Field Notes: Guest Post on European Reaction to Trump

A Guest Post Perspective:   An American in Europe finds "preponderance of people who like Trump."

I consider Thad Guyer to be a liberal populist.    I consider him fully "liberal" because of a lifetime of work on behalf of disadvantaged and legally mistreated people, including a decade's nearly fruitless efforts to protect the interests of jailed people from police abuse.   Plus he appears to me to have the usual suite of "liberal" attitudes toward equality for ethnic minorities, for reproductive rights for women, for access to justice for the poor.  He is a liberal.

But I consider him a populist simultaneously and his guest posts and podcast commentary reflect his impatience with excessive preciousness in political correctness, with the failure of liberal elites to defend the laws on immigration, and with their squeamishness about condemning violence perpetrated by people here and abroad in the name of Islam.   Readers who watch Bill Maher on HBO will recognize some of the same politics, to my mind.  Guyer--like Maher--voices a kind of muscular liberalism that says we should be unafraid to call out our own liberal side when we are being stupid.  Policies that ignore reality in an effort to be nonjudgmental cause voters to decide liberals lack common sense.   A liberal populist, for example, might admit aloud it is perfectly reasonable to want to avoid being shot or blown up.   It isn't racist or xenophobic to want to avoid being killed and for wanting dangerous people excluded from the country.   It is crazy to conflate racism with wanting laws to be obeyed.  Laws protect disadvantaged minorities, too.

[This is my characterization of how I interpret Guyer.   My words, not his.   If readers really want to get nailed down how best to peg Guyer--liberal, populist, whatever--they should listen to the podcasts and decide for themselves.]

The Democratic Party's style of liberalism as expressed by Obama and Clinton is polite and urbane and careful not to offend.  It has urban sensibilities.   It is anti-gun.  It is comfortable with globalism because it serves the needs of the educated information and health care and technology workers who were comfortable in the party.   

1992: Saturday Night Live parody of Bill Clinton at a McDonalds

Their style is liberal but it is not populist.  Populism accepts as completely valid the cultural norms of average people.  At its simplest, a liberal might consider a person who drinks a Budweiser and reads the NY Post a person who has not yet learned to appreciate the finer tastes of a craft beer and the NY Times, but education will fix that.  The populist voter resents the condescension and the populist candidate actually fully respects a man who drinks Bud and reads the Post.   He might genuinely prefer them himself, in real life, not just on a campaign photo shoot holding a shotgun.

Hillary is a liberal.  Bill Clinton--at least the Bill who got elected back in 1992--was a populist.   He was derided as a chubby McDonalds food eater--and he got elected notwithstanding "bimbo eruptions."  The wealthy and slender vegan of 2016 watched his wife lose.  They were out of touch, no longer rednecks, no longer having a southern accent, no longer poor, no longer populist, and no longer able to find 270 electoral votes.

Thad Guyer reports that Europeans he spoke with appreciated Trump's populism, if not Trump himself.

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

Thad Guyer

"I Thought I’d Be Embarrassed by Trump in Europe"

I’ve been embarrassed by our Presidents before during my foreign travel and work. I am lawyering in Geneva, Switzerland now, and was in Paris last week. I was ready for it again, the “what’s wrong with America” questions, this time about Trump rather than Bush. But I’m not getting it not now. 

Since 9/11, Europe has been repeatedly traumatized by radical Islamic terror, its borders overrun by millions of “irregular immigrants”, the loss of national identities and currencies as the EU and euro dissolved borders and sovereignty. On “the continent”, Britain’s Brexit from the EU was largely derided in these countries. Britain is not, and never has been, regarded as a world leader here, centuries old antipathies are still alive. But the USA was the savior in WWII, we broke up the Soviet Union, we launched the global anti-terrorism intelligence regime to track and thwart the perpetrators. Europe deeply values a big creative friend with muscle.

Donald Trump himself is not popular here, but “Trumpism” is. It inspires considerable awe and the spirit of self-determination. Trumpism is the story of American democratic grit, American power, the proof that Americans can innovate from moon shots to the internet to populist revolution. Europe remains steeped, and some here say trapped, in cultural and political tradition, but “those Americans” can just rise up one fine morning, say enough is enough, and cast off the political malaise and established political order. I am hearing that Americans are showing what “the people” can do if they want to do it. 

Americans can say enough uncontrolled migration, be politically incorrect in saying that obviously suicide bombers are Muslims, and proclaim that we won’t commit to war with Russia because they invade (“take back”) the Ukraine. People I chat with in the bars and cafes, on the trains, in the establishment venues I work in, say Trump is right to question whether NATO should get everyone into war over new members like Latvia and Estonia, who maybe shouldn’t have been let in in the first place. What matters is the confidence that America under Trump or any other president would never let Russia invade France, Belgium, Germany, Spain or Britain. 

I’m finding a preponderance of people applauding America for electing Trump, for proving that liberal elites and their media can be punished for their excesses.. They see a symmetry of Trumpism with the controlled immigration views of Europe’s new feminist nationalist leaders like Marine Le Pen of the French National Front, Frauke Petry of the Alternative for Germany, and UK Prime Minister Theresa Mary May of the Conservative Party. Women take the edges off nationalism, I suppose. The French like their now one year old “State of Emergency” allowing widespread raids on, and instant detention of, suspected Islamists, and close monitoring of mosques—these being the polices not of racist nationalists, but of established political parties. 

Trump’s calls to do the same sounds decisive, not radical here.  Trumpism is seen as getting a grip on what is happening in your own homeland and to your own jobs, your own identity, and who you are willing to go to war for. I expected a chilly reception from white Europeans in the wake of Trump’s election, as I did during Bush I and Bush II. But after Islamic bombing across Europe and streets flooded with migrants, I’m getting the opposite from white Europeans in 2016. Trump validates what white Europe is feeling. For better or worse, they see Trumpism as the new world order.

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  Thad Guyer had reported that the data he found convincing predicted a Trump win.   I said that I thought the closing argument for Trump--the drain the swamp theme--gave Republican voters a good-government basis for electing him, and I said I thought it would be a narrow victory.   We were right, but we don't gloat.  We try to explain what happened and what is ahead for a Trump administration.