Dreamstime
All politics is local. — Tip O’Neill
Your world changes on November 8th. By that I mean our world, of course. The election of a new American president is always a game-changer, but in this year’s case, it’s become harder and harder to identify what game, exactly, Americans are playing.
By the early morning hours of November 9th, we will have elected either this country’s first female president or its first Donald J. Trump. Discussion will turn to how exactly we identify a male “First Lady” or how precise the plans are for a border wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico. Say what you will about the 45th American president, this election will enter the books as one of the most tumultuous in our 240-year history.
There’s some irony to the often-twisted nature of the Clinton-Trump, “who-do-you-loathe-less” campaign for the White House. You have to go back more than half a century (1933-61) to find the end of a period as long as our current 24 years when only three men occupied the presidency. You have to go back much further, actually, to find three consecutive twice-elected presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe (1801-25). As vastly different as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama may be, there has been a stability at the top — at least as measured by length of service — unseen for generations.
“Stability” will not be a word associated with the person sworn into office on January 20, 2017. Our 45th president will enter the White House with surely the lowest popularity figures since Abraham Lincoln (who horrified the American South) in 1861. Here’s hoping the emotional and philosophical divide that separated our new commander-in-chief from his/her opponent doesn’t lead to the kind of crisis Lincoln had to address over his four years and one month in office. With the level of vitriol that has followed each candidate for well over a year now, it’s hard to judge how deep, and how severe, the country’s collective wound measures.
And our new president’s to-do list? Where to start? To begin with, our judiciary branch remains a man (or woman) short. The Affordable Care Act (will it still be called Obamacare?) is in a difficult place, if not in its actual death throes. Gun violence vies with terrorism to capture the fears and anxieties of Americans (and what is gun violence but a domestic form of terrorism?). The job market is strong, but wages are weak. America has the finest colleges in the world, but they’re too expensive for most who might attend.
These worrisome challenges are all here, right at home. Internationally, Clinton or Trump will have to coordinate relationships with European countries splitting in the aftermath of Brexit; a Middle East region unsettled (to say the least) by civil war in Syria; and China. Since I visited in 1994, I’ve considered China the sleeping dragon when it comes to worldwide harmony in the twenty-first century. Well, the dragon is stirring, both economically and militarily. Let’s keep it comfortable. Stable.
Where will Memphis land on the new president’s agenda? The cost — in human terms — of substandard primary education is an unyielding weight on the shoulders of our community’s future workforce. A president can lead the conversation on how we might begin to remove that weight.
U.S. business relations with China will shape worldwide industries, from manufacturing to energy to transportation. (FedEx is paying attention.) A president can steer this ship toward smooth seas, and the Memphis economy will benefit.
Perhaps closest to home, our next president will determine where, when, and how often American troops are deployed in the world’s hot spots, be it Afghanistan (where we’ve fought the longest continuous war in U.S. history), North Korea, Russia, or closer to home. (If we can build a wall on the Mexican border . . . .) Memphis has suffered its share of wartime casualties this century. Here’s hoping our next commander-in-chief reduces such a number as close to zero as possible.
History doesn’t wait to be made. But it is malleable, and tends to be shaped by human hands. It can unfold with immediacy or over the course of several presidential terms. Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will help shape at least the next four years, perhaps in spite of majority opinion across the country in which one of them is elected. Such would be perfectly American, would it not? There’s no obligation to like — or even respect — the American president. We, in fact, can actively loathe the leader of the free world. But he (or she) is entirely ours. We get what we vote for.
