It matters who the next president is, but it matters more that whoever it is has the vision and guts to change American politics

There is much that is unpredictable about 2016, from the fate of China’s economy and world stock markets to the possibility that Chelsea will be relegated from the Premier League. But one thing is certain – over the next 10 months, an extraordinary amount of time, money, effort and media attention will be spent deciding who is the next president of the United States. When Tuesday 8 November, election day, arrives, it is a safe bet that many American voters, and numerous non-voters around the world, will be heartily sick of the whole process.

When contemplating the onset of this four-yearly ritual, a basic question arises: does it really matter who is US president? Fashionable pundits of a conservative bent claim Barack Obama has presided over a sharp decline in American power and influence around the world. They point to his inability to halt the war in Syria and defeat Islamic State terrorism. Similarly, liberals and leftists profess disappointment that the first African American president failed to do more to promote social equality, combat climate change, resolve the Palestine-Israel conflict – and close Guantánamo Bay.

Delivering his State of the Union address, Obama was in no doubt that it still matters massively who occupies the White House, and not merely to Americans. But the way in which he defined US pre-eminence, in terms of guns and missiles rather than ideas and inspiration, was troubling. “The US is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world... When it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead – they call us,” Obama declared.

True, but only up to a point. It is this sort of vainglorious rhetoric, cringe-making and endlessly recycled by Democrats and Republicans alike, that distorts American election campaigns, deflecting attention from nitty-gritty issues that really count in people’s lives at home and abroad. The global electorate knows, even if some US voters do not recognise it, that the fabled “American moment”, around 1991 when the post-Soviet world briefly appeared to be unipolar, has passed into history. The world knows that, slowly but surely, the balance of global economic and productive power is shifting eastwards and southwards, away from Washington and the west.

It is also plain that the gridlocked, polarised US political system, poisoned by intolerance, extremist views and personal vitriol, is not fit for purpose. Faced by an absurdly self-important Congress and under constant battering from TV news channels, radio shock jocks and lobby groups, any future president’s power to effect meaningful change is severely circumscribed. Of course it matters who is US president. The job remains the single most important in the world. But it matters more that whoever secures the post has the vision, the determination and the guts to turn this ugly, self-defeating situation around. What is wanted, and desperately needed, is a return to non-ideological, consensual and inclusive policy and decision-making, for the sake of Americans and the world.

Nowhere has the sheer nastiness of contemporary Washington’s political scene been better demonstrated than in seemingly endless televised debates among candidates for the Republican party nomination. The malaise can be diagnosed in two words: Donald Trump. The billionaire property developer is far from alone in his divisive and ignorant rants. Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina, senator for Texas and businesswoman respectively, have thrown their share of mud pies. Among other candidates, perhaps only Jeb Bush, George W’s brother, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and Kentucky senator Rand Paul have maintained a modicum of dignity. But it is the frightful Trump, leading in the polls and convinced of his own megalomaniacal manifest destiny, who has singlehandedly dragged the contest into the gutter.

It is clear now that the political and media establishment’s initial impulse to portray Trump as a clown was mistaken. It is clear now that Trump has hit a nerve among working-class and older, conservative voters worried about immigration, Islamist terrorism, jobs, wages and gun control. These concerns have helped put him well ahead of Rubio, his closest rival in the nation’s first primary in New Hampshire on 9 February. He is currently running neck and neck with Cruz in Iowa, where caucuses will be held on 1 February. Nationally, Trump is averaging a 15% lead over Cruz.

But it has also become clear that Trump, who stands condemned by the obnoxious utterances spewing forth from his own very big mouth, is a bigot, a racist, a misogynist and a man who is dangerously ignorant about key international issues. His proposal to ban Muslims entering the US typifies the blind bias Trump has come to represent. His candidacy is a disgrace that shames the Republican party and the United States. On the Democrat side of the contest, matters appear calmer. Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and New York senator, looks set to win the party’s nomination, the first woman to do so, despite an unexpectedly strong challenge from the left by Bernie Sanders, an elderly, Corbyn-like Vermont socialist. Clinton may stumble in New Hampshire, but once the southern states begin to vote, her ascendancy should be assured. In national terms, party pollsters say, changing demographics, potentially producing a coalition of African Americans, Hispanics, younger voters, liberals and secularists amounting to 63% of the electorate, favour Clinton.

But this arithmetic is by no means definitive – and Clinton has notable political and personal vulnerabilities. She is seen as an establishment figure in an electoral year when voters may be in the mood to punish incumbents. She is closely identified with Obama. She faces the hostility of a particular group – defined as white male voters lacking college degrees. Although this group accounts for a declining proportion of the electorate, it holds the balance of power in the Deep South and swing states such as Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Negative memories of the 1990s presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton, could also count against her.

A Trump presidential run, exploiting these weaknesses, pandering to fear, prejudice and ignorance, splashing out unlimited millions in television and online advertising, and possibly fuelled by renewed Isis attacks on US soil following that in San Bernardino last month, could run Clinton very close. If nothing else does, this scary, deeply disturbing prospect shows why the question of who wins the US presidency continues to have universal significance.