Subject: Davos Dispatch from Steve Clemons
From: "Steve Clemons" <[email-masked]>
To: "undisclosed-recipients:"
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2019 13:06:29 -0500

*Greetings all -*
*Here is my next dispatch from Davos.  While I thought it odd and weird in
ways that the UK, France and the US heads of governments all cancelled
Davos and I thought there'd be a void, most I have spoken to are ready for
a break from America and have found other countries -- some sort of not
like these three -- to fill any gaps with.  Hope you find of interest.*
*All best, *
*Steve Clemons*
*Washington Editor at Large, The Atlantic*
*202-276-1176 mobile   **Follow me on Twitter @SCClemons*

*http://washingtonnote.com/trump-dropped-davos-so-empty-without-me/
<http://washingtonnote.com/trump-dropped-davos-so-empty-without-me/>*
Trump Dropped Davos — So Empty Without Me?
Steve Clemons <http://washingtonnote.com/author/steve/> - January 21, 2019
To weirdly paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen smacking down
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator,_you%27re_no_Jack_Kennedy> Dan
Quayle, Donald Trump is no Eminem.  But the latter’s thumping *Without Me*
<https://www.google.com/search?ei=6fhFXIrmJILXwQK3oKSQAw&q=without+me+lyrics+eminem&oq=without+me+lyrics+eminem&gs_l=psy-ab.3...0.0..2602370...0.0..0.0.0.......0......gws-wiz.QdKZmcN-_Rc>
 would appel to the Donald.  SNL should do a karaoke skit of Alec
Baldwin/The Donald singing all those lines, maybe inserting Mueller for
Moby.  In Trump’s mind, he is the party; he is the sizzle.  Eminem raps:

But no matter how many fish in the sea
It will be so empty without me

And so Donald Trump dumping the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
<https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting> to
tend to government shutdown drama, and scotching as well his Cabinet’s
Davos journey, means that globalists here don’t have to pull punches in
declaring how done they are with America right now.  No one is admitting
that they miss the Donald here — none that I’ve found so far.  I’ve been
asking a lot — and everyone says nearly the same thing, “Thank God he
didn’t come. A break would be good.”

And there’s no Emmanuel Macron.  And no Theresa May either.  They all
dropped out.

Whoa. France, the United Kingdom and the United States used to be the
essential ‘committee to save the world.’ A bombing action against Benghazi,
a big global shove towards a climate change deal, or trying to nail down
global uneasiness on the Iran Deal were often precipitated by op-eds signed
by Obama, Cameron, and either Sarkozy on Libya or Hollande on Iran.

But they are out. Trump is not at the party. And the best I can tell, Davos
doesn’t feel *empty* without him.

But what is worrisome is what the Davos crowd is filling that void with.
For starters, on Tuesday (tomorrow) newly elected Brazilian right wing
populist President Jair Bolsonaro will be the first head of government to
speak.  Bolsonaro has mimicked Trump’s executive order two-step by almost
immediately weakening gun ownership laws, undermining land set asides for
Brazil’s indigenous populations and descendants of slaves, and dropping
LGBT discrimination from the official roster of concerns of Brazil’s new
Ministry of Human Rights. There’s a party starter.

And that’s not all, folks.  The moment I got off the train at Davos Platz
was a sign pumping attendance at the June 2016 St. Petersburg International
Economic Forum.  This is the St. Petersburg in Russia, and the Forum is a
pet project of Vladimir Putin. Just keep that whole France, UK, USA oped
thing in the back of your mind.

And THEN, giant sign stretched over the massive side of the
centrally-located Ameron Hotel is none other than an “Invest Saudi Arabia”
advertisement.  Maybe the Crown Prince bought the ad before the whole Jamal
Khashoggi murder thing, and thus they were stuck with this poor taste
legacy ad buy.

Or maybe it’s just that democracies are out — and thug-run countries are on
the rise.  That is perhaps the real flavor of what Fareed Zakaria once
coined, “Rise of the Rest.”

In different times, if the US wasn’t in the game, there was no game.
Eminem’s lyrics were dead on then, if we were indeed talking about a
country and not him.  There was only one big fish in the sea and it would
have felt so “empty without me,” meaning the big me, or the big we.

For nostalgia’s sake, I went back to listen to Bill Clinton’s Davos speech
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOq1tIOvSWg> in 2000, almost two decades
ago.  To get a feel for why so many globalists here are done with American
attitudes today, at least the temporarily dominant personalities in the
White House squelching the more sane personalities buried somewhere in
Trump Land, just spend a moment reading how Bill Clinton framed the risks
and rewards looking forward to where we are today – but from his perch back
then.

Bill Clinton said:

As we know, in many ways the global economy was almost as integrated as it
is today a hundred years.  But after World War I, leaders in the U.S. and
Europe made what we all now recognize were false and short sighted choices.
Instead of partnership they chose protectionism and isolationism. And for
decades, globalization went in reverse with *utterly disastrous
consequences*.

After the Second World War, the leaders were given a second chance.  This
time it was clear that what was at stake was not just prosperity — but the
defense of freedom.  They chose the path of political and economic
partnership.  And they set the stage for 50 years of growth around the
world.

No one can seriously argue that the world would be a better place today if
they had reverted to the old isolationism.

Well, that didn’t hold.  America First has sent a signal that many in the
USA, not all but many, want a redo of that choice in the past, want that
‘old isolationism,’ want to shake down partners, engage in mercantilist
protectionist trade practices, and pull the legs out of international
institutions.

One can almost hear many of the world’s elites, many of them American in
fact, singing back:

Without you, we’re bigger fish in the sea
It will be so great without you

*--Steve Clemons