Historically, domestic issues have always mattered more than foreign relations.  But the willful ignorance of the rest of the world leads to a misleading view of domestic issues.  So three topics worthy of a closer look.

First, for the last week the pomp of the United Kingdom has been on display with the ceremonies connected with the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the succession of King Charles III.  We simply do not do pomp in this country that well.  What can’t be denied is that pomp has a role to play.  The formalities of politics emphasize continuity and the orderly rules of succession.  If you have ever watched coverage of a British general election, there is a whole formal ceremony connected with the declaration of the vote in each district.  And, at least for the early results (until they expand from a trickle to a flood), many of the declarations get live coverage.  By contrast, in the U.S., the media “declare” a winner long before the count becomes official, and the official declaration of the vote is simply a vote by a canvassing board covering multiple races and some signatures on the official documents with little or no public fanfare.  This low-key approach has, as we have seen, the consequence of depriving the final result of some of the finality and officialness which would make it harder to challenge.

Second, we are now dealing with a global economy.  National (and state and local) governments can impact things around the margin.  But we lack any recognizes statistics for measuring how well or poorly a particular country is doing.  How many Americans know that the United Kingdom with a Conservative government is looking at double digit inflation while the U.S. is doing about 5% better.  The reality is that so much of what is produced and consumed in this country (even if it stays entirely in the U.S.) is part of a global market.  The oil produced by U.S. wells may be refined in U.S. facilities and then sold at U.S. gas stations, but that is all done by private companies which only do so to the extent that they can make more money in the U.S. than in Mexico or Japan or Germany.  So if prices are going up in Germany, Americans will have to pay more if we want to keep the gas in the U.S.  Likewise, it is hard to have a growing economy if the rest of the world is in a recession and nobody abroad can buy the extra goods that you are producing.  But there is no official number for global inflation (pegged to value in the same currency) or global economic growth.  Thus, it takes a lot more effort than most voters are going to do to find out if the current government is doing as best a job as can be done to weather hard times in the global economy or is doing a lousy job to maximize gains when the global economy is doing well.

Third, continuing on with the global economy, the three big headwinds are still the war in the Ukraine, Covid-19, and climate change.  The war in the Ukraine has disrupted food supplies from the Ukraine *due to Russian military operations and oil and gas from Russia (due to sanctions).  China is still ruthless in shutting down regions to combat outbreaks of COVID-19 (cause bottlenecks in production and distribution of goods from China to the rest of the world) given the failure of China to implement better techniques to mitigate COVID-19.  Finally, climate change is leading to droughts and other natural disasters in various agricultural regions with the expected impact on food supplies.  Put simply, no U.S. president can magically snap his (or someday her) fingers and get new oil supplies or replace lost production in another country or grow food in an instant.  All of these things take time — time to build new factories, or drill new wells, or convert land to agriculture (and in the U.S., it is hard to keep land in agriculture given relative values of agricultural land compared to other more profitable uses).  We need to address these other problems (which will take time) to reduce future problems.  But, in the short run, there is little that the President or Congress can do that will help immediately (and a lot of bad ideas that will cause problems in the future without getting much relief today).

As we talk about things this election year, we need to make sure that things are seen in context — which requires comparing the U.S. to other countries.  Failing to do so allows MAGA folks to distort reality.