There appears to have been a breakdown in the notion of smooth transition of the Presidency in the US that is quite surprising and for which Obama appears more to blame than Trump. The Kerry speech over Israel was pointless from a Secretary of State with his bags packed and should have been made three years ago, when it might have done some good. Made now it gives the Israel is always right lobby the perfect opportunity to hijack Trump. The latest spat with Russia is a glaring mismanagement of a delicate situation which will not achieve anything useful. The issue is not that the emails were hacked and by whom, but that they were written and on a private server to keep them secret from the US disclosure provisions. If some Russian set up hacked them, many would regard their alleged interference as a public service. Obama is claiming that the Democrats have a licence to mislead and conceal and anything done to expose the felony is un-American. But surely the un-American bit is the concealment?
There is more to this. The Democrats have for decades been more anti-Russian than the Republicans. It is doubtful if a Democrat in the White House would have seized the Gorbachev opportunity which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. There is no doubt that Bush II, whom this blog regards as a disaster, was nevertheless much more adept at dealing with Putin. Obama has, through a series of blunders across the middle east and Ukraine (backing the neo-Fascist Kiev was madness) including sanctions and exclusions, elevated Russia from humble fallen Empire to assertive World Power. Whilst this blog has no problems with that, since I believe a world with a single power is as unsatisfactory as a democracy with one party, the point is this outcome was the opposite of the Obama intention.
So having been a strong supporter of Obama throughout his term of office and forgiving of his failures, this blog now feels he leaves office a much diminished figure, still the darling of the liberal establishment, but a disappointment to everyone else and outsmarted by a much more astute Putin and likely to be humiliated by an incoming angry Trump. As for the hacked election drama and in spite of the unprecedented campaign of support from the incumbent, the democrats lost fair and square because they had failed in too many areas that affect the people who normally support them. As for Hilary getting more votes, you only need to look at the map. The glittering prosperity of the highly populated west and east coasts is blue, but most everywhere else, the beating heart of the American dream, turned red. To assert that this is all because of Russian hackers is to confirm that the Democrats have completely lost the plot.
However Trump is left with a problem. The naturally hawkish Republican party appears to back Obama’s expulsions, while Trump rejects Russian intervention, although he appeared at one stage in his campaign to invite it. The American intelligence services have shown themselves, especially over weapons of mass destruction, to be a lot less sure footed handling what we can call political intelligence, rather than terror or espionage assessments. Trump wants to square up to China mostly on trade issues because he has promised to repatriate jobs and that will be a good deal easier if he is able to exploit his hero status in Moscow and mend fences with Putin. So his first day in the Oval Office will test his ability to use the levers of power deftly and with a positive outcome for America. The whole world will be watching (twitter mostly) and so will this blog.