Author: Bob Claude

2024 Election, Nationalist Theory, Politics

2024 American Nationalist Voting Index – Character

Bob Claude |

SCORE

Harris (-1.5 *2) = -3 Trump (-2.5*2)=-5

On Sunday we celebrated the 166th birthday (posthumously) of Theodore Roosevelt. Few presidents personified America as well as TR. In the next week, we will elect a president that will have to fill that role over the next four years.

As I said four years ago during the 2020 version of this index, the American presidency fills two discrete functions that are usually separated in other democracies – chief of state and chief of government. The chief of state is a unifying figure, such as a king or queen, who symbolizes the history and values of the nation. In short, he or she symbolizes its character. In contrast, the chief of government is usually a prime minister elected through a partisan process tasked with advocating and implementing certain public policies.

The previous articles in this series concerned the policies an American nationalist president should pursue in their role as prime minister. However, the chief of state role is equally important. Indeed, an American president who cannot symbolize the nation and its character cannot really be said to be nationalist. Thus, the score for this role will be doubled to reflect its importance.

Sadly, neither Kamala Harris or Donald Trump appear to be capable of being a unifying chief of state. They are both running two of the most divisive campaigns in history. Whether it’s Harris calling Trump a fascist or Trump calling her retarded, both clearly see this election as a kind of personal vendetta against the other. They allow their supporters to demonize and degrade each other with no condemnation or apparent concern. Both concentrate on holding rallies in front of thousands instead of engaging in civil debates. In light of this contempt for the American public, the question before us may actually be “Who is the least divisive candidate?.

The Harris candidacy has energized women and people of color but seems unable to connect to men or other groups. She has a reputation for imperiousness and a history of high staff turnover.  Her inability to articulate a coherent thought without the help of a teleprompter can be maddening.  We can only hope she will accept more substantive help in governing. As a result, she rates a minus 1.5 for unifying skills, which, after doubling, becomes a minus 3 .

Meanwhile, Donald Trump‘s arrogance has only worsened since he left office. He seems to believe that unifying means threatening his adversaries and engaging in vulgar epithets and insults. He has condoned the January 6 insurrection and refused to safeguard and return highly classified documents, showing a disgraceful contempt for the law and the national security.  He has been found liable for sexual assault, for financial fraud and campaign finance violations in New York, though the latter two cases are legally questionable. Nevertheless, his attacks against the judiciary during those cases showed a further contempt for the law. Yet the most damning indictment comes from many staffers of his prior administration, including his vice president, who are on record saying he is unfit for office.

Trump thus rates a minus 2.5 for his own unique failures as a unifier, which, after doubling, equals a minus 5. Only the endorsements of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and former congressmember Tulsi Gabbard prevent him from reprising his minus 6 score of 2020.  They have vouched for Trump and hopefully will inject some patriotic unselfishness into a second Trump Administration. Otherwise, we would be guaranteed another four years of juvenile meanness, personnel turmoil and a frightening dictatorial approach.

There is an old cartoon of a boy looking up at a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt and wishing he could be like him. Few Americans would look on the two presidential candidates today and say that. Let us hope that these ratings are wrong, or we will have to look for someone else to unify America over the next four years.

Next: Final Score and a Personal Decision

2024 Election, Globalism vs. Nationalism, Nationalist Theory, Politics

2024 American Nationalist Voting Index – Political Philosophy

Bob Claude |

This is the seventh of a series examining the issues in the 2024 presidential election. To see previous articles, click on the “2024 Election” category under the “Politics” tab above.

Score

Harris -2.5 Trump +.5

Presidential campaigns should be informative discussions about the issues that face our country. Many historians believe that the 1912 election between Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and William Howard Taft was among the most intellectual and consequential in our history. Unfortunately, this campaign so far is sorely lacking in those qualities.

However, presidencies often are defined not by the issues raised in the campaign, but by crises that were totally unforeseen. Think George W. Bush and 9/11 or Donald Trump and Covid. Both risks were “known unknowns” discussed only in academic circles and were never campaign issues. Nevertheless, they happened and required fateful decisions by the president on behalf of the nation that became right or wrong.  Since we don’t know what the crisis will be, we lack any indication of how today’s candidates may deal with it. There is only one indication of how they might – their political philosophy or ideology.

In a recent series on this website, I argued that the most relevant ideological divide in politics was between globalism and nationalism (see the category under the “Politics” tab above). Globalism believes that national borders should be irrelevant. Leaders and elites should have obligations not just to their own peoples, but to the entire world. Nationalism believes that individual communities represented by nation states are natural and legitimate actors in the world.  National leaders owe primary allegiance only to their respective peoples. The two ideologies actually break down into four subsets – socialist globalism, corporate globalism, ethnic nationalism and the progressive nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt. If we can place a candidate’s ideology on this spectrum, we can make an intelligent guess about their approach to future issues.

Kamala Harris‘s rhetoric and past issue positions place her squarely in the camp of socialist globalists. As she repeated in these clips from past interviews, Harris believes government should insure that everyone “end up in the same place”, regardless of circumstances. While she is clearly correct that people do not start in the same circumstances, her goal is not equity (equal opportunity) as she claims, but an empirical equality that is inherently impossible in a free society.  Moreover, her past positions on issues like immigration enforcement suggest that this desire to achieve empirical equality extends to the rest of the world as well.  Thus, when confronted with a crisis, her response will likely be to cater to the rest of the world, even to the detriment of the American people. She thus rates a -2.5 on the globalist side of the ledger.

Donald Trump is more difficult to pin down. While he campaigned in 2016 on a nationalist platform that included progressive ideas, his administration adopted policies dear to the corporate elite. His 2018 tax cuts reduced taxes on business and higher earners while widening the budget deficit and stoking inflationary pressures. His immigration policy successfully limited and deterred illegal border crossings, but it was often justified on ethnic rather than economic grounds. He has also favored increasing the number of higher skilled immigrants to compete with American tech workers, even to the point of “stapling green cards” to foreign students’ diplomas. His new alliance with consummate corporate globalist Elon Musk is also worrisome.

Thus, Trump may simply be a corporate globalist masquerading as an ethnic nationalist. Nevertheless, there are three groups that could pull him back to the nationalist side.  First and foremost is his voter base, which is ardently (and sometimes dangerously) ethnic nationalist. He will be loathe to cross them after their past support. His embrace of RFKJr. also introduces a progressive nationalist influence that will be more difficult to dismiss in a new term. Finally, his vice president JD Vance is a professed foreign policy nationalist.

Needless to say, Donald Trump is a mercurial and strong-willed candidate who has ignored outside advice in the past.  When all of these influences are taken into account, he is best rated as plus .5. In other words, he will tend to react to a crisis as a nationalist, but exactly to what extent will depend on the particular nature of the crisis.  Since we cannot know what those particularities will be, we can only hope that his nationalist side will prevail.

I recognize this analysis is based on guesswork, though it is leavened as much as possible with the facts. Trying to predict a person’s future decision on an unknown matter can easily degenerate into a form of divination. However, TR teaches us that avoiding such decisions can have worse consequences and the unpredictability of today’s world requires that a decision be made. I hope the four ideological categories I cited earlier are at least helpful in telling you where you stand, and then aiding you in determining where your candidate will stand as well.