February 12th 2016

U.S. presidential elections.

American society between Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton
Mr. Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review senior editor, Bloomberg View columnist, American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow

Within the framework of the MCI Alumni & Friends lecture series, the Entrepreneurial School® had the pleasure of welcoming the National Review senior editor, Bloomberg View columnist, American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow Mr. Ramesh Ponnuru for an inspiring talk about the U.S. presidential elections.

Ramesh Ponnuru proposes, that contemporary times are called the “area of bad feelings” whilst the past three decades of presidents was called the “area of good feelings”. He explains the contemporary climate in the U.S., that people think, America is heading into the wrong direction. They do not believe that their political leaders serve them well. In the past when people were asked if their children will be better off than they are, there was once a great deal of confidence that the answer was “yes”. Now they have another opinion. The Americans are concerned about the low economic growth, about the cost of living, the cost health care and higher education and over all about the future.

Ramesh Ponnuru identifies two points of views within the society. Meaning people are either conservative, either progressive – so that the middle isn't nearly existing any more. There used to be a lot of conservative democrats and progressive republicans. And this is no longer the case. Political divisions now line up with cultural divisions. Now in most of the states it is clear where they are going to be and is not as much mixed as it used to be. Moreover he identifies the social movement that Americans stopped trusting the democrats to stand for middle class values but they don’t start trusting the republicans to stand for middle class values.

After describing how parties could deal with issues like migration, higher education, health care, balancing family and work the talk ended into a very vivant discussion hosted by MCI Lecturer Dr. Armin Fiedler.