Leaders do matter, sometimes (as with Hitler) quite a bit. But overall I believe that leaders matter much less than people think. It’s human nature to anthropomorphize big changes. Thus the neoliberal wave of the 1980s and 1990s, which affected almost all countries, is seen as the “Reagan-Thatcher era.”
Americans find this easier to see in other countries than our own. Thus we understand that Switzerland will be Switzerland and Portugal will be Portugal, regardless of who is leading those two countries. But we also talk about “Obama’s America” and “Trump’s America”.
Perhaps my claim would be easier to understand if we looked at Australia, one of the two countries that is most similar to the US:
MALCOLM TURNBULL had always seemed to be what Australians call a “small-l liberal”. Unlike many in the Liberal Party, which despite its name is Australia’s main conservative force, he was a defender of progressive causes. In 1986, as a lawyer, he successfully challenged a bid by the British government to prevent the publication in Australia of the memoir of a former British spy. He led the failed campaign in 1999 for Australia to become a republic. And unlike his fellow Liberal and predecessor as prime minister, Tony Abbott, he has no doubts about global warming.
Yet since becoming prime minister two years ago, Mr Turnbull seems to have jettisoned many of his small-l views. The most obvious reversal concerns immigration. In 2013, when a government led by Labor, now the main opposition party, sought to curb temporary work visas, known as 457s, Mr Turnbull called the visas the “heart of skilled migration”; he dismissed as “chauvinistic rhetoric” claims that they robbed Australians of jobs. Yet Mr Turnbull recently announced sharp restrictions on 457s: most recipients will no longer be able to apply for permanent residency, and the number of eligible professions has been cut by a third (actors, biochemists, detectives, metallurgists and web developers are among those who need no longer apply). To oblige immigrants to learn “Australian values”, the government wants to add questions on topics like child marriage, domestic violence and female circumcision to the test they must take before they become citizens. Mr Turnbull described all this as “standing up for Australian jobs and Australian values”. The sudden blast of “Australia First” rhetoric has left many asking what Mr Turnbull really stands for. . . .
He used to advocate a market-driven mechanism obliging polluters to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. Now he has embraced Mr Abbott’s much criticised alternative: an A$2.5bn ($1.8bn) public fund to pay businesses to curb emissions. By the same token, he used to argue that parliament should legalise gay marriage; now he wants to hold a plebiscite first, just as Mr Abbott proposed.
Notice how just as right wing nationalism is sweeping the globe, a liberal Australian leader suddenly becomes a right wing nationalist. Sad!
I’m not saying that leaders don’t matter at all—that would be crazy (again, Hitler). Rather I’m claiming that they don’t drive the ideological waves that impact the world; rather they usually surf along the tops of those waves. Trump’s Supreme Court pick is a bit different from Hillary’s, and his trade policy will be a bit different. His Obamacare 2.0 will be a bit different. The new tax deal with be a bit different from the “lower corporate rates in exchange for infrastructure” deal that Hillary would have struck with Congress. His incompetence will lead to more screw-ups, like this one, than what would have occurred under Hillary.
But in the general scheme of things not much will change. Unless of course Trump gets us into a nuclear war with N. Korea (which I doubt).
PS. The same is true of monetary policy. The Fed will stick to its 2% inflation target regardless of whom Trump picks. Bloggers (as a group) probably have more impact on monetary policy than Trump. It’s the zeitgeist, stupid.
PPS. The same is true of the Supreme Court—it will mostly go with the flow, regardless of who is picked. During the liberal era of the 1960s, even GOP justices voted liberal.