Why ‘risky’ Donald Trump looks a better bet in the race to be US president

The word “snafu” originated as a US military acronym in the second world war, standing for “situation normal: all fouled or f***ed up.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was originally “an expression conveying the common soldier’s laconic acceptance of the disorder of war and the ineptitude of his superiors.” In its first published appearance, in 1943, it was “politely translated as ‘situation normal; all fouled up’, to indicate that things are not going too well.”

Desperate times call for desperate neologisms. A year later, American bomber crews came up with another acronym to describe a state of affairs more extreme than snafu: “fubar”, which stands for “f***ed up beyond all recognition.” The OED defines it as “bungled, ruined, messed up. Also: extremely intoxicated.”

The big question we in America confront as election day slouches towards us is whether the future of the United States will be snafu or fubar. Slumped in the Democratic corner, her haggard visage being fanned by anxious trainers, is Hillary Clinton, candidate of the effed-up status quo. Impatiently bouncing off the ropes on the other side of the ring is the overweight, orange-featured personification of very, very risky change.

As I write, the future still seems more likely to be snafu. But the status quo’s margin of advantage suddenly looks much smaller than in the dog days of summer.

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The conventional wisdom, as August drew to a close, was that Trump’s campaign was in free fall. Some Clinton supporters had even begun to anticipate a landslide.