I am mesmerised by the US presidential primaries. Not in the way that many other Washington-watchers are, reading online newspaper polls from Midwest states they couldn’t point to on a map. Instead, for me, it’s a disbelief that the first and second rules of politics seem like complete strangers to so many of the candidates. A quick recap. Rule One is: know what you’re for. Rule Two, which can be deployed alongside or (in extremis) instead of Rule One, is: have the self-respect to know what you’re against.
And yet in this contest, perhaps the last in which the US dominates a unipolar world, many candidates do not seem to know why they want to be president. Twelve Republicans and a lone Democrat have so far “suspended” their tilt at the White House. Each thought they were capable of being the 45th president and yet I can’t think of a single big idea they believed in, apart from the obligatory faith in America.
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