The breast-beating in the US isn’t over, not by a long shot. All those experts who were proven wrong in their pre-election pronouncements are continuing their quest to try and show that they were not really wrong.
Among them is Nate Silver, once known as the man who never got anything wrong, and now known as the god who failed. Silver is still continuing to analyse statistics to try and show that he was actually quite correct in his predictions even though he was totally wrong.
Not for nothing is there a hue and cry over fake news in the US.
People are also acting surprised that Donald Trump has switched tracks on many of the election slogans that won him support. This is normal behaviour, as a politician will say anything and everything to win. But Americans seemingly do not believe this.
Trump will not build any kind of wall as he promised. No, he will deport as many people as Barack Obama did but make a big show of doing so. It will seem like he is more active in this area than his predecessor. Trump knows how to manage the public much better than many others.
He has already indicated that he not going to “drain the swamp”, or in other words keep Washington insiders out of executive positions in his administration. He has even given a former Google executive, Joshua Wright, a position at the Federal Trade Commission. This is the same Google, whose chairman Eric Schmidt set up a company to provide Hillary Clinton’s technology needs during the campaign.
Trump knows that politics involves wheeling and dealing as he has done all these years in his business endeavours. He will play the game for all it is worth, quietly boosting his own worth even as he attempts to convince the people who are his constitutency that he is doing what is in their interests.
He will want a second term, if only to prove that he is the equal of Barack Obama. Not that Trump is interested to any great degree in politics or a legacy; no, for him it is more about ego. He has proven all the naysayers wrong once and would love to do so again.
The US will not suffer greatly under Trump, though it will continue to become a more rabid and polarised country. But that has been a trend during Obama’s time too.
The world has already seen plenty of fools in the White House. Trump is just one more, with a loud mouth to boot. That makes him look worse than many of his predecessors, but make no mistake the difference with George Bush isn’t all that much.