Thoughts about the next US president

By the time you are reading these lines, the presidential election in the United States will be over. You will know, in other words, whether the next American president will be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. But I am writing these lines many hours before the election results. I have no idea, therefore, who will be the next leader of the world's superpower. 

I have a clear preference though: Hillary Clinton. This is not because I am ideologically inclined to the Democrat Party, or ideologically opposed to the Republican Party, at least given the long history of these two main pillars of American democracy. Most of the time, I find myself agreeing with Democrats on certain issues and with Republicans on others. 

But this election has been different, because Donald Trump is not your usual American presidential candidate. His political narrative has indicated hostility toward minorities, including Muslims, a tendency toward authoritarian and arbitrary rule and a lack of basic civility. His personal life, as we have seen in the past few months, includes repeated sexual offenses against women, about whom Trump has also used very demeaning words. (One wonders how some Republican voters who care so much about "family values" can stomach Trump's trampling on those values with those scandals.) 

What is even worse is that if someone like Trump becomes the president of America, the illiberal tide that is haunting much of the rest of the world will be emboldened. No wonder almost all far-right parties in Europe have a heart for Trump. No wonder non-Western dictators such as Russia's Vladimir Putin or Egypt's Abdel Fettah el-Sisi like this "strong man" and have sought his victory. 

Clinton, on the other hand, represents the America that we...