The prevailing argument defining the upcoming United States midterm elections is that even though the Democrats are no prize, and their recent shift to the left following their election defeat will likely alienate some of their traditional supporters, America is in an age of "anybody but Donald Trump".

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To his fiercest critics, he is without doubt the worst and most dangerous president in the history of the US. When it comes to unpredictability, unreliability, disruption and short-sighted thinking opponents argue that nobody else is even close.

Veteran Australian politicians, including John Howard, have repeatedly pointed out that the Australian two-party system, with its checks and balances, and the weight given to serving politicians to make the call on who leads, means that neither a Trump, nor a Biden, and possibly not even a Kamala Harris, could ever make it to the highest office.

This is one reasons why Australian politicians on both the left and the right, regardless of where they stand on the Republic issue, are wary of any change that might deliver a directly elected head of state.

Trump, thanks to the Republicans' control of both houses since 2024, has managed to evade many of the checks and balances designed to restrain an "imperial presidency". He has been a disruptor and an economic vandal, weaponising tariffs in trade wars that nobody can win, using the courts to vindictively pursue old foes, questioning the legitimacy of the democratic process that saw him defeated in 2020, and launching another........

© Canberra Times