According to a poll that I’ve just concluded, the average person’s favourite mythical creature isn’t the phoenix, Tinkerbelle, the unicorn, or Hagrid.

It’s the honest politician. 

In Malaysia, they’re about as common as dragons. In fact, when a neighbouring ex-Minister of Transport was charged with accepting “gifts” like theatre and plane tickets worth almost S$600,000, the incredulous “what was he thinking?” sentiment from our local politicos wasn’tas much about the alleged dishonesty as its alleged scale. 

It was pure disbelief. “So little-ah?” 

That’s why we must be the only country where a former premier who stole more than Midas ever accumulated sees no irony in his appeal to allow him to serve out the rest of his sentence in the luxury of his well-appointed home. 

Now everyone can understand “a sense of entitlement.” 

It was a novel approach though, and it appealed to Donald Trump’s keen sense of justice and fair play. “Fair’s fair,” said The Donald who was a staunch conservative who believed, like Jibby and other staunch conservatives, that he deserved everything he’d stolen. 

You might say both George Bernard Shaw and Napoleon Bonaparte were prescient: they’d predicted the rise of someone like Trump way back when. 

Shaw was blunt. “He knows nothing but thinks he knows everything: that points clearly to a political career.”  Napoleon might just have been a shrewd observer of the human condition. In politics, he noted, “stupidity isn’t a handicap.”  

Forty-six years after his death, Shaw’s description of a future US President seems spot on. Meanwhile, Napoleon’s observation could explain the man’s tremendous popularity among the people. That is why, statistically speaking, half the American populace think the other half’s crazy.

And so, despite a reputation as a woman-assaulting, flag-waving, steak-inhaling, ozone depleting, seal clubbing, greenhouse gas-emitting, non-tax paying, serial lying, narcissistic troglodyte of the best sort, Mr Trump is a cinch to win the Republican nomination for the Presidency. 

And there is a very good chance he will go on to become the US’ next President. 

It might be said that the coming election is the incumbent Joe Biden’s one to lose. His “Sleepy Joe-out-to-lunch” style of governance has won him no plaudits and few favours.

In the context of previous presidential elections, it reminds me of the quip made by comedian Mort Sahl after the 1980 election: “Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed, he would have lost.” 

I suppose I should not comment on another country’s politics but it’s mostly out of fear. The US is the most powerful country on Earth with enough weaponry to destroy the world several times over – so an assessment of the man with his finger on the trigger seems appropriate. 

Then again, what do we Malaysians know? 

We’re the same ones who, in 2013, re-elected the world’s biggest kleptocrat. Some of us publicly deplore racial and religious rhetoric but privately condone, even applaud it. 

To quote Bob Hope, it even gives dirty politics a bad name. 

ENDS