“We agree that if US voters re-elect Trump, America’s international standing would take a disastrous dive. That doesn’t trouble Alan, but it fills me with pain. In so many ways the US is the engine room of progress,” writes The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.

I had a call from Longreach last night. It was my old mate Alan Blunt from the shearing sheds of my youth. He’s a bush poet, a former middleweight champion of Julia Creek, and a lifelong Labor man.

He stunned me when he said: “I reckon Trump’ll win, and a good thing, too.” 

It was a long phone call and he even had me half convinced that a President Trump would be better for Australia than the Democrats’ Kamala Harris. 

He’s no male chauvinist. On the contrary, his best friend is Heather, a lovely Longreach lady and the nurses who call by his place regularly these days dote on him. 

Instead, it’s about the big picture, the difference between the mainstream Democrats like Biden/Harris and (in my view) a Republican liar, cheat and bully, a Narcissus with scary authoritarian tendencies.

Alan more or less agrees with me. But in his view, it’s these very Trumpian qualities that commend him to Australia. Sure, he says, the man admires dictators such as Putin and the murderous Saudi Crown Prince; he gets “beautiful letters” from Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping. Even the execrable Netanyahu is hanging out for a Trump return to the Oval Office. 

How the hell does that help Australia?

Well, here’s the thing, he says. He’s worried that Harris would follow her White House predecessor by pouring more and more deadly arms and ammunition into the Ukraine and Israel until the “tactical nuclear response” becomes inevitable from one side or the other. 

The same thought has occurred to me. We also fear that Kamala would follow her patron Nancy Pelosi with a foolish gesture to visit Taipei, despite the “One China” policy that they and we adhere to formally if not wholeheartedly… and Dutton’s Liberals not at all. 

War with China is idiocy in spades and, as Alan sees it, there’s absolutely no way that Trump would let the US military loose in a war over Taiwan. 

“All bullies are cowards,” he says and the idea of putting his troops in harm’s way is abhorrent. Instead, he’ll use tariffs and the other old instruments of trade protection such as quotas and government subsidies. 

“It’s all about ‘the art of the deal’, mate,” he says, “and you can be damn sure [or words to that effect] he will not go to war with China, even if his mate Xi mounts a full-scale invasion. And that’s great for Australia.”

Alan, like many old Labor men, is no great fan of the Americans. Not surprising, I guess, when they seem determined to rule the roost at the barrel of a gun. We both also agree that if US voters re-elect Trump, America’s international standing would take a disastrous dive. 

That doesn’t trouble Alan at all, but it fills me with pain. In so many ways the US is the engine room of progress.

Just recall the speed with which their scientists created a vaccine that saved millions of lives from COVID-19. Think of Jonas Salk who lifted the curse of polio from the children of the world. Remember their coming to Australia’s rescue from Japanese invasion in World War II. Revel in the gift of John Steinbeck, the courage and wisdom of Franklin Roosevelt, the songs of Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland and Louis Armstrong, the genius of Stephen Spielberg, the humour of George Burns and Walter Matthau. 

Well yes, there is another side: the mad religiosity, the gun-loving stupidity and pathetic notions of exceptionalism. But even though Trump turns them to his favour at the ballot box, they really don’t deserve a return to the chaos he represents. And neither do we. 

robert@robertmacklin.com