The quagmires of a President Clinton II

AGAINST the backdrop of the hostile takeover of the GOP by Donald Trump and the electoral demise of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, veteran political observers have suggested that former President Ronald Reagan, who is regarded as an icon of sorts among most Republicans, would probably have failed to win his party's presidential nomination if he had been running in this year's GOP primaries.

After all, President Reagan was an ardent supporter of free trade, a foreign policy internationalist, and a proponent of liberal immigration policies, while the 2016 Republican presidential nominee has won the backing of his party's voters by campaigning against free trade and by promoting an isolationist approach to global affairs and a nativist immigration agenda. Mr Trump has emerged as anti-Reagan, transforming the GOP from a political party committed to internationalist and free market principles and projecting a sunny optimistic face into an angry nationalist political movement.

In a way, one could make a similar how-things-have-changed case about what has been happening in the Democratic Party this presidential election year. Although with the Democrats, the comparison with the past may be infused with a certain irony that could be placed under the heading of the Clinton I versus Clinton II match, after the delegates to the Democratic Nomination Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania officially elected Hillary Clinton as their president nominee and listened to an address by former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday.