In a democracy, you basically elect a candidate who has enough of a stakeholder vote to implement a policy. If, by cheating or some other means, a candidate is elected who cannot sway stakeholders sufficiently to implement a policy, you end up with a lame duck president who can’t get anything done. Obama is a good example of that. He is a demagogue and an ideologue who isn’t skilled in the politics of making a deal and getting things done.
So, basically, if you elect a candidate who will stay the course, the general trends in politics and economy dictate the course. If you elect a disruptive candidate, the general trends in politics and economy dictate the course, in the sense that a disruptive president doesn’t have enough power do change anything significant.
That’s why I’m skeptical of all those who believe that Trump winning the American elections can change anything significant. He might have the best of intentions, and is in fact the better of two candidates, but he can’t change anything because the reason behind the current global situation are systemic trends of the kind that cannot be influenced by a president, for better or for worse.
Yes, Hillary is a pro-war candidate, and Trump is a pro-America candidate. Hillary is a crazy person who will yell and threaten at Putin and anyone else, would implement a hardline policy and would cause a nuclear war after a few moves. Trump would want to re-assert American supremacy, and the Russians and the Chinese will say “no thank you, we have this now”. He will then slam his metaphorical fist on the table and play chicken with them, because he would expect them to back down. They will not, and there will be a nuclear war in a few moves. The thing is, Hillary is so pissed at Putin because she already tried to bribe him, to intimidate him and to make him back down, and it didn’t work. Trump is yet to get there, but the result would be the same. The Russians don’t want to be slaves who are ordered around, and the Chinese don’t want to be the manufacturing colony of the West.
Trump also naively thinks he can bring back the jobs that were outsourced abroad. Those jobs were outsourced because in America labor is too expensive, and it’s systemically expensive, because the inherent costs are greater in the USA than anywhere else in the world. This means housing, food, basic expenses, education and health. This in turn dictates the behavior of the labor unions, who press for higher wages. If you reduce the wages below a certain point, you reduce the purchasing power of your population and essentially lose them as a market for your expensive products, essentially pricing your population out of the market. Considering how the American population has the greatest purchasing power in the world, that’s not good. Also, considering how the second greatest purchasing power in the world, the Chinese middle class, is basically uninterested in American overpriced and often underperforming products, it’s not something that can easily be changed by some political maneuvering.
The main reason why America was great is that Europe was torn down by two world wars, and they had an influx of the most competent immigration in the world. They also got industrialized by the war effort, and after that they implemented a lever in the world’s financial system, where US Dollar was the world reserve currency, controlled most of the world’s gold, and was the OPEC trading currency, where anyone who wanted to buy oil first had to buy dollars on the currency market, making it possible for America to print enormous amounts of unbacked money, and everyone had to purchase that Mickey Mouse currency with actual hard assets, or the American aircraft carriers would get parked close to their shores and reduce their country to rubble. Also, they abused other supposedly international systems in such a way as to strongly motivate their own economy while imposing various hindrances and pressures to non-American economies. An example of that is cheap FED money for the venture capital investors, who could pump enormous sums in all kinds of American technology startups, both boosting the American GDP and their technological competitive advantages. So, those are the reasons why America was “great”. It’s not the constitution, it’s not democracy and it certainly isn’t freedom. It’s the combination of military force, control of the world’s financial system and some very lucky historical and geographic circumstances, such as being essentially on an island separated from potential adversaries by oceans on both sides.
The trend is that the time of America’s dominance is over. Also, the trend is that America will not yield its dominant position peacefully. Also, the other forces aren’t willing to put up with American pressures, manipulations and abuses much longer, if at all. Since America still has a military advantage over them, it is likely to try to use that advantage while it is still there. So, America thinks it will win in war and lose in peace. You tell me what is going to be the end result.