Bryan Gould: If Trump loses the nightmare is over

U.S. President Donald Trump. Photo / Getty

It was, as the Duke of Wellington said after the battle of Waterloo, "a damned close-run thing".

But he did at least get a result on the day; there was no confusion about what casualties counted and Napoleon was not able to claim that the outcome was a fraud and threaten going to court to have the result overturned.

The American presidential election, despite the confusions engendered by Donald Trump and legal challenges taken by his team to challenge some of the results, will also, no doubt, eventually produce a winner; and when that happens, it looks odds on to me that the right person will win.

I predict the winner will be Joe Biden - the right person for us, here in New Zealand, and for all of America's friends around the world.

For us, and for the world as a whole, it will mean that the nightmare is over - that the world's most powerful country is no longer led by an amoral, self-obsessed and ruthless narcissist, whose primary goal has always been self-aggrandisement, and who has posed a constant threat to international peace and co-operation, and to effective action on the challenges, such as global heating, we all face together.

But, most of all, the right person will win for the Americans themselves.

It will give them the chance to re-assert the values in public life that were in danger of being lost - truth, honesty, public service, care for others and that is not even to mention the values that our own recent election rewarded - kindness, empathy, courage and true leadership.

And they will no longer need to put up with a president who treated running the country as just another family business.

The Americans will have the chance, under Joe Biden's leadership, to heal the wounds that were opened up and exploited by a Trump presidency. They can refuse to endorse violence and extremism and white supremacism, and can look instead for ways to work together and to minimise difference.

They can learn to live again as citizens of a united country, instead of constantly looking askance at "others" who are different, and therefore threatening and unwelcome.

They can reject bizarre and outlandish conspiracy theories that have no place in a mature democracy and that should never have been entertained or given currency by responsible leaders.

They can appreciate again the great virtues of a democratic system of government that leaves no one behind and that gives equal value to every citizen. They can again take pride in demonstrating to the world that democracy is, to quote Winston Churchill, "the worst system of government, apart from all the rest".

They will have the chance to make a real effort to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control, and to save thousands of lives as a result, and to do that by listening to the science, rather than reflecting the priorities and fights of fancy of a leader who thought of nothing but his own short-term interests.

They can ponder and apply the lesson (which was in danger of being forgotten) that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

They can take the opportunity to look again at their own constitution and electoral systems and to consider whether they could operate better to the public advantage.

They can re-assert the value of an independent judiciary, capable of reining in an out-of-control executive.

They can ask themselves whether they should ever again repeat the experiment of entrusting their nation's affairs to a showman whose measure of value was always his own money rather than the wellbeing of their fellow-citizens.

But, as Donald Trump rides off into the sunset, they might also find it within themselves to salute a larger-than-life character who dominated their politics for good or ill for half a decade.

I, for one, though, am not sorry to see him go. He has done enough damage already.

- Bryan Gould is an ex-British MP and former University of Waikato vice-chancellor.