The 46th/47th President of the USA?
When Alexander de Tocqueville visited America in the early 19th-century, an extended vacation that would produce his classic work Democracy in America, the outstanding feature of the country as a whole was for him its practical expression of equality. Of course, he was dead a decade before Americans from either side of the Mason-Dixon line would slaughter each other in a gruesome Civil War partly over that very question, but it is worthy of note that a social equilibrium not manufactured but encouraged, and not before seen on earth, and certainly not in de Tocqueville's native France, prevailed for this master stylist and talented prodigy, at least during his lifetime.
Those were the days. For all the gum-flapping to be found about equality in the last few weeks, the concept is of no interest whatsoever to Black Lives Matter and their white Liberal fellow travelers. The neo-revolutionary black caucus, as well as their globalist puppet-masters, have eyes only for power. To paraphrase Enoch Powell’s famous but anonymous constituent, they wish to change whip hands or, as one of our staff writers puts it, have their go on the pool table. Equality requires honesty however, both at governmental and at local level, and honesty in the contemporary West is as rare as a contraceptive vending machine in a Vatican City speakeasy.
But America’s system of governance is honest about one thing; the head honcho does not necessarily have to come from the political class. This, of course, is one of the many things that rankles with America’s elites, quite apart from any considerations of Trump’s personality and general boorishness and, now, his participation in the new original sin of whiteness. The USA has a building magnate in charge and, with Ronald Reagan, actually had an actor at the helm. The governor of California, Arnold ‘I’ll be black’ Schwarzenegger is, if not an actor in the familiar sense of someone who can act, at least a movie star. I believe flint-faced Glenda Jackson is all that the UK has to offer in the way of thespian political placements.
The political class, and its new Mafiosi the deep state (new in terms of the fact that we all know about them since Trump ‘n’ Brexit), are what the youngsters call a ‘thing’. And if you are going to hold the reins of power, you had better come from the right stable.
In Britain the course is clear with a few quirky exceptions. PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) at Oxbridge, internship in PR, media or advertising with one of the family’s network contacts, work as a special adviser blah blah blah. Kiss the right arses and it will be your arse that gets kissed one fine day.
America is much the same, but there is more opportunity for a president to come out of left field. The ghost of de Tocqueville’s equality, one assumes. And there has been whispering of a new challenger – a Trump aide here, a respected political hack there – who is not only rogue when it comes to the political class, but spends his time in the klieg light of fame attacking them. The man is Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson.
Carlson is a well-known news presenter on Fox, which is something the UK doesn't have, a conservative news channel, and he is a clean-cut, all-American square-jaw with a Norman Rockwell family. Indeed, his family is so archetypal that a mob of howling, baying genetic shortfall merchants were obliged to gather at the Carlson family home a couple of years ago screaming obscenities and making threats. The police, obviously, were in the donut shop. Carlson is, after all, a white conservative.
He particularly despises the Pelosi/Schumer axis of evil. Pelosi is the embittered house speaker, the woman who inexpertly ripped up Trump’s state of the union transcript on TV, flailing at it like a raging dowager unable to handle the sugar-tongs, and Schumer is the one who looks like he missed his calling in Hollywood playing a piece-of-shit lawyer in the film of a John Grisham book. And now Tucker 2024 is rising to the surface of what passes for the American national consciousness, the knives are whetted and ready.
A bumptious little prig on the make by the name of Alex Shephard, who plies his weaselly stringer’s trade at the Leftist yawnfest New Republic, uses Carlson, or rather the publishing of his book, as a stick to beat whitey (isn’t the forest stripped bare yet?), and given that the Left dominates the publishing industry (check the Amazon top 10. It is a who’s who of anti-racism), Carlson is being singled out from quite a pack.
Tucker Carlson is, you see, that deeply unfashionable animal, a man who loves America. And he keeps one idea in the centre of his attack strategy; the American left genuinely despise their own country and wish to see only its horrid down-tumbling.
Carlson is the antithesis of this hatred, constantly exposing the agendas of the anti-American fifth column. He is articulate, polite onscreen even to the shouty idiots he is often faced with, and has that presidential ‘look’ and feel about him. He is, of course, a media animal, but he is clearly the possessor of a straightforward sensibility, and boy could the USA do with a dollop of that.
So if you are a betting type, a flutter on Tucker might pay dividends. With the other news channels floundering in the ratings (is Rachel Maddow a transitioning man? Genuine question), and Fox’s star in the ascendant largely due to Carlson (with help from Laura Ingraham), we may be watching a very early presidential run indeed.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore