“Once every 50 years there is a financial crisis in which we have a populist leader. Usually, within five years, the populist leader becomes incredibly ineffective and unpopular, and we go back to status quo — George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Those are normal American Presidents. Donald Trump is a relatively limited-term phenomenon,” said Arthur C. Brooks, president of the 80-year-old American Enterprise Institute, and New York Times columnist, at an interaction with senior journalists of The Hindu here on Friday.
“For people who don’t like him, I say, just wait. For people who like him, I say, sorry he is not going to be around for that long. I have looked at the data and history, if anything is like the way it has been before, we can expect the Trump phenomenon to last for a couple of years at most before we go back to typical patterns in governance,” Dr. Brooks said.
Answering a question on how long President Trump would be tolerated by the big businesses considering his blistering attacks on immigration, free trade and news media, he said, “His bark is worse than his bite. He is barking all the time, he is not biting. He is not very effective. He is experimenting with different messages a lot. He talks an awful lot about curbing free trade around the world but free trade has increased at a slower rate and legal immigration is at the same level. Illegal immigration has come down.
“The key thing to understand about Trump is that he is talking a lot and expressing himself to his followers who take him seriously but not literally but we, in the so-called establishment, take him literally but not seriously.”
Presenting an optimistic view of the future, Dr. Brooks listed five things that he believed would bring prosperity and growth. “Globalisation, free trade, property rights, rule of law and a culture of entrepreneurship. A lot of it is down to good regulation and proper governance.”
He also defended the American version of free speech and argued that the answer to hate speech does not lie in curbing it. “Hate speech cannot be tolerated when it incites violence against people or property. We believe that speech is not inherently violent. I know the unique history of India where hate speech has resulted in violence. Social movements are the answer to these things. We have to create social movements that counteract these things.”
Responding to a question on what social movements could do against the constant attacks by President Trump on the news media, Dr. Brooks said: “It is nothing new. Nixon did the same thing, Kennedy did the same thing, Truman did the same thing and Franklin Roosevelt did the same thing. They all branded parts of the media they didn’t like as telling lies… even used the language ‘enemies of the people’. But the other point is, it just burns hot and fast.”
Speaking about his impression of Chennai, a city that he happened to visit unexpectedly 35 years ago, he said, “This is my second time in Madras. I didn’t intend to come to Madras [the first time] but the pilot of the Air India flight from Colombo [Sri Lanka] made an emergency landing. I just had a few dollars and walked around for three days. I had the experience of seeing Madras as a 19-year-old with no money. This is an extraordinarily changed country. As an outsider, I have incredible admiration; 300-400 million people have been pulled into the middle class. This is beyond what anybody in my country could have believed in 1983.”
Dr. Brooks will be in conversation with Sadanand Dhume at Chennai International Centre, Madras School of Economics, Kotturpuram, on Saturday, at 6 p.m.
