With the presidential nomination contests in full swing, you would suspect that things are going to get a little silly, if not downright weird. Candidates are promising to fix everything. There are things the president can do something about and other things are going to happen that are driven by global forces that no one can control.
One thing we can’t change is demographics. All of the populations of the Western world, U.S. and almost all European nations are getting older. Japan has the same problem. As nations get more developed and prosperous, the birthrate drops. When I was growing up, people had two, three and four children. Today, most have one, maybe two. Think of your own family. Only the very wealthy or the very poor can afford to have four or five children. We need those children. Someone has to pay for our Social Security while we lounge around in Sun City. In the U.S., we get those younger people from Latin America and Asia. This immigration —both legal and undocumented — makes many Americans very uncomfortable. It also squeezes out many middle aged, non-college educated white males. They are very angry about that, and they are now making their last stand with candidates like Trump. They are destined to lose — maybe not this time, but the demographic tide is irreversible.
Another thing no president can fix is the Middle East. They are going through their own reformation, which Europe went through hundreds of years ago. In large measure, the stability of the Middle East for the last 100 years or so was built on oil. At $100 per barrel of oil, it can support a large social welfare system, but at $40 or $50 per barrel of oil, it’s got big problems and most of the countries know it. Apparently, Saudi Arabia is running billions in the red this year, and there are some predictions that it will run through its cash reserves in five years or so. Additionally, in the next decade or so, many cars will be electric. Look at what Tesla has done. It’s now hip to drive an electric car. In the next decade, cars will drive themselves on the freeway, riding something like an electric guideline down the center of the lane. The demand for gasoline will probably drop significantly, and the price of a barrel of oil will probably keep heading down, and the entire oil-driven Middle East will be in turmoil. Here in the U.S., there are a number of states heavily dependent on oil, and it will also change our domestic politics.
The only things that could change this equation are wars, but there are several things we know about wars. First, wars are enormously expensive and the results of many of the wars are inconclusive. Look at Iraq. We are probably $2 trillion into the Iraq war, plus thousands of American dead and injured, and what do we have? Certainly not an ally. Certainly not a safe American base. Certainly not a bastion of democracy; in fact, pretty much the opposite. Afghanistan is much the same story. Another couple of trillion dollars and no ally, no bases and the Taliban are still there. Did we win in either case? Did we even have a draw? Getting us into war or keeping us out of wars is something a president can impact. The pressure to be strong (or really to appear strong) is enormous, but what history tells us is that the results are often very iffy and sometimes they turn around and bite you in the rear end.
I’ll close with an example that’s closer to home. In the 1700s, England and France were battling for control of North America in what is called the Seven Years’ War. It went on for eight years. We all learned in elementary school what happened. Wolfe beat Montcalm at the Battle of Quebec and lots of heroic pictures were painted. What they didn’t tell you in elementary school was that at the end of the war, England had an enormous war debt and it was practically broke. Meanwhile, the colonies were booming. In fact, the Royal Navy started building ships in colonial shipyards because they could do it for one-half of the price of British shipyards. You can imagine how this went over in Britain, so the parliament was under pressure to do something to raise some additional money. After all, if the colonies were going to profit from the long war, it was only fair they pay their fair share of the costs. The parliament didn’t want to do anything terribly dramatic or terribly expensive, so they just passed a tea tax and a Stamp Act, and we all know how that worked out.
I’m not a dove by any means because sometimes force is called for. But we need a steady hand to captain this ship — someone who doesn’t panic and doesn’t stampede. Some of the silliness and nastiness coming out of this primary is frankly very scary and dangerous.
P.S. We are asking everyone to submit their nominations for 2015 Malibu Times Dolphins Awards earlier this year because the nomination period is going to close on Jan. 15, 2016. If you nominate someone, please give us enough details so we can make some rational choices. It doesn’t hurt to have several people nominate the same person. If you submitted someone before, feel free to nominate them again. Send the nominations to dolphins@malibutimes.com.