Soon after Joe Biden had become president, I travelled with him to Carbis Bay in Cornwall to the G7 summit. It would be the new president's first major outing onto the world stage, and he had a message to deliver to his allies in Europe: America is back - American leadership internationally would resume.
The leaders who were gathered there on the Cornish coast breathed a huge sigh of relief America would be looking out again across that big Atlantic Ocean. But one of the leaders with whom I caught up for a drink whispered to me: That's all very well, but for how long?
This week the American people delivered a brutally straightforward answer: four years. And no more. Could it be that Biden was the blip and outlier? Could it be that Donald Trump, Trumpism and the Maga majority are the new normal? It certainly looks like it after the astonishing scale of his victory, because not much stands in his way. And this is profoundly different to when Trump took up the presidency in 2017.
Then, Trump had given little thought to what America First - a phrase coined by the isolationists before the Second World War - meant in practice. Sure, he had a set of instincts but not much more. He never thought he was going to win in 2016, and hadn't spent much time thinking about how he would govern and with what policies. It really did feel like he would see a general in uniform and say, "Oh, you can be my national security adviser. Yeah, and you the multimillionaire Goldman Sachs investment banker, you be my treasury secretary."
But he would later find that these strong, independent-minded people would act as a block on him. He came to loathe the so-called grown-ups in his administration who would impede and thwart his wilder ambitions.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November 07, 2024 من The London Standard.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November 07, 2024 من The London Standard.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Kylie Minogue loves the bar at Louie, startling Beefeaters and snooping in The Conran Shop
Currently it’s largely suitcase-based as I’ve been doing so much travel for work, but Melbourne, Australia, is home.
Are Spurs willing to invest what it takes to win trophies?
Criticism of the manager for the club's struggles misses the point-whatever he says, he's not been given a squad ready to push for the biggest honours
Crowning glory awaits Britain's golden girl
Odds-on favourite to win BBC Sports Personality, Keely Hodgkinson never doubted she was ready to conquer the world
Residents at war over £10 billion 'Shanghai-style' Earl's Court plan
Controversial proposals are causing a huge furore in west London
The secrets of selling the capital's £40m homes
Armed security, NDAs, a gold temple...inside the world of ultra high-end property deals
Jenny Packham on Amsterdam why is truly magical at Christmas time
The designer gets lost in the cobbled streets and is entranced by the city’s twinkling lights and unique spirit
Alfies Antique Market
Here is a place to blindly lose oneself in a labyrinth of staircases and thresholds.
Decline and fall: what comes after peak wellness?
The social elite are obsessed with devices that track their health but the backlash is building
The newest AI can arrange your holiday- but will it be a strictly woke one?
A lightning-quick artificial megabrain with an appetite for social justice? WILLIAM HOSIE has a chat with Claude Al
'Fame just isn't healthy
Mercury Prize-winning band English Teacher on the pressure of success, trying not to burn out and the challenges black women face in indie music