The US itself could be the biggest loser in this election

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The writer is an FT contributing editor, chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and fellow at IWM Vienna

Right up until the moment that a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed the ear of Donald Trump, the US presidential election had looked like a tragicomic clash between the “convicted” and the “feeble”. The debacle of the elderly Joe Biden’s performance in the recent debate with his almost as elderly predecessor fed an already growing sense that American democracy is in peril, regardless of who wins in November.

The attempt on Trump’s life has dramatically intensified this sense of crisis. And the terrible irruption of violence into the campaign brought with it the spectre of democracy transformed into civil war.

Those of us outside America used to want to vote in US elections. They have always seemed more dramatic, unpredictable, theatrical and consequential than anything our own democracies could serve up — let alone the succession of geriatric leaders in the old Soviet Union, the staged elections of Russia today or the stultifying congresses of the Chinese Communist party.

In 2008, for instance, many around the world would have jumped at the chance to pull the lever for Barack Obama — just as people once dreamt of travelling to outer space. And in 2020, more than a few foreigners were eager to put their thumb on the scale to decide the fate of Trump’s re-election campaign.

This year, however, might be the one in which the US election finally loses its magic. November’s poll is probably the most important in generations. But speaking with people outside the US, I no longer hear them fantasising about participation in the only election that matters. Pundits around the globe rightly assert that America faces a dramatic choice. But something has changed. Viewed from afar, the contrast between Biden and Trump does not look as stark as it once might have. People just see two old guys who have been unpopular presidents.

In a much discussed recent article, the historian Niall Ferguson argued that comparisons between today’s gerontocratic politics in America and the last years of the Soviet Union, while misleading, are nevertheless also revealing. He has a point: comparisons are not predictions but warnings.

Washington in 2024 is certainly not Moscow in the late 1980s. The US economy is strong, the US military is formidable and people still risk their lives to come to America. Yet, there is an emerging consensus that, as occurred towards the end of the Soviet Union, American society is in crisis and American power is in decline.

In the absence of some dramatic change, the US and its global influence could be the biggest loser of this election. The more that America looks crisis-ridden and dangerous — and the shooting in Pennsylvania this weekend will only contribute to this — the more the country needs a president who can talk about, and represent, the future.

In 1982, Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary of the Soviet Communist party, died at the age of 75. Like many of his colleagues in the politburo, he was old and sick. He was replaced by the chief of the KGB, Yuri Andropov.  Andropov had the ambition to renew, or at least to discipline, the Soviet regime. But he too was elderly and infirm, and died a mere 15 months after taking office.

Andropov was succeeded by the 73-year-old Konstantin Chernenko. What Chernenko sought to do is unknown because he too passed away only a year after his ascension. When Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest member of the politburo, came to power in 1985, the task of renewing the regime had become mission impossible.

I was in my twenties when all this took place, and the succession of funerals shaped my view of the communist regime and its future more than anything else. The Soviet Union might be said to have died from the exhaustion of queueing to bid farewell to its leaders.

The coming months will shape the view of American democracy for both young and old, citizen and foreigner. The magic of democracy lies in its capacity for renewal and self-correction. In this respect, neither a Biden nor a Trump victory looks like a date with the future. Biden is a noble defender of a vanished world, while Trump unfortunately mistakes revenge for greatness.

The Biden camp must realise that in moments like the present one, the greater risk is not to take a risk. If people no longer expect that democracy can change itself in a moment of crisis, it will have lost its most important advantage over non-democratic regimes.