USA: US elections: No salvation in sight

The Roman Empire did not collapse overnight. It was an agonizingly long process. No wonder that the English historian Edward Gibbon needed around 3,000 pages in the 18th century to trace the “decline and fall of the Roman Empire”.

What is striking is that there wasn’t the Event that changed everything. The “decay” took place as a slow wave movement that began with the death of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the year 180. Phases of decline were followed by times of recovery and upswing, in which the Roman Empire picked itself up again and seemingly returned to its former greatness.

Does this sound familiar? Anyone who looks at the history of the American empire over the last 60 years will see astonishing parallels. When Tom Hanks’ cheerful rock ‘n’ roll film “That Thing You Do!” was released in German cinemas in 1997, he was asked why he had moved the action to 1964. His answer is also interesting for historians: »1964 was my refuge – the time of optimism, swing and cool sunglasses. It was the year before America finally lost its innocence, before Vietnam. Suddenly there was a global force that took hold of us from the radio and television. We still believed that the world would get better and better. We were convinced that soon we would all be flying around the country in hovercraft. The future looked very promising.«

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But the Vietnam War, which had escalated since 1965, ended the good old days. America, previously undefeated, failed to defeat an enemy that was hopelessly inferior militarily. Within a few years, the mood on the home front changed. The USA began to doubt itself. When President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to run again in 1968, it was also an admission that he had been unable to prevent the nation from drifting apart.

There is a certain tragedy in the fact that the very president who initially succeeded in pacifying society through progressive domestic and skilful foreign policy ended up driving the wedge even deeper: Richard Nixon. No politician was more popular than him. In the 1972 presidential election, he won over 60 percent nationwide and won in 49 of 50 states – no one before or after him could do that. But with the Watergate scandal he not only destroyed his life’s work, but also the belief that America was doing better than the rest of the world.

This belief was cemented in the years after 1945. The USA experienced a never-ending upswing. In the 1960s alone, average purchasing power increased by 50 percent. The rich became richer, but so did the middle class and parts of the working class.

But the decline began with the two oil price crises in 1973 and 1979, which were accompanied by the killer combination of recession and inflation. Once thriving industrial cities like Detroit – which was nicknamed Motortown/Motown as the center of the automobile industry (which is why the record company founded there was called Motown) – became slums within a few years. Those who could fled. In many places the population was halved. The heart of heavy industry – the northeast of the country – degenerated into the “Rust Belt”. The likeable but hapless President Jimmy Carter had the misfortune of having to run for re-election in 1980, in the midst of the deepest economic crisis. He had no chance against Ronald Reagan.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, left-liberal media such as “Spiegel” and “Stern” took delight in mocking the new president as a “former Hollywood actor.” This cheap mockery revealed the arrogance of educated citizens who believed themselves to be intellectually superior. What they didn’t notice in their arrogance: Reagan was not a Western actor who had changed his ways, but a convinced politician with clear ideological ideas. In the 1964 presidential election he supported the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, a pure libertarian. Now, 16 years later, he began to consistently implement his agenda.

Who wins the US presidential election is secondary. Whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, both are faced with the rubble of an economic policy for which Democrats and Republicans are jointly responsible.

“Deregulation” was the magic word. Less state, more freedom for companies. But the associated “job miracle” had a crucial catch: the pay. People had jobs again, but for many their paychecks were noticeably emptier. It was a false prosperity, just like the Roman Empire had experienced in the 4th century (before everything went down the drain in the 5th). Because the boom was financed on credit. Due to the massive tax cuts under Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the US national debt quadrupled between 1980 and 1992. In addition, the upswing passed through many regions of America. In California, IT companies prospered, while industrial plants in the “Rust Belt” continued to rust.

Surprisingly, even the Democrats didn’t notice this, even though the party was traditionally considered pro-union and pro-worker. As recently as 1990, Donald Trump declared in a “Playboy” interview about his political ambitions: “If I were actually to run for office, it would probably be as a Democrat and not as a Republican. (…) The worker would vote for me.«

But the Democrats would subsequently disappoint their core clientele. If you want to understand today’s alienation between workers and the Democratic Party, look no further than the 1990s. When their candidate Bill Clinton became president in 1992, he seamlessly continued the neoliberal policies of his Republican predecessors Ronald Reagan and George Bush. The low-wage sector continued to grow, and the legal easing in the banking and stock market world created the basis for the financial crisis of 2008. It became clear that the political coordinates had radically shifted since the 1960s and 1970s. Compared to the Democrat Bill Clinton, the Republican Richard Nixon suddenly seemed like a left-wing social democrat.

In terms of economic policy, it no longer made any difference whether you voted for Democrats or Republicans. Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 belied the fact that the Democrats lost their voter base in numerous states. The center and south of the country are dominated by Republicans.

At the same time, the USA’s exorbitant debt (now over 100 percent of gross domestic product) leaves less and less room for political action. Last but not least, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the management of the self-inflicted financial crisis caused the credit burden to skyrocket from 6 to 16 trillion dollars between 2002 and 2012. When Donald Trump announces that he wants to stop supporting Ukraine, there are also monetary reasons. The world policeman USA simply can no longer afford wars; they have become too expensive. This is also irritatingly reminiscent of the Roman Empire. When there were fires everywhere in terms of foreign policy, people were no longer able to keep up with putting out the fires in terms of domestic policy. And vice versa. The internal distortions made it impossible to appear as a strong unit to the outside world.

Against this background, who wins the presidential election in the USA is of secondary importance, not from the Ukrainian perspective, but from the US perspective. Whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, both are faced with the rubble of an economic policy that Democrats and Republicans have been responsible for together for decades. When the “Stern” portrays Kamala Harris as a Statue of Liberty and “Savior” on its cover, it only proves that it has not understood the essence of today’s America: This country does not need redemption, but cohesion – which brings us back to the Romans .

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