Us politics

After some confusion, it is confirmed: Donald Trump has picked Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice-presidential running mate. After the terrorist attack in Nice last night, the Trump campaign announced, somewhat melodramatically, that it had postponed its Veep announcement  ‘out of respect’. This led some pundits to suggest that all the reports yesterday saying that Trump had settled on Pence as his running mate had been misinformed. Well, they weren’t: Mike Pence ticks a lot of right-wing boxes, and helps Trump appeal to old-fashioned Republican voters. Pence is a straight conservative, Reaganite figure. ‘Get government out the way’ is his core message. He is House Speaker Paul Ryan with a bit more All-American

Last night a gunman attacked a gay club in Orlando, Florida. At present at least 50 people are confirmed dead and another 42 are confirmed injured – which would make it the worst mass shooting in American history. The gunman appears to have been a US citizen called Omar Mateen. Even the FBI is now admitting that he would appear to have had ‘leanings’ towards radical Islamic ideology. Perhaps that’s why, shortly before his murder spree, he called 911 to declare his allegiance to the Islamic State (which has since claimed responsibility for the massacre). Here’s a prediction. If the gunman from last night had proved to have been a Christian fundamentalist,

You don’t have to like Hillary Clinton to hope she becomes the next President of the United States. But, by god, this year, in this election, she is, as you might say, likeable enough. Of course there is something dispiriting about Mrs Clinton’s campaign. But, based on time-served entitlement and identity politics as it may be, it is nowhere – nothing – like as dispiriting as the alternative. Nor is it as mournfully depressing as the spectacle of so many Republicans dutifully lining up to endorse a man they know – if they have any shred of intellectual or even political decency – is the most appalling, dangerous, and unqualified candidate

Imagine, if you will, two epileptics trying to share a bowl of noodles and you will get a sense of how messy and unappetising the contest between Donald Trump, a Mussolini wannabe, and Hillary Clinton, a Nixon in a pantsuit, is going to be. (Actually, let me preemptively engage in America’s favourite pastime and apologise to both epileptics and noodles. Doubtless, both would make more congenial dinner companions.) How on earth did we get here? To start with, Trump and Clinton are not the beginning, but the continuation of the deterioration of American politics. That is not an uncommon development in mature, dare I say ‘sclerotic’, democracies. The Roman Republic gave

Oh dear. I’ve always admired Jonathan Freedland, and he usually writes so well about America. But his latest contribution to the Donald Trump debate is dreadful. It is a Guardian video — the format doesn’t help — called ‘Dear America, this Donald Trump thing? It’s not just about you.’ In it, Freedland warns the US that the rest of the world will be very, very worried if Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee. Watch and try not to cringe: Surely, as a clever man, Freedland realises that such progressive special pleading is what fuels the Donald Trump phenomenon? It is so deeply patronising. Come on America, the Guardian is saying,

In Cuba, they are shouting: ‘¡Viva Obama! Viva Fidel!’ What a slogan. The FT headline ignorantly described this as a ‘Nixon in China’ moment: implying that Obama had previously been opposed to Castro’s Cuba. The US President is expected to come to Britain next month to order us to stay in the EU. Let us strew his way with palms. Let all of us — workers, peasants and soldiers — shout with one voice ‘¡Viva Obama! Viva Jean-Claude Juncker!’ This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes. The full article can be found here.