Candidates want to be elected by diverse
constituencies, with different and often contradictory interests and demands.
They need to be everything to everybody, avoid every polarizing matter and
promise everything and its opposite. They also need to appear aligned with
their party’s doctrine and record while in government. More to the truth, they
must look like towing the line most convenient to the interests of their
party’s contributors, particularly those who control the media, which in turn
controls the perceptions of the electorate.
The burning issues in these elections are there for
all to see. How they are actually exposed or dissimulated during the campaign
depends on the capacity of the candidates and their supporters to present or
even manipulate the facts.
The two major and unequal categories of issues are
the domestic and those pertaining to foreign affairs. The presidential
elections are generally won or lost on domestic concerns, the only
international occurrences that could change this mindset would be either a new war,
making the electorate usually rally around the incumbent, or old tiresome wars,
which may stock anger and the desire to change.
Save that, the economy comes first. If the economy
goes well, every other problem dwarfs by comparison, if the economy is in decline,
nothing else matters much. Presently, the economy seems to be in partial reprieve,
after much trouble and scandal from Wall Street, the privileges of a few failed
bankers and industries being rescued by everybody’s tax money. The taxes of all
those who actually pay them, that is. Simultaneously, progressive globalization
brings cheaper goods from abroad, decreasing inflation, but also causing de-industrialization
and the loss of blue-collar jobs, increasing the deficit and the numbers of the
unemployed.
The other domestic issues have polarized around the
form, role and size of government, meaning in fact a debate about what should be
the conception of society. Is the US still a nation of pioneers fending for
themselves, dreading government intervention and taxes, bound mostly by a
Constitution stressing individual rights and obligations, pursuing happiness in
communities of free entrepreneurs? Or have they evolved sufficiently towards a
European-style social convention, providing protection from cradle to grave to
all citizens, much beyond the minimum support to the old, the feeble and the downtrodden?
Social protection is creating a major political
division. The battle lines were drawn over the most basic of social cohesion
measures, whether or not to extend health coverage to everybody. Social
security is already a general contribution by all and to all, but provides only
very limited emergency health services and small unemployment, disability or
retirement pensions. It is still largely perceived as a last recourse for those
incapable of providing sufficiently through other plans for themselves and
their families. Therefore, health care insurance is still debated as whether it
should be made available for all as a matter of course, or better left to
individual decision.
A major concern is national and individual security,
the rise of extremism, the threat of terrorism, the fight against crime and the
disagreement over gun control. Then, there are the drug wars over production,
distribution and use, followed by the general corruption it causes and the
crowding of prisons as a consequence. How can a country that went through the
throes of prohibition and the consequent golden age of gangsterism, which
penetrated the political, judicial and police structures, be so foolish? Like
before, since it is impossible to defeat them, tax them. Alcohol is taxed,
tobacco is taxed, drugs should be taxed as well. There will be enough money to
treat the addicts, ruin the gangs and keep in prison the offenders.
The education systems are coalescing around
expensive and mostly private poles of excellence on one side and a majority of
increasingly mediocre public schools on the other side. In relation to the
protection of the environment, the candidates disagree over resource
exploration on protected lands, mostly national parks. Finally, there is the
recurrent theme of equality of opportunity and all the other problems common to
developed societies.
On foreign policy, this electoral campaign has
balanced between detachment and the recognition of dependence on foreign oil,
foreign commerce and the need for foreign intervention to defend the homeland
and its interests.
Against the temptation for some sort of isolation
is the belief in the uniqueness of America, a new kind of imperial power with a
“manifest destiny”, the first modern republic, a social experiment in equality
and material progress
for all and the responsibility for propagating democratic ideals. Battered by
rapid world changes, but still burdened by the need to act as the world’s
policemen for its own political and economic survival and the survival of the
western democracies. It is increasingly difficult and expensive to keep this
role among the rise of emerging economic powerhouses. The decolonization
degraded into failed states and countries carrying on endless wars over
territory and resources, turmoil all over the Arab crescent turning ignorance
and despair into religious extremism, wars in the Middle East threatening the
supply of oil, China and Russia changing from failed communist regimes into
corrupt plutocracies with world power ambitions.
The American political parties came to radicalize
the extreme conceptions of society and the role of government, the conservative
republicans versus the progressive democrats.
The Republicans took the conservative banner, supporting
the smallest possible government, no obstacles to entrepreneurship, lower
taxes, and individualism on social issues. Presently the Republican candidate claims
to be for the protection of individual rights against the intrusion of the
state, considers the social state, as it is understood in Europe, as socialism
or even communism. He is either for more aloofness in foreign affairs or more
hawkishness in foreign interventions to protect the interests of the US and its
allies.
The Democrats have evolved somewhat in the
direction of the European center right parties, liberal on economic issues, seeing
progressive taxation and redistribution as necessary to ensure social balance
and the protection of the poor. Like everywhere else, all claims towards making
the rich pay more than their fair share serves only as measure of example and
equity, but actually means that the middle class always ends up paying the most.
By different means (sometimes...) they follow foreign affairs policies towards
the same objectives as the Republicans. Since the Israeli lobby ruined the
reelection of Bush father when he tried to pursue a more balanced stance
towards the Middle East, there is not much change on the overall objectives of
the State Department regardless of the Administration’s color.
The American dream used to mean the possibility of
achieving success in one generation, personified by the self made man. Before
the European colonial expansion this was extremely rare. People would strive to
leave the serfdom of peasantry into the professional and commercial
corporations. Over time and successive generations, acquiring and expanding land or
commerce ownership and eventually becoming sufficiently wealthy, they would
send their sons to school or seminary to become clerks and thus acquire the
knowledge to reinforce their influence and power. Much later, of course things
changed, but social mobility was, and is, still limited.
The changes in American society go in the European
direction, the cost of education increases, productivity and income depend on knowledge,
economic and professional success depends on the capacity to integrate the new
paradigm of the information society. The whole country is more and more
stratified.
The evolving economic crisis has brought to light
the costs of mismanaging the empire. Spending too much in foreign interventions
for the benefit of ensuring a steady supply of energy and the protection of
transportation lanes to the exporting markets is turning out a negative balance
of costs versus benefits, as all empires eventually do.
The results of the American presidential elections
will have world consequences. Which one of the two candidates would the
electors choose? Better the devil you know.
JSR
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