“Unless something totally unexpected occurs, in January 2025 Trump will resume his chaotic, narcissistic governance from the White House, backed by a rabble Congress and a compliant Supreme Court,” writes columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.

LAST week, America’s President Joe Biden, 80, fell over.

He was handing out graduation certificates to US Air Force students when his feet became tangled on stage and down he went. He was quickly up and about and later tried to make a joke of it. 

Alas, it too fell flat.

So, here’s a confident prediction – something similar is going to happen again – probably more than once – in the lead up to the presidential election in November 2024. 

Each time it does, Biden will lose support, and the closer we get to the election the more he will dig in and press his case for re-election; the less chance a Democrat alternative will have to establish herself as a viable option to the Republican nominee, now almost certain to be Donald J Trump.

Already Biden trails the Republican front runner. Unless something totally unexpected occurs (always a possibility in gun-mad America) in January 2025 Trump will resume his chaotic, narcissistic governance from the White House, backed by a rabble Congress and a compliant Supreme Court.

I have been inspired to point this out by the thoroughly admirable efforts of John Menadue, who does Australia a great favour by publishing each week a collection of erudite articles in his “Pearls and Irritations” website journal. 

This week he featured a 5000-word analysis of Australia’s need for a defence and security policy and the formula for arriving at the best possible result.

It was written by retired Maj-Gen Mike Smith who, we’re told, was deputy force commander for the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor. He covered all the bases – the American alliance, the role of intelligence, parliamentary oversight, public engagement and debate, as well as the obvious involvement of diplomacy and collective regional bodies. 

But here’s the thing: it presumes that America will stay the same. All the old Biden policies of moderate Chinese containment and “status quo” for Taiwan will remain. 

Gen Smith is not the only oracle to dip his toe into that murky stream of consciousness. There’s an entire platoon of pundits parsing the same story, from Hugh White and John Blaxland to more retired generals than you could poke a swagger stick at. 

They gather like the witches of Macbeth around the stewpot crying, “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble”, and into which they load all manner of ingredients from “eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing”. 

Trouble is, their analyses might well be tasty and logical, but the world is full of surprises. Perhaps it’s unlikely that Pretend Emperor Xi Jinping, say, will be struck down by some deadly disease; or that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will mistakenly drop a missile on Tokyo. But some shining Australian VC hero might be revealed as a murderer who drinks beer from a victim’s prosthetic leg, or Australian defamation law actually delivers a fair judgement. 

Either way, doddering Joe Biden fell over his own 80-year-old feet, and that’s a fact. Americans don’t want a doddering president, and many will stay home rather than vote for him. Trump’s people by contrast would walk over hot coals to the voting booths. 

It’s not yet inevitable, but chances are that Trump is on his way back to power. And not all the eyes of newt or toes of frog in the oracles’ cauldron will prepare us for the chaos awaiting.

robert@robertmacklin.com