Opinion: Trump 2.0 poses a grave risk to the US, and Australia | Peter Hartcher
insurrection have told us a great deal more about something that we already knew: that Donald Trump tried to overthrow democracy in the US by fomenting a violent attack on the Congress.
Unlike a Westminster democracy, the American system reserves the uppermost echelon of the public service for political appointees. In Australia, a mere handful of senior officials will be replaced by an incoming government. The entire bureaucracy is supposed to be professionally apolitical. “The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.”
The personnel are also the policy, an echelon of ideological and policy loyalists who will deliver Trump’s agenda. Canberra will try to reassure itself on two grounds. First, it will point out that the alliance survived the first Trump presidency intact. But one of the Morrison government’s survival techniques was to emphasise dealing with a wide array of US government agencies, beyond the White House.Australia sought to avoid the mad king in the castle by working through the saner barons and earls in Washington’s various federal fortresses. Pentagon Secretary Jim Mattis, for instance.
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