 Good afternoon and welcome and welcome to our speaker today, Professor Sean Kaye. Hasn't been spoken here twice before in the past, but not for about seven or eight years, I think. And things have been some change in American politics and foreign affairs since that time. Sean is the Robertson Professor of Politics and Government at Ohio Wesleyan University and Merchant Associate at the Merchant Centre for International Security Studies at neighbouring Ohio State University. He's done a range of things in his career and has also advised the Obama campaign on security and defence issues in 2008 and the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016. He's going to talk to us about many of the aspects of American politics and how it affects all our lives. Sean, welcome. Great, cheers. Well, it's very, very nice to be here. I've always had an incredible respect for the role that this institute plays here in Dublin and in Europe and we listen very, very closely in the States, especially when we hear from Dan O'Brien. So I'm very, very happy to be here. It's a privilege to see you again. What I'll do today is try to pontificate about something we have no idea about what's going to happen. So that's the first thing I should tell you. Your guess is as good as mine. But I tell that to my students as well. I have a PhD in these things and I've no idea what's going on. So who am I and why am I here? What I'm going to try to do is give you some trim lines that at least I think help understand why the Trump phenomenon has come about and what that has meant electorally. I'll talk a little bit about the conditions or circumstances in which foreign policy is important in American political campaigns, both in primaries and general election, and try to give you a little bit of the current play of what's going on now and then conclude with some implications for Europe and Ireland as well. And I should tell you at the outset I am an informal adviser on defense issues for the campaign of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, but I speak only for myself here and anything you hear from me should not in any way be associated with that. So this is just purely academic stuff. So how did it happen in 2016 that we all woke up and thought, my gosh, what happened? What went on? How did Donald Trump get there in the first place? Well, I think some of these trends actually go back pretty far in American history. I mean, if you look at George Washington, he warned about entangling alliances. He warned about long-term commitments. He said you should engage with other countries but not make judgments about them politically and whatnot. Now, I'm not drawing direct parallels between George Washington and Donald Trump, but I am drawing parallels between these notions and these ideas. They're actually deeply rooted in the American historical and political culture, right? So that's one key part. You have presidents like Don Quincy Adams, too, who said that America should not go out searching for monsters to destroy and things like that, that we should stay at home. And as you know me, this long tradition of isolation is, you know, especially from Europe in particular, right? So that passion has been there for some time. But also in the run-up to 2016, you really saw at least in foreign policy a culmination of decades of kind of loose consensus, I refer to it, of liberal interventionists and neo-conservative Republicans, which culminates in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war and endless wars, which are still going on now, right? And so you also had even things like, you know, arguments about burden sharing. One talk I gave here some time ago, I mentioned, I was up NATO and burden sharing and I did say that if we can't get this balance right, somebody's going to come along and demagogue this issue politically, that the Europeans should pay more and do more and that they're just basically freeloading on the American public, right? Which is not accurate by any means, but politically resonates to a degree. So there's a long tradition in America, if you look at public opinion polls, that people favor restraint. They favor not isolationism now, but they do have a preference for staying out of war, as if possible, and engaging adversaries. I mean, there's been polling way before Donald Trump, like 70% of the American public said, yes, we should talk with North Korea, for example, right? So everyone criticized Donald Trump. We've did the thing with the Kurds on Syria recently. I think that's not an unpopular move, actually, among much of the American public. It's not popular though in Washington circles, where you hear these, the foreign policy circles, but good reason, because who would now trust America after we betrayed the Kurds on the ground, right? I mean, that's a serious problem in terms of future policymaking. But some other things were a little weirder, like the realignment of the Republican Party into a position of unquestioning approaches towards Vladimir Putin of Russia. That's a new thing. This was, of course, the party of anti-communism and anti-Soviet and wanted to enlarge NATO because we keep the Russians down and things like that. And now that's totally inverted, and that's odd. None of us really can understand that, that looked at this. Now, but also Donald Trump won by succeeding in places, interesting enough where Barack Obama had succeeded. We were just talking about this earlier, but Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, right? This was the key to the whole thing. And he won in key counties in Wisconsin that had twice voted for Barack Obama. So it's kind of hard. I mean, racism was out there. There was a whole lot of sexism and other things. But in these counties, it was trade policy. It wasn't even, it was more the sense of dislocation that people had had, that trade had left them behind, these communities that were, and I see them. I live around them in Ohio and other places. You know, it's true. It's a real thing. And this is also why Bernie Sanders was very popular in 2016. He also resonated, rightly or wrongly, on the substance, but resonated with this notion of trade as a serious problem. All right, so what you end up with is a sense of sort of cultural dislocation. But what's ironic is that for the die-hard Trump voters, they're the ones he's actually lied to the most. And so it's a little bit tricky to understand why they're so unquestionably with him on things. But they are, right? And he's got a problem now because he can't afford to lose them. So when he goes to these rallies, he's got to fire them up. And they do get a lot of data on who's the voters and whatnot. But if there's one reason why there was a big surprise, and it shouldn't have been, we saw polling in the summer of 2015 that showed that in those states that I just mentioned, Hillary Clinton had honest and trustworthy ratings of about 30%, right, which is not a good number going in. And people had made that judgment call already. And she was relying very heavily on women and suburbs to turn on Trump, which has happened, actually, but it didn't happen in her election because party affiliation turned out to be stronger, actually. I remember there was a survey out of Philadelphia Inquirer that asked, when did you decide of a woman, a Republican, and they interviewed her after the survey in Philadelphia's suburb? And she said, when did you decide you didn't want to vote for Hillary Clinton? She said 1989. And also, then finally, you had one of the most anti-establishment elections in a period of time when Democrats ran the most establishment candidate you could probably find. So there was a backlash to that. But what's problematic here is that he does have that base in these rallies, right? And he can't lose them. If he loses them, he's got nothing going into this election. And so, you know, that's a real problem politically because it prevents him, even if he wanted, which I don't think he does, but if he wanted to move towards the middle and reach out and expand his base, right? But he hasn't expanded his base. Okay, he's narrowed it even more. And so, you know, I think that there's any scenario here where Donald Trump could get re-elected to which a ham sandwich could defeat Donald Trump. Maybe a toasted ham sandwich. You know, but somewhere in between is what we're going to find out, right? So then the question is, what are the variables in between now and then that can lead to that? And some of them are international. Impeachment obviously is something we can talk about that during the Q&A I'm happy to. But there's some other issues. Brexit, you know, trade, the trade tariffs and whatnot could lead to some economic dynamics that could be problematic for them, right? If we even just in a normal cycle into recession again, right? These kind of things. Could either get his base even more riled up or it could get some people to turn on him a bit too. The other issues like NATO and things like that, right? These are policy problems, but they're coming under threat and challenge and, you know, fundamental institutions of foreign policy could come back and have an impact as well. But I think some of these things just go so much deeper. You know, we're talking about wherever anyone sits politically. We're talking about an administration that took children at the border from their parents and put them in cages. Now I'm here as an American on Thanksgiving to tell you how appalling I find that, you know? And I think a lot of Americans privately, even if they're for Trump, also would find that deeply appalling. But they also like tax cuts and they also like, you know, A, B, C or D, judges, Supreme Court especially, right? And so he's found a way to tap into that quite successfully. The reputational costs are huge, but my sense is that the world is kind of waiting us out and to see, you know, what comes next. And the challenge for the Democrats will be, will they reconcile the kind of dilemmas that led into leading up to the Trump phenomenon? Or will they just think, oh well, now we're back, everything's grand, right? And my guess is it won't be. And I think that they're going to have to figure out some different approaches to a whole range of issues. But in a normal circumstance, no wars, or no new wars, I suppose, and economic prosperity at home, right? Typically those would be pretty grand design for a overwhelming re-election for any incumbent president, right? So that alone you got to start with as a potential strong point that could get him across the finish line, you know? It's even possible that he could get re-elected and lose the popular vote by many millions more. He lost by three million last time. He could lose the popular vote by many millions more votes, but still win the electoral college because of, you know, our system is set up as he did last time. But there's also some demographic trends that are going on and every election, including in places like Kansas and Alabama and just recently in Louisiana and right next door to me in Kentucky, every chance since then that there's been a vote. People in very red conservative states have been voting for the Democrat. And so that also suggests a trend line that's coming. And the key trend has been shifts in the suburbs. And it's women voters in particular and they're concerned about gun control, they're concerned about healthcare, and they're concerned about the environment. And the Republican Party is not talking about any of those issues. They're not resonating with them. You could have lots of disagreements on the issues, but they're not even acknowledging these things as policy concerns. You know, health, well, you know, Obamacare, they want to get rid of it, right? That kind of thing. Which would hurt actually Donald Trump supporters probably the most, which is, again, ironic. All right, so, but I would posit that there are scenarios here where Donald Trump can be reelected. Okay. And a lot of that has to do with what goes on with the Democrats. So that's where I'll turn to next. Foreign policy, which is kind of at the root of my work anyway, is not a huge thing in primaries. It's you want to show that you could be commander in chief, that kind of thing. Sorry. You'd want to show that you can, you know, that you have good judgment. A lot of times experience has like, like with Hillary Clinton versus Barack Obama did not win out over judgment, the argument of judgment on the war in Iraq in particular, right? That Obama was opposed to it. Now, who knows? He was a state senator at the time. He'd actually been in the Senate. He might have actually, we don't know, you know, but it worked for his advantage. Hillary Clinton refused to quote, unquote, apologize for her vote on Iraq. Joe Biden voted for the war in Iraq, but it's kind of been vetted since then. He has recognized in his view it was a mistake to do it. And so forth. That's just not a huge issue anymore. And so mainly we do see these things manifest. Hillary Clinton ran campaigns against Barack Obama where there's a, it's the middle of the night. It's 3 a.m. The phone rings. You know, who's going to pick up that phone, right? Do you want, you know, a junior guy from Illinois that no one's heard of? Or do you want, you know, experienced, you know, that kind of thing. So that kind of, that can play. The Democrats have a bigger problem actually, which is that all these, remember I mentioned before, the Republican neo-conservatives, these are like the pro-war pro, you know, really engagement stuff, they're going to prop, many of them are never, never Trumpers, right? And so they will support probably the Democrat. And what kind of expectations in return will they be looking for? Jobs, you know, positions, influence, outcomes, right? So that's an interesting problem because this is the team that brought us into Iraq and has kept us in Afghanistan and other places as well. So the Democrats are having a little bit of a debate, not a lot, but a little bit about Afghanistan, but they're all in a race to get out as fast as possible, which is a contradiction because they're also saying, oh, we should have stayed in Syria, right? And so the Democrats have to kind of figure out their approach to wars and foreign policy. They're going to have to, there's internal conflicts that they have on climate change, even though they all agree on the substance of the problem. You've got plans that vary from Bernie Sanders that would cost as much as, I think, $30 trillion or something like that. Now maybe not, excuse me, 16. 16 was the number. That's the healthcare plan is $32 trillion. That's a lot of money, right? Where is it going to come from? Where are you going to get the votes for that, right? And the answer is, well, there'll be a revolution. Okay, but a lot of people want problems fixed right now. They don't want to wait for that, right? As Barack Obama said just a couple of weeks ago about climate, Americans generally, in his view, and he's got experience, tend to look at these issues as evolutionary, not revolutionary. And so Democrats have some conflicts. But they are having a discussion about these things, but they say things like, we have to advance human rights, but without regime change, okay, well how? How are you going to do it? What's the plan? What are you going to do? We're going to restore alliances, right? Rebuild NATO, that kind of thing. How? What exactly are you going to do? What trade-offs are you going to do? Are you going to allow European industry to take up, in terms of military and whatnot, instead of American, always insisting it be an American platform and so forth, right? So, you know, what are we willing to trade to make these alliances strong again? And what are you even going to do? You know, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was asked a couple of weeks ago on CNN, should Turkey be expelled from NATO, right? Because of what's been going on there. And the problem is, there's no clause that allows you, even if you want to, expel someone from NATO. You know, I think, frankly, on a political case, about Turkey, Hungary, these are countries you might take a look at if you had that kind of architecture, just me speaking personally. But there is no such architecture, and in fact, there is a rule that says you have to have consensus to even make the change, and you can't get consensus to even talk about it, right? So, it's not going to happen. But somebody needs to come up with some creative, innovative ideas about how we're going to rebuild these transatlantic relations in particular. So, the implications of this, well, also, very quickly, a couple of other issues in the Democratic Party, just for your information. There are some cleavages for sure. Right now, we see the sort of, if you will, the socialist leaning, you know, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, sort of to his, a little bit to his right, right? And they're occupying a pretty sizable, national percentage. And if one of them dropped out and took the others, they would leap pretty far forward. Pete Buttigieg has moved significantly forward in the state of Iowa. You know, people are getting to see him and whatnot. He's doing well there. But he has a very low support polling of African-Americans in South Carolina, where Joe Biden has had a consistently strong base. And they are the group, especially African-American women, that vote most consistently in Democratic primaries. Joe Biden's had a real lock on that. And his numbers have been steady, you know, throughout. Even every time he's been challenged and he's faltered, he continues to be a very strong national candidate, but not as strong in the states now that are coming first, right? So that could also tip that a little bit, as has happened before. But also, Joe Biden doesn't have much registering support among people under the age of about 25. And so that's an issue that he would have to figure out, right? So implications here for Europe and Ireland and then we'll conclude, because I just want to lay out some parameters here and then I'd much rather talk more directly with you all. So first of all, I think there's an interesting political dilemma here. The Democrat, whoever it is, probably is going to be attacked as some European-style socialist who wants to take over your healthcare and all that kind of thing. And so it's kind of a weird thing. Attack European-style, right? But Putin is from Europe, last I checked, right? I mean, Orban is from Europe, last I checked. You know, there's other things happening in Europe right now. And maybe the existential question of our time is what is going to be the plan to try to effectively and positively in a constructive way roll back to the liberal trends we're seeing that are coming out of extra-constitutional outcomes of some of the elections that we've had or even without, like in Turkey and so forth. How do you do that? I don't have the answer to that. But Donald Trump has been very skillful. If you look at his UN speech from September, he says the globalists will not take over, right? The socialists will never govern America. And he a couple of times throws in communists too, right? I mean, this is classic McCarthy-type stuff that we're trying to do to appeal to a fear of the outside. Ironically, if you follow the impeachment issues, I mean, what's more globalist and hidden than a president of the United States coordinating a campaign illegally, apparently, overseas with foreign governments to interfere in our election? I mean, he is the thing he says that we shouldn't have. And that's a tricky thing to get his supporters to go in. But it really is astonishing, and he's a senator who I have a lot of respect for. His name is Rob Portman. He's Republican. He has a strong record on foreign policy. He was the U.S. trade representative. And this president stands for everything that this guy's built against his entire career, and yet he supports them continuously. And it's mind-boggling to understand that. There seems to be some fear of taking him on among the Republicans. My theory on that, and it's purely a theory, is that it's because they did determine, after Obama won twice, that the demographics in America are changing so much that they really, this is maybe the only way they can hold power right now. Because if you look at some states, like even Texas has predicted with population changes, maybe sooner. I mean, they've already kicked out a bunch of conservative Republicans from Texas in recent elections. Texas could change Arizona. New Mexico, Colorado already have. Florida would be up for play. Where I live, Ohio, a lot of the people have moved out of Ohio and moved to Georgia and to Arizona. And that's actually changing. So Georgia just had a governor's race where African American women being very close to defeating the very pro-Trump Republican. But the fact that it's so close in a traditionally very conservative red state tells us, I think, a little bit about the trends. So more broadly, I think, if a Democrat wins the election, you can expect on day one, America returns to the Paris Climate Accords and things like that. But whether America itself will take its own heavy steps on climate, that remains to be seen. But we would certainly see a lot of plans restored that were at least under works under Obama and so forth. But the one I think that you really need to watch out for here in Ireland, in particular is the trade policy issues. Now, if you get Joe Biden in one of those middle lane Amy Klobuchar, that kind of thing, then you might have good hope for kind of a return to normal. But the Bernie Sanders Elizabeth Warren view would be not particularly friendly in my assessment to foreign direct investment here in Ireland. And I think this is something you need to be aware of and factoring for. It would be hard to do, but there are certain kinds of levers with taxes and whatnot that they could do to help Trump try it a little bit with our own corporate tax rate, but it's certainly not competitive enough even at the lower level. But I could see some more. I don't think you'd see a major shift on the trade issues. The Democrats are likely to affect a lot of the appeal that Trump has from some Democratic voters is on these trade concerns. And then I worry about the sequencing of foreign direct investment, the Brexit and the tariffs that are going on worldwide, and even just the potential for normal secular recession, right? But there is a potential, frankly, here for Ireland of a perfect storm, economically. I'm very pleased to be back here and see things going well again. And I can't imagine a scenario would ever go as bad as it did before. But the winds are out there, and the seas are rising. So now to conclude here, I'd like to say a little bit more about Ireland as an example. I've watched Ireland over the years. I wrote a book on it after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger and all that. And one of the things that really came out to my mind here was the embrace here of multiculturalism. The referendum on marriage equality was the way they did it. Wherever you sat on it, the way they did it was, I interviewed the people that ran the campaign and I brought them out to give speeches in Ohio. And they did it in a way that allowed people the space they needed to come to the issue in a comfortable way and to get talking to people, average people, not hitting a like on a Facebook, but people really talking face to face and listening, listening more even than talking. I believe, and Dan was there visiting when this happened, that Hillary Clinton lost that election when she referred to Donald Trump voters early September of 2016 as a basket full of deplorables. These are my friends' parents. These are people I know. They're not deplorable people. They're Republicans. They have their views. But they're not bad people, right? And if you go out and attack the voter, you can't really expect a lot to get in return. Also help if you actually campaigned in Wisconsin, in Michigan, and Pennsylvania as well. So I think that Ireland offers some lessons there in particular. To conclude here, just with these general remarks, some of the concerns I have about what's happening in America that resonate internationally, clearly attacks on journalism, attacks on press, despots are watching us, despots are learning how to get away with these things. Despots are learning how to remove an ambassador if you don't like what they're saying to you. That's one of the most serious consequences actually for foreign policy or the impeachment dynamics going on. And also clearly, America's greatness did rise from its soft power appeal. The appeal that it had of sort of the idea of America and whatnot. And again, that idea, at least in my book, does not include separating children from their parents and locking them in cages. You know, this is just one of the most appalling things. I never thought I'd see this in my life. And I'm sorry about it. And just again to move to conclude here, the big winners of this four years are one of the biggest winners here. The big winners of this four years are Russia and China. They're the winners. They're the ones being made great again here. And I mean, I don't mean that just in terms of politically, but for China, they're really getting a lot of opportunities now to move into places. And Russia too on the ground, for example, in Syria and so forth. So anywhere between Donald Trump is reelected or even a ham sandwich could win, right? We just don't really know. But against him. He hasn't brought him to his base of appeal. So there's, you know, the first scenario, and frankly, honestly, I would predict and I'm willing to do that here. We'll have to check back and see. But I do think that the Democrat, I mean, I think it would be good money to put down Democrat for the next president of the United States. But I also, for anyone who doesn't like Donald Trump, I wouldn't want you to take that as wishful thinking. Because clearly, again, they could drive up the popular vote, but still lose the election. But Donald Trump could run an inside straight again on some key states. They're trying to expand into New Mexico and New Hampshire to make up if they lost Michigan. That kind of thing. But he doesn't have a lot of room for maneuver. That's the thing. So that's why I think structurally it would be favorable to any real serious opponent at this stage. But there's so many scenarios, and any time you hear anyone say, well, the conventional wisdom would suggest that's immediately, or I would say, let's recess that. And so I could imagine scenarios all the way up to and including that Donald Trump is an even president by April. And not by impeachment necessarily, but by his own, perhaps, resignation and deciding he doesn't want to do this anymore and just declare victory. America's great again. Go home. Ironically, if he did that and they were to have somebody like Nikki Haley, who was the former ambassador to the United Nations, former governor of South Carolina, if you ran her against Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, she'd probably win that election in a landslide. So the Republicans have some choices of their own to make going ahead. They could actually have a more likely re-elected election possibility without Donald Trump. And if they make that calculus, they may make the turn against him. I could also imagine scenarios where you could have an electoral college tie and it goes into the House of Representatives to decide the election. These kind of things. I mean, anything is possible here. But the key thing probably for the Democrats to decide is there are a few issues. The question is, do they want to run in the middle lane, make an argument for a return to normalcy and appeal to people that we're going to have a calm time and you can trust the government again and you just don't, we don't have to hear about it every night in the news or tweets, that kind of thing. But there are some issues, some key issues I think, and this will be my last point, that Donald Trump could seize on. One would be the issue of Medicare for All. The concept is perfectly fine. We're here in Europe. We understand the benefits of public health care. But this is an issue that he could run on and say, I'm here to defend your freedom. And by the way, Medicare for All, if you get into the weeds is a problem for many unions because they actually negotiated lower wages in return for better benefits. And so now the socialists would come in and actually take away the benefit and they'd lose the wage too. So that has not helped them actually in some of these debates. Second key issue that could favor Trump in the election would be guns. Personally speaking, I'm not a fan, although I do support people's right, of course, to hunt and things like that. But this could be a big issue. And when you heard Beto O'Rourke who dropped out of the race and he was very understandably upset, rightly so after El Paso shooting, right? But he did say, yes, we're coming into your, I think, effectively, into your basement to get your guns. And that is just a trigger warning. That's a wrong phrase. That's a warning sign for many people who would be very opposed to that, including many Democrats. Right around where I live in Ohio, rural Ohio, they really appreciate their arms. I personally don't. But that's a choice they make. And the third issue is a little minor minutiae, but they are advocating Bernie Sanders and a couple others for decriminalizing illegal border crossings. And that would be in Donald Trump's wheelhouse in terms of immigration issues. So basically there's a whole range of scenarios all the way up to a landslide defeat of Donald Trump. And I don't want to project or offer wishful thinking here, but the way these elections have been going in the suburbs, and that's why that more moderate kind of middle path may be the pathway to victory as opposed to, oh, we'll have a revolution and bring benefits to everybody. That's been the evidence so far that these elections have been winning in the suburbs and that requires probably a more moderate approach. So the question is, will the Democrats end up with a candidate that can fill that lane? Or if they don't, will it be sufficient that it's just not Donald Trump? And that's what we're going to find out over the months ahead. An interesting 12 months course. Thank you.