“New American Moment”

AMERICAN State of the Union address to the Congress has conventionally been designed to enable the President to spell out his grand agenda  for audience at home and abroad. Donald Trump's State of the Union performance on Wednesday turned out, mostly, to be a sum total of all the tweets and other verbal fusillades he had fired. He declared, in a self-satisfying manner, that there was a “new American moment” and that he had restored American “greatness” and “strength.” In particular, he was uncompromising in what he calls “America first” stance, which turns out to be a call to return to protectionist policies as well as a litany of complaints about unfair and unequal global trade practices and deals. Like an accomplished demagogue, he invokes the American farmer, the American taxpayer and the American consumer. His implicit message was that the world must reorient itself to his understanding of fairness and reciprocity. 

On the domestic front, President Trump largely stood his ground on immigration, hinting broadly at tweaking some rules, without diluting his rant against the “illegal” immigrant. He reiterated his solution of building a wall to keep the undesirable and the unwanted immigrant out.  He chanted the mantra of homeland security, declared that Guantanamo Bay base would not be closed down, and that the United States would “annihilate” terrorism and was more than ready to deal with pinpricks from North Korea or the ISIS.

In this longish State of the Union, President Donald Trump failed in his endeavour to sound presidential; he remains miles away from gravitas. And, given the fact that he is an addictive Twitter-junkie, the quasi-sobriety of the Union address will evaporate next week. And, though Donald Trump tried to suggest that as the President of the United States he was committed to the “citizens of every background, colour and creed”, his first year in the White House has left America a deeply fault-lined country. There is lesson for demagogues all over the world: it is easy to divide but very difficult to heal; it is easier to be partisan than to elicit cooperation and bi-partisanship.