Most American commentators repeatedly bemoaned what they feared was the irreparable reputational damage former President Trump was costing America with, among other things, his xenophobic “America First” policies. And he hardly allayed their fears by going through every trip abroad like a bull through a china shop.
I was more sanguine. For example, it’s arguable that those commentators bemoaned like never before when Trump bullied Joe Biden during their first presidential debate. No doubt because it smacked of Vladimir Putin berating a hapless dissident – who everyone watching knew was fated for the gulag as soon as he left the stage.
Yet here is how I crystallized that political farce in “Presidential Debate: Biden vs Trump Was Much Ado About Nothing (aka a Sh!tshow),” September 30, 2020:
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Despairing friends and gloating foes alike should beware that this debate will have about as much impact on America as a flea sh!tting on the hide of an elephant. What’s more, nobody should doubt that it will take a President Biden no more than four months to clean up the mess Trump has created, at home and abroad, over the past four years.
This is why, despite the dystopian anomie that has occasioned the Trump presidency, I remain convinced that there’s no better place in the world to live than the good old USA.
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Given that, imagine how heartened and vindicated I felt when I read this yesterday:
Trust in the U.S. president fell to historic lows in most countries surveyed during Donald Trump’s presidency, according to Pew.
Under Biden, it has soared. In the 12 countries surveyed both this year and last, a median of 75 percent of respondents expressed confidence in Biden to ‘do the right thing regarding world affairs,’ Pew found, compared with 17 percent for Trump last year. Sixty-two percent of respondents now have a favorable view of the United States vs. 34 percent at the end of Trump’s presidency.
‘The election of Joe Biden as president has led to a dramatic shift in America’s international image,’ the Pew report reads.
(The Washington Post, June 10, 2021)
One of the fringe benefits of my law-school education was learning a few esoteric Latin phrases. And, truth be told, some of them really should be as commonplace as others like vice versa, status quo, and Trump’s favorite, quid pro quo.
The point is that, when a colleague remarked on how this polling by Pew and other firms represents the “uncanny fulfillment of my prophecy,” a Latin phrase came immediately to mind, “res ipsa loquitur”, which means the thing speaks for itself.
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