Why American presidents matter

 

Strong leaders club: Lee Kuan Yew was an admirer of Reagan and Nixon.— AP Photo/File 

 

 The zeitgeist of the world is infused by the character of the US leader. Biden will bring back the civility and generosity that the American spirit is associated with.

THE first American president to enter my personal consciousness was John F. Kennedy. It wasn’t his stirring rhetoric that reached me as a child in Singapore. It was the news of his assassination. The sense of loss was globally palpable. History has been kind to him.

He was succeeded by Lyndon Baines Johnson. As a child, I was puzzled. How could someone so ugly succeed someone who was so attractive? Indeed, he was boorish. Legend has it that he would summon his staff to meetings while sitting on his toilet seat, doing his business.

Still, history will be kind to him. His bold and massive civil rights legislation changed the course of US history. Which may explain why he has the most voluminous and still unfinished biography of any recent American president, in the four volumes by Robert Caro.

History has been unkind to Richard Nixon, his successor. Watergate killed him. The liberal media has not forgiven him. Yet there’s no doubt that he changed the course of human history. Without Nixon, Henry Kissinger could not have gone to China.

Lee Kuan Yew named Nixon as the greatest American president he had met, saying: “But for the misfortune of Watergate, I would say Richard Nixon. He had a realistic view of the world. He was a great analyst, realistic, but also a tactician to get things done.”

When Nixon stepped down, Lee lost a true friend in the White House, a major asset for the leader of a small country.

This partially explained the contempt Lee had for Jimmy Carter, whom he considered naive. In Tom Plate’s book, Giants Of Asia: Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew, Lee named Carter the worst president, saying of him: “Your job as a leader is to inspire and to galvanise, not to share your distraught thoughts. You make your people dispirited.”

Fortunately, Carter was succeeded by the two-term Ronald Reagan, another admirer of Lee. I was present when they met in the White House. Still, as a Singapore diplomat in Washington and New York during Reagan’s era, I experienced the condescension the liberal media displayed towards him. However, history has been very kind to Reagan, especially because of his spectacular victory over the Soviet Union.

Reagan was succeeded by another great friend and admirer of Lee, George H. W. Bush. I was present in a small room in St Petersburg, Russia, in the late 1990s, when Bush confirmed that the No 1 leader he admired in the world was Lee.

I reported this to him. Sadly, Bush became a one-term president, and his departure was another huge blow to Lee.

The point of these stories is a simple one. The selection of an American president has huge consequences for the world, including Singapore.

What Biden offers

Indeed, given the overwhelming power of America, especially in the media and communication dimensions, the zeitgeist of the world is infused by the character and personality of the American president.

Donald Trump’s narcissistic and self-absorbed personality has deprived the world of a major source of inspiration, especially after Barack Obama.

So what does the election of Joe Biden bring to the world? Will good times return? The short answer is yes and no.

Biden is a truly decent human being. He will bring back the civility and generosity that the American spirit is associated with.

However, Biden also knows that he is taking over a deeply divided country, as demonstrated by the huge numbers who voted for Trump even though he was defeated. His priority is to heal his country, not create a better world.

Nonetheless, Biden has at least three opportunities he can capitalise on to retain his positive glow.

First, he can bring back some boredom to the White House. Both America and the world have become exhausted by Trump’s tweets and in-your-face presence. Some calm and reticence by the Biden administration will help to return the world to a certain degree of normalcy.

Biden knows that he cannot do this alone. Fortunately, he has assembled a formidable transitional team of real American heavyweights. They share Biden’s distress over the divisions in the country. Repairing the wounds in American society and bringing back a happy America will be the main priority.

The second opportunity is geopolitical. Biden cannot reverse the US-China geopolitical contest, for reasons I have documented in my book, Has China Won? He would be persecuted if he is seen to be soft on China. Yet, even if he cannot reverse course on China, he can press the pause button on the contest.

Americans believe in common sense. Simple common sense would say that Americans should first deal with the pressing challenges of Covid-19 and economic slowdown, not to mention global warming.

All these problems would be better handled with some degree of cooperation with China. Just as Winston Churchill partnered an adversary, Joseph Stalin, to defeat Adolf Hitler, Biden can partner a competitor, China, to defeat Covid19. Both Nixon and Lee would have approved such a Machiavellian manoeuvre against a common foe.

The third opportunity lies in stopping America’s drift towards a plutocracy. One key reason why Trump was elected in 2016 was because of the “sea of despair” among the white working classes. This is because America is the only major developed economy where the average income of the bottom 50% has gone down. The anguish of these white working classes must be dealt with. Some redistribution must take place.

Reagan delegitimised taxes. Biden must re-legitimise them. And, if America’s many plutocrats are wise, they would support him.

In short, Biden can apply some gentle soothing balm on the many wounds generated by the Trump presidency. His greatest asset is his decency. Plain decency will bring a lot of healing to America. Trump may have been cruel to call him “Sleepy Joe”. Yet a “Sleepy Joe” and calm American presidency may be good for America and the world. 

 By KISHORE MAHBUBANI Kishore Mahbubani is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and the author of ‘Has The West Lost It?’ and ‘Has China Won?’-ANN

 

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China and the US: the princeling and the professor

Barack Obama should strive to create conditions in which Xi Jinping, the presumed next leader of China, can play reformer 

Editorial guardian.co.uk, 

If Russia is a country with an unpredictable past, spare a thought for Jia Juchuan, the historian entrusted with the official biography of the father of the next presumed leader of China, Xi Jinping. The story of Xi's father – a member of the first generation of Chinese revolutionary leaders – is a bear trap for the fifth. The elder Xi was both a pioneer of the People's Republic who rose to the rank of vice-premier and a victim of Mao's cultural revolution.

This was not without consequence for the son who may shortly inherit the leadership. Xi junior exchanged his gilded cage in Beijing for a cave home in the impoverished northwestern province of Shaanxi. The first volume of Xi the elder's life was published without problems, but the second volume, covering the purge, has been shelved for three years, ever since the son's destiny became clear. 
Everybody wants a hand in writing it, the historian complained to the Washington Post. If only China's collective leadership could have followed Churchill's advice to Stalin and Roosevelt.



Xi's own biography is a major political asset as the Chinese leader-in-waiting tours America this week on what everyone is taking to be a pre-coronation visit. It gives him the ability to be all things to all men. He is both the princeling confident and authoritative enough to speak his mind, and a man with first-hand experience of rural China. Xi is the modern entrepreneur, not only at ease with China's coastal wealth but the creator of much of it, especially in Shenzhen. And he can also present himself as the man of the people – frugal, down to earth, pragmatic, eating dressed-down in government canteens, a modern politician at home with big business but uncorrupted by it. Supporters of Tibet have scoured Xi Jinping's past for any signs of a shift away from Beijing's growing clampdown. Xi's father was an interlocutor for the Dalai Lama's special envoy Lodi Gyari. But these are straws in the wind. Read what Xi said in a speech celebrating the 60th anniversary of Tibet's "peaceful liberation" last year – that China should fight against separatist activities of the Dalai group and "completely destroy any attempt to undermine stability in Tibet and the national unity of the motherland". As the US ambassador candidly observed, Xi seems personable, but US officials "don't really know much about him".

Perhaps that is why Xi was given the red carpet treatment on Tuesday in Washington. His day included a stop at the Oval Office, lunch with the vice-president and the secretary of state, and a highly unusual visit to the Pentagon – all after a dinner with Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. Xi remains number two, and his succession – although heavily scripted, with all members of the standing committee of the politburo except Xi and Li Keqiang set to leave – is not yet complete. The choreography of Tuesday's events left little room for doubt. These were the two most important world leaders getting a sense of each other for the first time.

For an America that has consciously turned its diplomatic firepower away from Europe and the Middle East – the former in economic decline, the latter convulsed by revolution to which Washington is a bystander – the Asia Pacific region represents a more fruitful arena. Not only as the economic powerhouse of the world, but an area where US power projection is positively sought – by its traditional allies Japan, Australia and the Philippines, but also by lesser nations emerging from China's shadow. If China and America can deliver mutually assured economic destruction – as the holder of $2tn of US treasury and mortgage-backed debt, China would suffer disastrous capital losses if it spooked the markets – in military terms China and America are regional powers. What more important task than they understand each other's red lines?

Obama should not read too much into Xi's arrival. He should strive to create the conditions in which Xi could play the reformer. If not, the US might find that Xi is equally at home with a more traditional role.

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