Americans will have to make some hard choices

One does not know whether to empathize or sympathize with US citizens at this time. Not that the global recession has hit them harder than any oth­er country. Also, it is not that, like the United Kingdom who voted to leave the European Union (EU), they are “feel­ing the heat”. We can also not say that the country is in a period of great mourning as a result of the loss of a great statesman. But because, the country has to face the hard-or harder- choice of having to make a choice of who be­comes President between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump!

Don’t let us lose our per­spectives. Both candidates are fantastic personalities and their outputs speak for them­selves. It will take an unre­pentant sadist to take build­ing a real estate empire, like Trump did in New York, with the wave of the hands; just as Hillary’s public service expe­rience is too intimidating to ignore, even to the blind. The fact that the US political sys­tem presents (or threw up) to its electorates, and the world by extension, two “controver­sial” presidential candidates, means they must make a very difficult choice come Novem­ber.

Making tough choices ap­pears to be part of the Ameri­can way of life. President Franklin Roosevelt faced the hard choice of “protecting American security” by con­fining thousands of Japanese immigrants and natural-born citizens in remote camps after the Japanese Navy launched their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

If voting can be seen to sig­nify an approval, influence a determination to change, pledge of allegiance and a disaffection to a particular choice, candidate or political party, then we need to under­stand what the Germans felt after the World War I, when they “elected” Adolf Hitler or what Italians were thinking when they accepted Benito Mussolini.

The present economic downturn hitting hard on some countries may again come to play in voters’ de­cision come November. Trump’s strategists appear to be cashing in on that to get the voters on their side. Ex­plaining economic phenom­ena to unemployed voters in logical terms may make little or no sense. All that an unemployed person thinks about the more is how to get the jobs. Trump is telling the voters that those taking away their jobs are – the Chinese, Mexicans, Minimum Wage, Deficit Financing and the likes. These appear to be making a lot of sense at least that was how he won the Re­publican primaries by land­slide in the first instance. On this one Trump appears to be winning!

 

 

On the other hand Hillary is doing her best to explain her policies to the Ameri­can voters. Her job is made harder for two reasons. First, she will have to withdraw speeches she made contest­ing against President Obama in 2008 for the party nomi­nation. Secondly, as the in­cumbent party’s (Democrats) candidate, she would serve as the unofficial spokeswoman of the Obama administration and its policies, even though she may not fully agree with them. As a result of these, her ambition, we must admit, to become the first female US president is made harder rel­ative to Trump’s.

Trump’s campaign has also done a good job of trying to “moralize” the political pro­cess. By frequently referring to the Benghazi attacks and others, including the han­dling of Syrian and Middle East crises, his strategists in­tend to take advantage of Hill­ary “lying to the American people” while she served as US Secretary of State (2008-2012). Some “scandals” have been “revealed” concerning donations from corrupt re­gimes to the Clinton Foun­dation in a well-coordinated campaign effort against Hill­ary. The truth of the matter is that, while this writer sup­ports moral authority, unnec­essarily “moralizing” politics leads to endless and unneces­sary arguments which ben­efit no one in particular. The reason for this is simple; no one can claim to be “the au­thority” in ethics or moral­ity. Trump doesn’t want his several cases of bankruptcy to be mentioned publicly. He doesn’t want the public to know the shady deals that comes with his massive real estate empire.

Using the “failed decisions” Hillary made as Secretary of State in the aforementioned cases. Let us assume as al­leged, that the decisions got so bad, which often do, and on the basis of past failed decisions, people should not be qualified for office

. This will only mean that no one, including those making the allegations will be qualified to hold any office of respon­sibly since no one recalls not making a bad, and I mean re­ally bad, decisions in the past! The recent Congressional report on Benghazi should equally have put the matter to rest since nowhere in the re­port was she found guilty or of any wrong doing.

Like I wrote earlier, Ameri­cans will be in a serious di­lemma between voting a pub­lic officer with long years of service and a business tycoon with little or no political ex­perience. The choice will also involve choosing a renowned “racist” or an allegedly “cor­rupt” officer. It is difficult to know whether to sympathize or empathize with Americans over the choice they are about to make later this year!

Olalekan Waheed Adigun, a political analyst, wrote through olalekan@olale­kanadigun.com, adgorwell@gmail.com- The Authority