On the flight from Boston to London last Friday I read the Daily Mail newspaper’s report on “How Trump lost cash in 18 of his 21 funds.” An English investor explained that the bad result “rather sums up Trump’s ability to lose rather than make shedloads of money.”
“Shedloads of money? Seriously – shedloads? You have to love the Brits’ sense of decorum. But I digress.
The investor continued, “He’s just a spiv with a dodgy hairstyle. God help us if he wins the American election because hairspray will be the only winner.”
On Saturday my wife Dale and I, after navigating through the crowds at the famous flower market in East London, ensconced ourselves at a coffee shop where we perused the day’s papers. A Times headline, “Trump mines rich seam of despair in ‘sickest’ U.S. town,” caught my eye. That article contained nothing scandalous or disparaging but instead related how in the down-and-out coal mining town of Grundy, Virginia, where a man’s average life expectancy is the same as in Iraq, Trump is winning big. It was a straightforward news report.
But nothing good can last forever. Below that story a headline blared, “Leave my wife alone, Donald, you sniveling coward.” Our waiter, from Italy, joined our discussion on the Cruz and Trump contretemps about their wives. He told us that Trump made him feel better. “In Italy we had Berlusconi. But now that you have Trump, we’re not the only western country to vote for an embarrassing idiot.”
The Sunday Times featured another financially focused piece titled, “What stocks you should dump if America picks Trump.” Citing Trump’s criticisms of pharmaceuticals and his cheerleading for guns, the securities analyst recommended selling Pfizer and loading up on Smith & Wesson. Notwithstanding his trepidation about the possibility of Trump’s election, that writer still recommended buying American stocks, grounding his advice on investment guru Warren Buffett’s memorable aphorism, “I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot could run them. Because sooner or later one will.”
That evening at a neighborhood tavern’s traditional Sunday roast with our daughter Leah and friends from her graduate program in international development management at the London School of Economics, I was speaking with Adam, a native Londoner with affection for the Labour Party. Adam told me that if he were an American, he’d vote for Bernie. He added that money doesn’t influence elections in the UK the way it does in America, that Cruz was the really extreme candidate and that Trump sounds – here’s that word again – like an idiot.
Later Dale and I watched the BBC television news. It showed Mexicans celebrating Easter by pummeling a Donald Trump piñata. That looked like fun.
Could Monday morning bring some respite from Trump?
Apparently not. The front page of the Mirror screamed “Britain is no longer safe, Trump warns Americans.” The headline captured the gist of the story, which also reported that Secretary of State John Kerry concurred, though less emphatically.
The drumbeat continued.The next morning I sat down for a full English breakfast at a restaurant in Covent Garden called Bill’s and found myself staring at a headline in the Guardian, “U.S. presidential contest is shocking foreign leaders [says John Kerry].”
That evening after returning from Hampstead, at dinner with Northampton, Massachusetts, native Cora Kaplan and her family, we were reminded that some 500,000 Brits had backed a petition to ban Trump from ever stepping foot on English soil. Though the fervor for that proposal probably ratcheted up a bit prematurely, the House of Commons did debate and vote on it – just like a real legislative body. Congress take note.
The conversation then turned to the ramifications of the Republican race having come down to a choice between a dangerous ideologue and a dangerous fool. Unlike the British, we Americans pay relatively little attention to the politics of most other countries. But most other countries cannot afford to reciprocate with equal inattention. The United States’ economic and environmental policies, not to mention the wars we fight, matter mightily to other people and other countries.
Conversations with Leah’s friends in London and ours, in addition to reading the papers and watching news reports, have convinced me that most people I spoke to here want assurance that neither Trump nor Cruz could be the next “leader of the free world.” I crossed my fingers and provided that prediction. That said, across the world mostly Trump’s, but also Cruz’s, destructive demagoguery, racism and xenophobia, perceived as America’s, will live on long after their political obituaries for 2016 have been written.
Bill Newman is a Northampton lawyer, host of a WHMP weekday program and author of “When the War Came Home.” His column appears the first Saturday of the month. He can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.