Daily World Dispatch - Lost in a hall of mirrors
Paul Keating famously said "when the government changes, the country changes". One might also say that when the president of the United States changes, the world changes. Speaking at the APEC summit in Lima, Chinese President Xi Jinping described it as a "hinge moment", but at times it seems we are simply unhinged.
Having watched the rise of Jeremy Corbyn across the Channel, and his reliance upon what is known as "entryism" to get elected to leadership of the British Labour Party, it seems extraordinary that the Gaullist right in France should fall victim to the same phenomenon.
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, right, with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy at a campaign meeting in Marseille last month.Credit:AP
Yet that is what appears to have happened with the ejection of Nicolas Sarkozy from the French presidential race. Whether Francois Fillon, who has replaced him as the front-runner for the Republicans, is really a breath of fresh air or just more of the same remains to be seen.
For some of those who cannot stomach the notion of Donald Trump as leader of the free world, much importance is now attached to the future of Angela Merkel, and her decision to run for Germany's highest office again has come to be seen by them as a candle in the populist darkness.
President-elect Donald Trump waves goodbye to Mitt Romney after they met at the Trump National Golf Club.Credit:New York Times
But even the politician known by her fans as "Mutti", or mum, may find that the story she tells voters has to change if she is to succeed where Hillary Clinton and David Cameron failed.
In the hall of mirrors that is Trump's America, everyone's shape can shift. Mitt Romney, who denounced candidate Trump as a "phony", now shakes his hand and wonders whether he can serve in the forthcoming administration. The real Trump demands that he receive "equal time" with a phony Trump on Saturday Night Live - to do what, exactly? Is there a script for a comedy that ends with people chanting "lock her up!" hidden somewhere in Trump Tower?
The cast of the US musical Hamilton clearly hoped that they were holding up some kind of mirror when Vice-President-elect Mike Pence dropped by the other night - "The play's the thing. Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" and all that - and there was a certain amusement value in seeing the President-elect, that slayer of political correctness, demand a "safe space" for his right-hand man.
But it was altogether predictable that Pence himself should show less petulance. As he understands, perhaps better than Trump, the king's "equal time" is about to come - all four years of it.
Aactor Brandon Victor Dixon who plays Aaron Burr, the third US vice-president, in Hamilton addresses Mike Pence after the curtain call in New York on Friday.Credit:AP
Must-reads:
Australian nurse Tammy Davis-Charles arrested in Cambodian surrogacy crackdown
Nicolas Sarkozy gone after French left-wingers pay to vote him out of presidential contention