America Gets Real...

Times Online
November 12, 2006

The world believes that a new America was born last week. At the flick of a democratic switch out went the wild, warmongering, fundamentalist neocons. Out went the xenophobic fanatics who believe that allies are wimps, that Arabs should be tortured and that dinosaurs inhabited the Ark. European is no longer an American term of abuse and vice versa. Liberals walk free down Fifth Avenue and eat french fries. In short, the great American polity is sane again.

Anyone who criticises America knows that it is among the world’s most paranoid nations. But nothing has more irritated many Americans this past six years than that the world should identify them with George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. I once attributed responsibility for Iraq to “America” and was deluged with complaints that the fault lay in Washington, with the Republicans, with the White House, then with the Pentagon, until I was told kindly to restrict my criticism to “Cheney and Rumsfeld”.

Nor have all Americans opposed abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research and evolution, let alone supported Pastor Ted Haggard, extraordinary rendition and biblical truth. As of last Tuesday, Bush’s reincarnation of the Ugly American may be dead, but not all Americans were that ugly nor are all ugly Americans that dead.

Since 9/11 the devil of the apocalypse in American politics has had the best tunes. There is nothing as useful to an insecure leader as fear. But it yielded no consensus. The last two presidential elections were a sign not of a homogeneous America but of a divided one. A bare majority (in 2000 a minority) supported Bush not just because they liked his fundamentalism but because his opponents were unconvincing and his organisation superb.

Nor are all this week’s “neo-Democrats” born-again liberals — far from it.

The election was a clear referendum on six years of Republican rule in Washington, but humility should guide any response to an American election.

A nation does not change its political culture overnight and America is the size of a continent. Reading this election would be like reading a European one in which, God forbid, voters were spread across Andalusia, Bavaria, Sicily and Wales.

The best available guide is the exit polls. Any midterm vote is conditioned by anti-incumbent, anti-Washington sentiment. After 12 years of a Republican Congress that failed to bring either Bill Clinton or Bush to book, outsiders might conclude that the American constitution of checks and balances needs reform. A flurry of scandals during the campaign capped a widespread aversion to the corruption of Bush’s Washington and a sense that something must be done about public spending that has risen faster under Bush than under any president since Johnson. [Read More]