PM let down by 'experts' on Trump, forum says - The Centre for Independent Studies
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PM let down by ‘experts’ on Trump, forum says

cis logo 640x360The Prime Minister’s embarrassing phone call with US president Donald Trump is a consequence of the failure by Australian experts, especially in DFAT, to anticipate the US election result and establish relationships with the Trump White House, speakers at a Centre for Independent Studies forum said last night.

The event: Trump in Oz: Could The Donald Happen Here featured: Tom Switzer (a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney); commentator and former Liberal MP Ross Cameron; and barrister Louise Clegg.

Mr Switzer said almost all experts both in the US and in Australia were wrong about the US Presidential election because they lived and worked within the bubble of accepted political wisdom.

Ordinary voters outside of the bubble, who may not have particularly liked Donald Trump, “nevertheless saw him as a human version of a Molotov cocktail that they could throw into the system in Washington and smash the system.”

Mr Cameron said Australian experts have also been caught up in the same bubble and have betrayed of our national interest by jeapordising our relationship with the United States.

“We know the whole of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs was entirely operating on the assumption that Trump was a joke who had no chance and would be defeated,” he said.

“What we have discovered is that there are consequences of that kind of catastrophic misjudgement and we have just experienced one of them today.”

Mr Cameron said that Mr Turnbull also had himself to blame, due to not meeting with Mr Trump when visiting the US in the lead-up to last year’s presidential election.

This was symptomatic of the failure by Australia’s foreign policy establishment to prepare for a “whole new world” and “there are consequences not just for Malcolm Turnbull  but for 24 million Australians who are exposed to risk — they have got enough problems as it is without being completely failed by the media and leadership class,” he said.

Edited transcripts of the speeches follow

 

Address by Tom Switzer

Thank you all for being here and what a day to talk about Trump and Australia. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the last few hours the Prime Minister continues to argue that the deal struck between his government and the outgoing Obama administration on refugees is a done deal. The President however begs to differ, taking to twitter just two hours ago calling it a dumb deal and this follows a Washington Post exclusive story today that shows that Donald Trump was very upset with Malcolm Turnbull during their 25 minute phone call conversation on Sunday.

Among other things, Donald Trump says that Malcolm Turnbull on this deal might mean a new Boston bomber in America – that it might mean, among other things, severing of the ties perhaps. He doesn’t quite go that far but he clearly, in his language, made it clear that he would hang up after 25 minutes. I’m reliably informed that the reason why Donald Trump was in such a bad mood is that he was told that Malcolm Turnbull is ‘one of those Liberals’.

Jeremy mentioned that I’m going to wipe egg off my face and that’s always never pleasant but I think it’s always important that journalists and academics always be held to account and the reality is virtually all of us, not all – Ross Cameron was one of the few exceptions – but most of us were wrong about The Donald.

Why was this the case? I think the general consensus right from the outset, if you go back to June/July when the Donald launched his presidential bid, the consensus was that he was rude, crude, lewd, a bit of a buffoon who, to put it mildly and politely, was incapable of understatement, erratic, divisive, he lacked a core governing philosophy and the general consensus was this would unite the Democrats behind a very flawed candidate in Hillary Clinton. It would alienate those important independents in the political centre. It would upset the Hispanic community, the fast-growing demographic group. It would alienate women, especially college educated Republican women, and moreover it would divide and splinter the Republican Party and the conservative movement more broadly. This was the overwhelming consensus to which I subscribed.

But you have to remember the pain of Reagan was very reluctant to embrace Donald Trump for various reasons. When the party of Reagan of the last 40 years has been about reducing the size and the scope of the federal government, free trade, immigration and activist engaged foreign policy, Trump is none of those things. In many respects Trump represents an insurgency populist movement against many of the core tenants of Reaganism.

I will never forget in late 2015 National Review, Ronald Reagan’s favourite magazine, many of you are no doubt familiar with it, edited for a long time by William F Buckley Jr, the patron saint of American conservatives. It dedicated a special issue: ‘Stop Trump’. Extraordinary. It had about 30 to 40 of the finest conservative and neoconservative minds in the United States writing articles on why Trump should not be the GOP candidate.

Add to this the electoral arithmetic tomography, Hillary Clinton for all her flaws was nevertheless the most experienced political figure arguably in living memory, perhaps other than George HW Bush. Add to this all those factors and you can see why the betting markets, the pollsters, the experts and the so-called experts predicted a Hillary Clinton win. We were wrong.

Why? I think the best explanation – this is probably one of the few times that people like us can ever praise the fellow – but Michael Moore, the left-wing movie documentary maker, I thought, had it best in the months leading up to last November’s election. He said that Trump was resonating with a lot of working class folks, uneducated mainly from rustbelt states, de-industrialised towns, from states like Wisconsin and Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and many of these states hadn’t voted Republican since the Reagan era. And Trump, according to Moore, was resonating with these folks because he stood up to globalisation and Wall Street and the big corporate banks and he railed against identity and political correctness that had poisoned the Democratic party.

And although a lot of these folks didn’t particularly like Trump, they nevertheless saw him as a human version of a Molotov cocktail that they could throw into the system in Washington and smash the system. And the reality is, although Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, he won pretty convincingly in the electoral college votes – which is what counts in the American system. And he won over those so-called Brexit states that Michael Moore identified.

I think another reason why people like me were horribly wrong about Donald Trump – I say this about academics and journalists especially – is that we all too often live in a bubble.  I think that it’s very easy for us to float around and not even mix with a Donald Trump supporter or a Marine Le Pen supporter or even a Nigel Farage supporter or a Pauline Hanson supporter; and this is certainly the case with a lot of my colleagues at University and in journalism.

I’ll never forget the day of the election, spending the day at Channel 7 and then going to the ABC that night and seeing all my colleagues in radio and television staying away from sharp objects. And I said you guys have to be dispassionate about this. You have got to report it as it is. Of course a lot of these journalists just could not come to grips with the fact that a Donald Trump resonated with so many people who were fed up with globalisation or at least blamed globalisation.

I think they’re more likely to be right to blame technology but they’re blaming globalisation for displaced jobs and wage stagnation and income inequality. They’re blaming political correctness. They’re blaming open borders.

I think all too often journalists and academics, folks you often watch on television, we do live in a bubble and the episode reminded me of something that Pauline Kael – the New Yorker film critic -said after Richard Nixon’s landslide election victory in 1972.  He beat George McGovern 49/50 states he won 61/60% of the vote. Pauline Kael, quintessential Metropolitan sophisticate from Manhattan, she looked at her colleagues next day and said ‘how could this be? I didn’t know anyone who voted for Richard Nixon.’

Finally, could a Donald Trump-like figure resonate in Australia? A few points… I think Donald Trump himself is peculiarly an American phenomenon. I think America – the broad cross-section of the American people – are in a foul mood. 60% to 70% of the American people, according to all the available polling evidence, think the country is heading in the wrong direction. These polls precede President Obama, so they go right back to the Iraq war 2004/2005. But I do think that Trumpism – if you like – has resonated in many parts of Europe, especially in France and we’ll know in a few months’ time whether the Trump-like figure Marine Le Pen wins. It’s conceivable she could.

But whether a Trump-like figure in Australia resonates, I have my doubts for two reasons. One: unlike United States and Europe we’ve had 25 years of continuous economic growth. We haven’t had a recession in a quarter of a century, we’ve had real wage growth throughout much of that period. It’s tapering off now, but it has been, all things considered, a robust economy in that 25 year period – they haven’t had that in Europe and haven’t had that in America.

Second: as controversial as our border protection policies are, I would argue they help boost public confidence in a large-scale non-discriminatory immigration system and that confidence is obviously lacking in many parts of Europe and indeed in the United States. So a sluggish economy and poor immigration controls, I would argue, are the two principal reasons why we’ve seen the proliferation of a Trump and Trump-like movements across Europe and America.

I’m doubtful that it could happen here, although if our economy does go into recession and if we somehow lose control of our borders — and, moreover, if political correctness continues to foul the academies and the broader culture generally — circumstances could change.

 

 Address by Ross Cameron

Well, today’s news of Donald Trump’s ‘tough’ phone call with Malcolm Turnbull makes it a big day – and in many respects a tough day – for Australia. Even a bleak day. Because I believe that just as Donald Trump ended the political career of Jeb Bush in three words: “low-energy guy” … Donald Trump in all seriousness, in my view, has just ended Malcolm Turnbull’s political career in four words: “worst call by far.”

My task tonight is to say what I think Trump did right and what are its implications for the Australian establishment. There has been this feeling that Trump was (as Tom said) some kind of a buffoon, some sort of a klutz, some amateur stumbling into politics who had no idea what he was doing.

And I want to tell you that has never, ever been my view. The most famous encapsulation of the campaign- which came from an article written by Salena Zito in The Atlantic – is that the media establishment took Trump literally but not seriously, whereas the American people took Trump seriously but not literally.

I believe, if I’m being absolutely frank, that the Australian people were entirely betrayed by the establishment media in their coverage of Donald Trump and his campaign from the very first day.

We know the whole of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs was also entirely operating on the assumption that Trump was a joke who had no chance and would be defeated.  Operating on the same assumption, the Upper House of the NSW Parliament passed a unanimous motion that “Donald Trump is a slug and unfit for public office”.

The whole organisation of Australia’s professional diplomatic apparatus was wrapping its arms around and tongue-kissing Hillary Clinton on the assumption that she was invincible, the most highly qualified candidate ever and obviously could not be beaten. What we have discovered is that there are consequences of that kind of misjudgement – and we have just experienced one of them today.

As Tom Switzer says, it’s not just the consequence of the phone call. It’s the briefing beforehand: “another one of these liberals.” Now I’m guessing that Steve Bannon would have turned to the great man and said “you’re about to talk to the Justin Trudeau of Australia.” That’s my sense about the locker room chat that would have been going on.

We had a situation where you’ve finally had the tall timber of this massive edifice of the establishment just come crashing down. It’s a whole new world … everyone is in a state of shock, not least because every major organ of the mainstream media had been saying for a year, “It’s not possible for Trump to win”. Malcolm Turnbull went over to the Unites States in the lead-up to the election, and didn’t even seek to meet with Donald Trump. There are consequences not just for Malcolm Turnbull  but for 24 million Australians who are exposed to risk — they have got enough problems as it is without being completely failed by the media and leadership class.

On the question of ‘could there be a Trump figure in Australia’, I think Australians are very tolerant – a combination of tolerant and disengaged -when it comes to the political class.

They basically expect the political class to be self-serving. They basically expect the political class to conduct themselves with low levels of care. They expect the political class to be fairly incompetent. Okay. But when the political class – as we have seen, for example, with these three students at Queensland University of Technology, where we have an institution of the Australian Government that has turned its guns on three students and has harassed, has intimidated, has persecuted, has prosecuted them to within an inch of their lives – when the government actually turns on the citizen and starts attacking, this is what provokes revolt.

If you want to understand Julius Caesar you need to read The Gallic Wars. Julius Caesar wrote the book and reveals his mind in the book, in his own words. If you want to understand Winston Churchill, you should read History of the English Speaking Peoples. If you want to understand Donald Trump you should read his book, because -while he had the aid of a co-writer – there is no doubt these are the genuine thoughts and values and ideas of the man himself.

When asking what did Donald Trump do right, the first thing he did right was his life before politics…was a life outside politics. And it’s a very human story we would all do well to understand. It particularly starts with his experience with a very tough father.

In the book, Trump talks about the native aggression that he lived with even as a young boy – and on one occasion he nearly got expelled for punching his music teacher because he formed the view his music teacher didn’t know he was talking about. And then Trump said he had a revelation in his early teens that he had to channel his aggression into his using his mind to achieve outcomes, rather than express it physically.

And he went off to a military academy in high school to learn discipline. He finished as captain of the baseball team in part because his peers wanted to follow him. But he used his mind, he learnt over the course of his life… he said “I responded to the business environment and I wasn’t intimidated by my father. And I found if I pushed back- if I disagreed with my father – that he actually respected it.

Trump’s cites 11 Elements of the Deal; if you want to understand his foreign policy, you need to read his elements. One of the points is: “if people treat me fairly, I’m the easiest guy in the world to get along with. But if people are unfair or disrespectful towards me, on a matter of principle I fight back, hard.”

That’s the Trump approach, whether we like it or don’t like. The book is very frank, admitting “as I was growing up, I polarised people. I found there was a group who absolutely loved me and would follow me over a cliff and lots of other people who found me a kind of intimidating, disquieting, uncomfortable person.”

And Trump is saying: ‘I’m used to that. I expect it.  That’s my life story. I’m not intimidated by a million protesters.’

Stephen F Cohen is the Professor of Russian Studies at Princeton University, and – talking about the way Trump communicates – he said that you have to understand Trump communicate in an elliptical way. But you have to look through the words to what’s in the man’s heart… what is he trying to achieve?

One of the things that brought me to Trump is that I’ve been looking at Syria – as we all have – looking at US foreign policy in Syria, looking at Australian, UK, Establishment foreign policy for years; and it has just seemed to me completely incoherent throughout the whole Obama administration.

If you look at who our co-our partners are in Syria, they are the worst grab bag of global terrorists and Islamic extremists that you would ever want to be stuck in a lift with. It is an embarrassment.

And then you’ve got Russia on the other side, fighting for Assad and against Islamic State: Russian green berets going deep into enemy territory, at risk and getting killed, while we’re dropping bombs from playstation screens and giving advice. At the time we’re making David Morrison Australian of the Year – our military hero – you’ve got Russian green berets directing the bombing raids on Islamic State by line of sight. And when one of the commandos realised he’d been compromised, the IS fighters realised where he was and what he was doing, and they moved in for the kill from all sides. And the Russian soldier’s last order was to call in the bombs on his own position. That’s the Russian idea of valour; our idea is David Morrison meeting with staff at PWC and telling them not to use the word “guys” in the cafeteria.

We had it wrong. The whole establishment – the whole foreign policy establishment – was just grinding on with this stupid war.

If you could distinguish morally between those on the side of Assad and those on the side of the opposition, after Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and the lads had moved in, you’re kidding yourself.

And Donald Trump looked at this and he says: okay, we’ve got NATO, created at a time when the Berlin Wall was up and the Soviet Union was in place. Inside NATO we’ve got Turkey, who is buying oil from Islamic State and murdering Kurds and locking up judges and journalists disappearing. We’re fighting Russia, whose special forces are getting killed calling in the bombs on their own positions to ensure they would not miss the jihadis who were closing in.

The Sydney University idea of protest is to stop any voice sympathetic to Israel being heard on campus by shouting them down with megaphones – Vladimir Putin’s idea of protest is to stage a concert of Bach and Prokofiev in the ruins of Palmyra after re-taking the city from its occupants whose preferred use of the Roman amphitheatre was a venue for the execution of prisoners and sexual slave markets.

Donald Trump is only guy in the neighbourhood with the humility to ask the simple questions… Whose side are we on? What are we trying to achieve?  Why don’t we make friends with Russia? Maybe they want to be friends with us?  Hillary Clinton looks at Libya and sees a good country to invade.  For what purpose?

And at that point I said okay, I’m taking Donald Trump seriously – because he projects the outsider’s innocence, the common sense and confidence to say “the king has no clothes”. And he did it again and again and again. He did it on the wall, he did it on the UN, he did it on Climate Change, he did it on common core of education – he was bringing a fresh mind to old problems.

Talk about an outsider. You had News Corp hosting the presidential debate; and it was first time in history a presidential candidate looked at the most powerful news network in the world and said ‘look, I don’t think I’m going to come. I think you need me more than I need you.’  The first GOP debate, first question, who doesn’t take the pledge?  One hand goes up.  While others formed a flotilla hugging the shore line, Trump struck out into blue water, entire alone, and found a new and stronger breeze to carry him forward.

The last point I’m going to make is that in talking to Janet Albrechtsen yesterday, she related that a journalist at the New York Times had told her ‘you need to understand something: the American economy is on the balls of its feet, bristling, ready to go bang.’

And if you read all the fake news about what a financial catastrophe Trump would be, about the flight of capital that was going to take place, then we see the Dow punch through 20,000 points for the first time.  Think about this – when the US drops corporate tax from 30% to 15%, can I tell you – capital is going to move! It’s not going to walk, it’s going to get up and run.  USA under Donald Trump is going to be a magnet for capital and talent.  It’s already moving.

And Australia is going to look like, you know that old pub that never got the refirb, with a few tired old poker machines and a pool table with faded fabric and cues without tips, and there’s a few ‘derros’ in a drunken stupor out the front. And you walk in and it’s smells of stale beer and urine.   That is what Australia is going to become. So I say ‘God bless Donald Trump.’