President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom at the United Nations General Assembly (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
The future of politics may well be that everything will have to get worse before it gets … worse, writes Daniel Henninger in the WSJ. “It won’t be pretty, and for many it may be painful.”
In the United States and the United Kingdom—two of the world’s oldest democracies—national governments are at a standstill. This, for better or worse, could be the future of politics.
No Legislative Support, No National Leadership, No Game Plan
Using the U.S. government’s shutdown and the U.K.’s Brexit as examples, Henninger believes both have become problems: both are without exits. Absent is any legislative support or national leadership. “The American and British political classes look intellectually exhausted and clueless about a path forward.”
It’s fashionable to deride Mr. Trump’s crude, tanklike strategy of grinding across broken glass. Look past the Trump personality, though, and you may soon see more conventional politicians, out of options, resorting to his political model.
One reason this is happening is that politicians and external factions foment dramatic projects like Brexit without possessing any idea how to execute them.
They gave British voters a lot of emotion but no game plan. More than two years later, they still don’t have one.
Another reason is the rise in power of the inconsolables. Political factions are eternal. The new element is that their social-media bullhorn makes them seem larger and more intimidating than they are. Twitter really is the mouse that roars. Unable to figure it out, the politicians have turned themselves into twittering mice on the floors of Parliament and Congress.
They look trapped. So do we.
Read more from Daniel Henninger here.
