The Tribune

with CHARLIE HARPER

“The Brits really know how to do this ‘pomp and circumstance’ thing, don’t they?” An Anglophile friend was commenting on the magnificence of the reception Donald Trump is getting in London and the UK this week. The “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom underlines once again the many aspects of the closeness of these two powers, and what we’re witnessing on our TV screens is vivid evidence of two other things.

First, the British are almost always keen to remind themselves, the Americans and the wider world that they’re closest to the US. And most Americans have gotten the message: US Polls show that the UK is the number one US ally, followed usually by some combination of some other British Empire alumni including Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But secondly, what we are watching shows the British to be ultimate pragmatists. They have no more interest than anyone else in incurring the wrath of the current American president. And Trump is nothing if not transparent about how to curry favour and influence with him. You do it by flattery. And Trump is getting flattered this week like no one but the British can do.

We’ll see how the efforts by King Charles and Prince William, among many others, work out in terms of deflecting Trump’s more ultra-nationalist views on trade and tariffs, European domestic spending on defence and the whole Ukraine situation generally. But as Europe faces a crisis unlike any other in 80 years with Russia’s implacable aggression, the British are showing their continental colleagues the way forward in trying to move the US to a position of greater engagement in the miserable Ukraine war and bringing it to a conclusion by turning on the American military assistance faucet once more.

The hope among millions around the North Atlantic region but also in the wider world is that Trump will come around and do the right thing for Ukraine.

The current situation is reminiscent to some degree of what Europe faced in 1939 and in the years leading up to that critical year. In 1930s America, voters were worried about the Great Depression and its devastating effects on their economy. Millions were out of work, family wealth disappeared seemingly overnight, and desperation reigned. The growing crisis in Europe appeared to most Americans as a secondary concern.

Now, the US is preoccupied with Trump’s cultural revolution. The current administration boasts openly of its efforts to rig the next election to ensure that Republicans loyal to Trump continue to control the immense power of the US government. Figures on both the right and the left have been the targets of successful political assassinations in recent months. Personal loyalty has clearly replaced competence at the highest levels of the federal government in Washington.

And there is a growing concern about the long-term effects of artificial intelligence and the onset of a potential robot-driven manufacturing sector and a bewildering search, in an age of misinformation and lies, for what is actually the truth.

America is, in other words, distracted.

We can only wish the best for the British government and royal family as they try to persuade Trump to follow in Franklyn Roosevelt’s legendary footsteps and resume full-scale military support to Ukraine.

But it’s also instructive to recall that it took the unparalleled diplomatic efforts of Winston Churchill and the sneak Japanese attack on a US naval base in Hawaii to finally move the US into World War II. And even then, nearly three years passed before the D-Day landings on Normandy beaches in June 1944 turned the tide on Adolph Hitler’s ascendancy in Europe.

We’re in the midst of a long-term emergency situation on Ukraine. It won’t take three years for American military and economic assistance to resume, but the first step is to somehow change Trump’s mind on the issue.

At the same time that we’re witnessing efforts to get Trump to view Ukraine differently, however, there is a political situation brewing in the US. It concerns identifying his successor. It’s of course entirely possible that that person will come from the ranks of the Republican Party, and the two most prominent names on any such list are current vice president JD Vance and secretary of state/national security adviser Marco Rubio.

Both of these highly intelligent, ambitious men started life on the national American stage as disdainful critics of Trump. But the man whose job they covet overwhelmed Rubio on the debate stage nearly a decade ago. And it has become more evident as time passes that Vance is singularly focused on power, and when he realised that Trump has the power, he transformed himself into a dogged loyalist.

Who will emerge on the Democratic ticket for 2028 is appreciably tougher to assess. For now, it certainly appears to be California chief executive Gavin Newsom. Newsom has been continuously in prominent public life in California for an astounding 21 years! He has been serving since 2019 as the 40th governor of California. He was the 49th lieutenant governor of California from 2011 to 2019 and as the 42nd mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011.

Newsom clearly figures that the best way to win the Democratic presidential nomination is to fight Trump on his own terms, with a bard-knuckled, brawling public posture. Newsom is tall, telegenic, articulate and often thoughtful, even in public. He has a beautiful, accomplished wife and four children with her.

Newsom burst upon the national stage most notably when he agreed to participate in a televised debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, moderated by Fox News heavyweight Sean Hannity and held in the Atlanta suburbs. Afterwards, respected on-line journal Politico assessed the December 2023 debate in these terms: “Fox News’ chaotic tussle in Alpharetta (Georgia) was, for the political class, a kind of fantasy for an alternate world many yearn for — a 2000s-era throwback where a raving former president under a legal cloud and out for vengeance (Trump) isn’t desperately trying to reclaim power, and where Democrats aren’t committed to their standard-bearer despite his old age and poor standing in polls (Biden). The tragedy for Newsom and DeSantis is that their debate wasn’t a preview of the future so much as it was a reversion, however brief, to those earlier times.”

That account turned out to be startlingly prescient, and offered a good forecast of the events that played out last year and up to the present time.

But it also put Newsom front and centre in the resistance to MAGA, the Republican Party and Trump himself. Political pundits are noticing. Here’s a summary of the views of several prominent observers: “The no-holds-barred approach appears to be paying off for Newsom. In a recent national poll of Democratic primary voters from Emerson College, Newsom was well ahead of his two main rivals, Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Notably, Newsom had been third, behind both of them, when the same organisation had conducted a poll in June.

“And Newsom seems to understand the demands of the so-called attention economy, which is the real currency in today’s politics. This is a dynamic that Trump has always understood, and one that I think Democrats completely misread during the Biden administration and in the 2024 campaign. To Newsom’s credit, he’s figured out how to spar with Trump in a way that drives attention, particularly around the (congressional) redistricting fight. Out of all the Democratic officials who have started podcasts since the 2024 election, Newsom is the only one who has built a respectable audience. That matters.”

There are others on the Democratic presidential stage. They include 2024 candidate Kamala Harris, who’s out promoting her new book and subtly teasing another candidacy. Buttigieg remains an alluring figure, apparently guided more than most politicians by common sense.

There are the governors of Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer), Pennsylvania (Josh Shapiro), Illinois (JB Pritzker) and Maryland (Wes Moore). They’re all attractive, and can point to important accomplishments in office and reliable resistance to Trump.

Still, in 1991 (Bill Clinton) and 2007 (Barack Obama), Democrats turned to virtual unknowns. Colorado senator Michael Bennet recently said: “Democrats are willing to take someone new (in 2028), that they may not know a ton about, rather than the kind of warmed-over leftovers, right? “

We’ll see.