A rare show of political civility

Last week, New York City’s newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, went to the White House to see US President Donald Trump. Everyone expected a public blow-up. For months, during Mamdani’s election campaign, the two men had traded barbs at each other and lobbed accusations. And when Trump has met rivals and enemies one-on-one in the past, he has often confronted them publicly.

In February, for instance, Trump shouted at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and unceremoniously kicked him out. Months later, Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa with incendiary allegations of white genocide. Trump also routinely derides and scolds reporters and staffers in full view of cameras.

The Trump administration has often characterised these public confrontations as a mark of honesty. Only a day before Mamdani’s meeting, the White House press secretary had said, “[The] president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is frankly a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration.”

Mamdani seemed destined for similar treatment. He epitomised everything that ran counter to Trump’s political movement: he is a foreign-born immigrant, a Muslim, a democratic socialist, and publicly unapologetic on all counts. Yet, the feared showdown never happened. From start to finish, Mamdani’s meeting was full of smiles, cordial handshakes, and warm photo shoots. Trump even came to the mayor-elect’s defence when reporters tried to remind the two men of their past public insults. He later posted a picture of Mamdani on social media, featuring him alone in front of a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt – another democratic socialist.

How did this all go so well? To understand why Mamdani’s meeting was so polite and cordial, one must first understand how political discourse got so rude and uncivil.

A century ago, the First World War, the Great Depression, and the effects of colonialism combined to give rise to a wave of identity politics around the world. In Europe, Nazi parties and their allies turned their guns on Jews across the continent. In America, Jim Crow laws and race-based segregation were in full force. In India, a Hindu-Muslim rift led to a manufactured Partition that displaced millions.

But the end of World War II and the fall of colonialism also pressed the need for rebuilding, and a door was opened for world leaders to refocus on economic goals. Politics henceforth began to be dominated by economic questions: Should the economy be led by the government or by private enterprise? Should countries trade? Are cities more important than villages?

To be sure, these questions could often break out into ugly fights and even wars. But for the most part, it was easier to debate and discuss questions of economic policy than identity or culture. People are liable to change their views on trade, inflation, and state control of the economy. They are unlikely to change their place of birth, religion or ethnicity.

The end of the Cold War appeared to settle the economic questions. With the fall of the Soviet Union, most countries around the world moved towards market economics and capitalism. Political candidates in the developing world actively campaigned based on economic reform, empowering private enterprises, and seeking trade deals with the rest of the world. In the West, candidates focused on driving global leadership on those issues.

In that atmosphere, running a political campaign on identity lines was not the wisest. In the search for economic success, people forgot their own biases. If you want to grow your business or national economy, you must work with people of all castes, creeds and kinds.

Arguably, the first blow to that order was struck on 9/11. By launching a barbaric assault defined on religious and ethnic lines, Osama bin Laden brought back the politics of identity to the high table.

A few recessions, wars and pandemics later, the global consensus on economics-driven politics has come to an end. Countries have reverted to the logic that led to World War II: stoking fear against imagined enemies, caricaturing entire peoples as traitors, and lobbing insults in the name of speaking inconvenient truths.

This is where Mamdani’s meeting with Trump did well to pause the cycle. Neither Trump nor Mamdani disavowed their ideological positions last week. But they smiled at each other long enough to focus on things that everyone can agree on: creating jobs, reducing living costs, and improving wages. Perhaps that’s what politics should always be about.