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US elections 2004: This is no passing phase. This is now an era
(Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, November 4, 2004)
Once it looked like an aberration. Now it is an era. George W Bush's tenure of the White House was born in 2000 to an electoral quirk, the fruit of a Florida fiasco, the arcane algebra of the US electoral system, and a split decision of the supreme court. . . . Those outside America, in the chanceries of Europe and beyond, who hoped that this would be a passing phase, like a Florida hurricane that wreaks havoc only to blow over, will instead have to adjust to a different reality. . . . For four years many hoped that the course charted by President Bush - a muscular go-it-alone view of a world divided between the forces of darkness and those of light - would prove to be a blip. Come November 2, 2004, they wanted to believe, normal service would be resumed. The United States would return to the old way of doing business, in concert with allies and with respect for the international system the US itself had done so much to create. The norms of foreign policy pursued by every president from Roosevelt to Clinton, including the first George Bush, would be revived. Senator Kerry promised as much. . . . Now that fantasy will be shelved. . . . But yesterday's victory also signalled a shift in America itself. It has been under way for several decades, but now it is revealed in all its clarity. The electoral map showed it in full colour: "blue" coasts where the Democrats won, vast "red" swaths of the Republican heartland everywhere else. . . . Many Bush voters admitted their unhappiness on Iraq and confessed to great economic hardship - two issues which ordinarily would be enough to defeat an incumbent. But these voters backed Mr Bush, because he reflected something they regarded as even more important: their values. . . . Those values can be boiled down to issues - abortion, guns, gays - but they represent a larger, cultural difference. One Republican analyst asks people four questions. Do you have a friend or relative serving in the military? Do you have any personal ties to rural America? Do you attend religious services on a weekly basis? Do you own a gun? Answer yes to most or all of those, and you are "a cultural conservative" and most likely vote Republican. Answer no, and the chances are you live on the east or west coast and vote Democrat. . . . In 2000 this cultural split was dead-even: 50-50 America. This time it was 51-49 America, with the conservatives in the majority. . . . Put plainly, the US is moving steadily and solidly to the right. That poses a problem for Democrats, who have to learn to speak to the people of those red states if they are ever to hold power again. . . . But it also poses a problem for America, which has somehow to house two radically diverging cultures in one nation. [COMMENT: Some say the winds of civil war are blowing once again.] And it may even pose a problem for the rest of the world's peoples, as they watch the sole superpower, the indispensable nation, chart a course they fear - and barely understand. . . . It seemed to be the accidental presidency, one that would stand out in the history books as a freak event. . . . Yesterday that changed, changed utterly. President Bush and his Republican army recorded a famous victory, one that may come to be seen as more than a mere election triumph - rather, a turning point in American life, a realignment. . . . [COMMENT: My deepest apologies to all of my friends who live outside of these Divided States of Amerika. I admit that today I am ashamed to be an American. I am ashamed that out of 300 million people, the two best candidates we could come up with for president are terrible at best. America as a nation has failed. Hopefully the dream of peace and freedom can be carried forward elsewhere, in some place where fascism does not now reign.]

posted by LoZo 6:00 PM