point.

Is this net-net good for Hillary?   Not necessarily, and probably not.   Hillary is more hawkish than Obama and some people will see her as a happy midpoint between Trump and Obama, but this does her little political good.  The Sanders voters recognize her hawkishness and don't like it.  Lots of people think Obama is handling things about right.  Those dovish voters have Jill Stein and Gary Johnson as options, and those candidates come across as dovish and non-confrontational.  Current polls suggest that Hillary's slender lead is most vulnerable to losing voters to the 3rd and 4th party, not to Trump.    As in the primaries, this may be an election about pluralities, not majorities.  Trump has the tough guy America First niche to himself, and it may be the biggest slice of the electorate.


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(Remember:  I have started an audio podcast for those readers who want to hear a dialog between Thad Guyer and myself.  We did our first one this weekend and will do one every week.  Check us out: 

www.soundcloud.com/twolefteyespodcast