Donald Trump: No Plan in Sight

Published in La Croix
(France) on 24 Aug 2020
by Guillaume Goubert (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Peyton Reynolds. Edited by Margaret McIntyre.
The Republican National Convention opened Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina.

It is fairly uncommon that, at the end of his first term, an American president finds himself fighting for his reelection. Donald Trump is nonetheless in this position as he prepares to accept the Republican Party nomination before the election in November. These days, all the polls are showing Joe Biden with a big lead after receiving the Democratic Party’s nomination last week, but the match is not lost yet for the outgoing president. He proved in 2016 that he was capable of thwarting the forecasts. But he still has a lot of ground to regain.

The biggest obstacle for Trump is that he has shown, in the last couple of months, his incompetence in managing crises. Whether it’s the COVID-19 pandemic or the indignation caused by the death of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer, the American president didn’t know how to chart a course and reunite the nation. Instead, he actually deepened the country’s divide in order to preserve his base of white voters from the Deep South. But for what?

What’s alarming, at this stage, is that we have no idea what Trump is planning for his second term. We could criticize Biden for having gambled too much with “Anyone but Trump” to the detriment of his agenda’s consistency, but at least he did something and formulated some objectives. On the Republican side, there’s... nothing. So far, Trump has been content with advertising the chaos that would ensue from Biden’s election. That will not suffice if Trump wants a victory.


La convention du Parti républicain s’est ouverte lundi à Charlotte, en Caroline du Nord.

Il est plutôt inhabituel qu’un président américain en fin de premier mandat se retrouve en position de challenger pour son éventuelle réélection. C’est pourtant la situation dans laquelle se trouve Donald Trump au moment où il s’apprête à recevoir l’investiture du Parti républicain en vue du scrutin de novembre. Toutes les enquêtes d’opinion donnent aujourd’hui une large avance à Joe Biden qui a été adoubé la semaine dernière par la convention du Parti démocrate. La partie n’est pas perdue pour le président sortant. Il a démontré en 2016 qu’il était capable de déjouer tous les pronostics. Mais il a tout de même beaucoup de terrain à regagner.

Le principal handicap de ¬Donald Trump est d’avoir démontré ces derniers mois une grande inaptitude à la gestion de crises. Qu’il s’agisse de la pandémie de Covid-19 ou de l’indignation suscitée par la mort de George Floyd sous le genou d’un policier, le président américain n’a pas su fixer un cap et rassembler la nation. Au contraire, il a plutôt creusé les divisions du pays afin de préserver son socle électoral blanc de l’Amérique profonde. Mais pour quoi faire ?

Ce qui est frappant, à ce stade, c’est que l’on n’a aucune idée du projet que Donald Trump pourrait formuler pour son second mandat. On a pu reprocher à Joe Biden de trop parier sur le « tout sauf Trump » au détriment de la consistance de son programme. Mais ¬celui-ci a du moins le mérite d’exister et de formuler des objectifs. Côté républicain, il n’y a… rien. Donald Trump, jusqu’ici, s’est contenté d’annoncer le chaos en cas d’élection de Joe Biden. Cela ne suffira pas pour l’emporter.
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