Donald J. Trump will take the oath of office at noon Monday in Washington, D.C., pledging to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." His political resurrection will be complete.

The paradox of his promise to defend the Constitution will be apparent.

Trump will stand in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, the same building where in 2021 he incited violent mobs equipped with a gallows to hang the vice president, urging them to "fight" Like hell” and overturning a free and fair election.

Trump's open disdain for the Democratic Convention is unlike any politician Australia has ever seen.

He is not a popular figure in Australia. A primary poll before the US election found only 29 per cent of Australians would vote for him as the presidential candidate.

But the man about to be re-elected as president has capitalized on deep discontent across the United States and a rising wave of populism around the world — including in Australia.

Will Australian politics emerge with a Trumpian politician similar to him - an iconoclast who flouts convention and shatters those moral values ​​previously considered unshakable?

Lachlan Harris, a former adviser to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and current ambassador to the United States, believes that there is currently no Trump in Australian politics. Kevin Rudd will attend Trump's inauguration.

"I think Trump is really trying to destroy American democracy: He's trying to break down democratic institutions, not just play rigid politics," Harris said.

"We don't have people like that in Australia and I don't think that determination exists in the Australian polity."

But that doesn't mean people can't or won't show up here, he said.

The embers of populism that Trump has ignited in the United States and fanned by powerful aides like Elon Musk are also burning here. Rising costs of living and growing inequality between the rich and everyone else, now less a gap than a widening chasm; dissatisfaction with housing and opportunity and the government's unwillingness or inability to address the problem; thinking The economic system is at odds with the “average voter” – all of which are shared feelings by both voters.

Some of Australia's political debates feel almost directly transplanted from the United States.

State and territory governments were elected promising to be "tough on crime" and even vowed to sentence children to adult prison terms. Bills to restrict abortion have been introduced or introduced in state legislatures. Incendiary, xenophobic rhetoric about immigration has and will become a staple of the debate in the run-up to this year’s federal election.

Culture wars against so-called elites – on Australia Day, ‘wokeness’, climate change science – are emblematic of the politics of discontent.

Democracies are more fragile than they appear.

Democracy gives the impression of inviolability with its majestic titles and majestic buildings. But the riots in the United States on January 6, and the continued vituperative attacks on political opponents, government departments and civil servants, exposed previously hidden vulnerabilities.

This is true for everyone. Democracies are based on convention, on people agreeing to the rules of the game, even if those rules are not written down. When a firebrand and commander-in-chief insists he will be a dictator "from day one," it's no harmless boast.

But Australia’s experience so far is that populism does not manifest itself in a behemoth, or a dominant celebrity like Trump in the United States. Nor is there a single fix, with solutions being (falsely) promoted as a panacea for various ills such as Brexit.

Instead, Australia's populism has splintered political loyalties. The old certainties of the two-party duopoly - with smaller parties playing a secondary role - have been steadily eroding for decades and are now collapsing at an even faster rate. The often eponymous party - Hanson, Palmer, Kettle - has emerged on the political right, capturing a small but crucial share of the vote.

Leaders of the major parties care more about appearances than results and break away from their previous ideological or demographic bases, hastening their own demise. Political leaders are chosen based on their slogans rather than their abilities, i.e. marketability rather than ethics, and they are easily abandoned by voters willing to look elsewhere.

Paul Strangio, emeritus professor of political science at Monash University, believes that in an era of rapid development in society and traditional media cycles, governance has also become more difficult.

“It’s more challenging to create and sustain a dialogue with voters,” he said. “The Albanian government is the latest victim of this difficulty, but its problems in engaging with voters are also due to Labour’s incrementalist, bite-sized approach to governance that is not fully reflected in the lived experience of voters. .

“At a time when dissatisfaction with business as usual is deep, there is a perception, fair or not, that Labor is limited to projects that maintain the status quo.”

There are structural reasons for Australia's relatively benign populist upsurge and its refusal to incarnate into a demagogic figure. Australia's democracy yes More powerful than countries like the United States.

An independent national election agency would (generally) be immune to the hyperpartisan attacks on corruption and vote-rigging that have plagued its U.S. equivalents. Limits on political donations limit—however imperfectly—the distorting influence money can have on elections. The Australian judiciary is far less politicized than the American judiciary.

Harris argued that compulsory voting also pushes parties into the precious heartland of politics (where most voters are). The loudest diatribe, "Get out and vote" (the crudest is "red meat to the base") is far less effective than laws forcing people to go to the polls.

Perhaps most fundamentally, a parliamentary system in which the people vote for local representatives and elect a government rather than a president is a bulwark against the hyper-individualism of the American political system.

But there are also cultural reasons.

"We associate populist leaders like Trump with charismatic, performative politics and demagoguery, which is unwelcome in Australia," Strangio argued. Scott Morrison, a Trump admirer, introduced elements of Trump's ballad: interpreting the "Canberra bubble" as the "Washington swamp."

"He also practiced a kind of performance politics, creating an image of an outsider to the system: a Cronulla shark from the suburbs, curry-cooking, sleazy dad. But Australians were quick to pick up on the design and discover what it was about There’s a different climate, a different history and a different political culture.”

But Strangio said "conservative populism" had been an emerging feature of Australian politics since the days of John Howard, and particularly since his groundbreaking re-election in 2001.

Strangio believes it is crucial that Australia's emerging conservative populism is not only recognized but understood.

"I think it's important not to lose sight of this and for people not to be sanctimonious or dismissive of those who vote for populist candidates, but to try to understand the mindset and the environment that drives populist candidates: ask 'what's driving this' What are the causes of 'politics of discontent'?

“There’s a template for how conservative populism works – you offer simple solutions to complex problems. It’s a politics of black and white, without any nuance.

"We probably all know deep down that it offers no meaningful solutions. Yet, in a chaotic and unsafe world, it can be tempting."

Strangio said that once the "populist genie" comes out of the bottle, it is difficult to regulate and control.

"This tends to intensify over time and I think the last 25 years have proven that, we've seen an intensification of this. Peter Dutton is one of the more radical conservatives in Australian politics Representative of populism.

"The upcoming election will be an important litmus test of how well the center performs in Australia."

Strangio, meanwhile, sees many differences between Dutton and Trump. "There is no hint of demagoguery, he has no charisma, he is not keen on show politics and in that sense he is in the tradition of Howard's run-of-the-mill populism."

That view echoes that of those who have watched Dutton from the other side of the finance bench for years.

Harris said Dutton did not support Trump. "I think we have to be very careful about comparisons. Peter Dutton is not Donald Trump: I don't support his positions, but his political character is different."

But Harris said Australia could not assume the presence of a Trump-like figure would be unaffected.

"Everyone needs to abide by the discipline of 'Trump' comparisons and only use the word when we really take it seriously, so if this character enters Australian politics we will all - from all quarters - give Australian Drop a nuclear bomb and when it comes, it will happen in Australian politics: because it will happen.”