The American Election
Truth, lies and the ballot
I must confess that I experienced a moment of
guilty joy, schadenfreude,
on waking up on November 3 to discover that Bush had narrowly won re-election.
I had gone to bed thinking that Kerry was the likely winner, and the lessor of two evils. Bush's incompetent and shameful conduct of the occupation of Iraq was the tipping point for me, overcoming Kerry's vacillation and eagerness to fend off the responsibility for the war on other nations.
If I were an American I would have voted for Kerry. I would have been willing to gamble that he would be a better president than candidate and his graceful concession speech left me thinking that might have happened.
On the other hand I knew many Iraqi democrats and socialists were hoping for Bush, unwilling to give the fascist insurgents even momentary encouragement.
And in my dreams and as a Canadian I wish we lived in a world where Ralph Nader was president.
My first thought though, on reading of Bush's evident victory, was of Michael Moore. Despite agreeing with much of Moore's sarcastic appraisal of America's capitalists and politicians, I think he represents the dark side of the left, a left that has abandoned the pursuit of truth and adopted the deception of propaganda. Factual accuracy is not his strong point. Moore has contempt not only for the ruling classes but for the rest of us as well. For the sordid details see this posting.
So much, I thought that morning, for the film Fahrenheit 9/11 or Moore's tour of sixty university campuses with its slacker slogan of "Drink beer, sleep to noon, vote for Kerry."
I paid very close attention to this election and was impressed by the effort made by many Americans to make a very difficult choice in the face of an incredible barrage of misleading and unethical stunts. I particularly dislike Moore because he pretends to speak for my side of the political spectrum but he is no worse than many others.
The Democratic Party enjoyed not only Moore's conspiracy theories but also dubious rumours of the return of the draft and Dan Rather's promotion of fake documents regarding Bush's national guard service. The Republicans countenanced a slanderous attack of Kerry's military service in Vietnam and created a gay scapegoat with their divisive and unnecessary campaign to amend the federal constitution to define marriage. The worst I heard was Rush Limbaugh accusing Kerry of corrupting children. I listened to Limbaugh's radio show for forty minutes before I realized he wasn't accusing Kerry of molestation. Two young boys had raised money for Kerry selling campaign buttons and bracelets. Recent campaign finance laws forbid minors from raising or making donations.
If this election saw more mudslinging than ever before it also saw a hunger for honest discussion. Instead of merely confirming their allegiances Internet users went comparison shopping, seeking out argument rather than slogans, and fact checking the claims, campaign promises and past performance of the candidates. Many people made a point of basing their decision on the speeches and debates of the candidates themselves, rather than the spinning of commentators in the big media.
On election day I saw pictures from all across the US of voters waiting patiently in long lines, just like those we saw in Afghanistan a few weeks earlier. I'm not sure a Kerry presidency would have been much different from what Bush is able to accomplish (or screw up) in the next four years. But I have to respect that many people felt they were casting the most important ballot of their lives.
In the days immediately afterwards a lot of despairing Kerry supporters feared that the Republicans had engineered a Christian fundamentalist takeover. A map of the electoral college result, showing Bush winning the heartland of the US and Kerry only taking the cosmopolitan coastal states, became a symbol of the triumph of faith over reason. In fact, as this web site at the University of Michigan shows, almost every county in the US was closely divided. Bush won most of them, but rarely by big margins. His victory came because three percent of the voters, Democrats and Independents, made the opposite evaluation that I did. They thought Bush had made some big mistakes but were unwilling to replace a war time president with a candidate of uncertain resolve.
Looking at the exit polling it appears that a majority of the voters were not only pro choice but pro gay as well. Many who didn't like gay marriage had no problem with civil unions, including both Kerry and Bush. Bush improved his performance over the 2000 results in almost every category, including people who rarely go to church, women, and visible minorities.
The US presidential election, despite all the flaws, and even though the guy I preferred didn't win, qualifies as democracy in its lowest, most basic, form. The people had the power to throw out the old regime and they almost did.
The congressional elections however, were pretty much a farce. The gerrymandering of districts by state legislatures make it almost impossible to defeat an incumbent, and only a handful were.
Party politics in the United States, and in most democracies, are scandalous. Electing representatives to government is itself a flawed concept. Politicians are always in a three way conflict of interest between their careers, their party and their duty to their constituents.
I'm hoping there is eventually a move towards a more direct democracy with legislative and executive councils selected by lotteries and laws proposed by those councils approved by the whole electorate, just as in the original Athenian model. The government of British Columbia established a Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform using a lottery and that was a step in the right direction. More on that soon.
I had gone to bed thinking that Kerry was the likely winner, and the lessor of two evils. Bush's incompetent and shameful conduct of the occupation of Iraq was the tipping point for me, overcoming Kerry's vacillation and eagerness to fend off the responsibility for the war on other nations.
If I were an American I would have voted for Kerry. I would have been willing to gamble that he would be a better president than candidate and his graceful concession speech left me thinking that might have happened.
On the other hand I knew many Iraqi democrats and socialists were hoping for Bush, unwilling to give the fascist insurgents even momentary encouragement.
And in my dreams and as a Canadian I wish we lived in a world where Ralph Nader was president.
My first thought though, on reading of Bush's evident victory, was of Michael Moore. Despite agreeing with much of Moore's sarcastic appraisal of America's capitalists and politicians, I think he represents the dark side of the left, a left that has abandoned the pursuit of truth and adopted the deception of propaganda. Factual accuracy is not his strong point. Moore has contempt not only for the ruling classes but for the rest of us as well. For the sordid details see this posting.
So much, I thought that morning, for the film Fahrenheit 9/11 or Moore's tour of sixty university campuses with its slacker slogan of "Drink beer, sleep to noon, vote for Kerry."
I paid very close attention to this election and was impressed by the effort made by many Americans to make a very difficult choice in the face of an incredible barrage of misleading and unethical stunts. I particularly dislike Moore because he pretends to speak for my side of the political spectrum but he is no worse than many others.
The Democratic Party enjoyed not only Moore's conspiracy theories but also dubious rumours of the return of the draft and Dan Rather's promotion of fake documents regarding Bush's national guard service. The Republicans countenanced a slanderous attack of Kerry's military service in Vietnam and created a gay scapegoat with their divisive and unnecessary campaign to amend the federal constitution to define marriage. The worst I heard was Rush Limbaugh accusing Kerry of corrupting children. I listened to Limbaugh's radio show for forty minutes before I realized he wasn't accusing Kerry of molestation. Two young boys had raised money for Kerry selling campaign buttons and bracelets. Recent campaign finance laws forbid minors from raising or making donations.
If this election saw more mudslinging than ever before it also saw a hunger for honest discussion. Instead of merely confirming their allegiances Internet users went comparison shopping, seeking out argument rather than slogans, and fact checking the claims, campaign promises and past performance of the candidates. Many people made a point of basing their decision on the speeches and debates of the candidates themselves, rather than the spinning of commentators in the big media.
On election day I saw pictures from all across the US of voters waiting patiently in long lines, just like those we saw in Afghanistan a few weeks earlier. I'm not sure a Kerry presidency would have been much different from what Bush is able to accomplish (or screw up) in the next four years. But I have to respect that many people felt they were casting the most important ballot of their lives.
In the days immediately afterwards a lot of despairing Kerry supporters feared that the Republicans had engineered a Christian fundamentalist takeover. A map of the electoral college result, showing Bush winning the heartland of the US and Kerry only taking the cosmopolitan coastal states, became a symbol of the triumph of faith over reason. In fact, as this web site at the University of Michigan shows, almost every county in the US was closely divided. Bush won most of them, but rarely by big margins. His victory came because three percent of the voters, Democrats and Independents, made the opposite evaluation that I did. They thought Bush had made some big mistakes but were unwilling to replace a war time president with a candidate of uncertain resolve.
Looking at the exit polling it appears that a majority of the voters were not only pro choice but pro gay as well. Many who didn't like gay marriage had no problem with civil unions, including both Kerry and Bush. Bush improved his performance over the 2000 results in almost every category, including people who rarely go to church, women, and visible minorities.
The US presidential election, despite all the flaws, and even though the guy I preferred didn't win, qualifies as democracy in its lowest, most basic, form. The people had the power to throw out the old regime and they almost did.
The congressional elections however, were pretty much a farce. The gerrymandering of districts by state legislatures make it almost impossible to defeat an incumbent, and only a handful were.
Party politics in the United States, and in most democracies, are scandalous. Electing representatives to government is itself a flawed concept. Politicians are always in a three way conflict of interest between their careers, their party and their duty to their constituents.
I'm hoping there is eventually a move towards a more direct democracy with legislative and executive councils selected by lotteries and laws proposed by those councils approved by the whole electorate, just as in the original Athenian model. The government of British Columbia established a Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform using a lottery and that was a step in the right direction. More on that soon.
Posted: Sun - November 21, 2004 at 08:14 PM
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Published On: Sep 12, 2007 03:13 PM
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Published On: Sep 12, 2007 03:13 PM