Category: Current Affairs

It’s morning in America, in at least the astronomical sense. John Kerry is about to concede the presidential election to President Bush, after a strong campaign that was just not quite strong enough to unseat an entrenched incumbent.

The strong uptick in turnout was very welcome – it is plain bad that US election turnouts have been so low for so long – but I do wonder whether that will be sustained into the next election, or whether the “new” voters are going away disillusioned. Moreover, the best ground for new voters to come from is the centre – it will be interesting to read the full profiles of the voting when they become available.

The early election commentary is as usual, the back-of-the-envelope notes for the first draft of history. One worthwhile read, however, is Andrew Leonard’s article for Salon on the echo-chamber effect of the blogosphere. It is a timely reminder of the harmful nature of such reverberation. The piranha-shoal treatment meted out to news stories on both sides of the fence (see much of the commentary on Free Republic or the WELL) shows the ferocity of belief, and the distrust of the other side can be pathological, not just the rough-and-tumble of politics.

The elections in Ukraine have not got off to a good start.

How do the moral majority see the rest of us?

If President Bush wins, it will be interesting to see what happens to the nature of anti-Americanism in other parts of the world. At the moment, surveys are reporting that Americans themselves are not unpopular, although the present Administration is widely despised. How would that change if the Americans seemed to take the decision to approve of Bush, after all the (perceived) bad things he has done?

Hunter S Thompson makes the same point:

The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more
and more like the head of a fascist government but if the American
people want it that way. That is what this election is all about…

Martini Republic gives us a snapshot of the Second World War 1,138 days after Pearl Harbor, today being 1,138 days after 9/11.

Of course, the Poles, British, French and others had been fighting for some time before Pearl Harbor happened, but the point still applies. The territorial advance for this sort of war is not on the ground, but in the mind – and there it’s looking a lot more like Dunkirk than the relief of Paris.

John Dean writes a sobering article from a lawyer’s perspective on the likely legal wrangling that will follow next Tuesday’s vote.

(Minutes from the No. 10 Lobby briefing of journalists)

“Asked if the Government remained committed to a draft Bill on [corporate manslaughter laws], the Prime Minister’s Spokesperson said that it would be inappropriate to comment on the contents of the forthcoming Queen’s Speech. Put to her that she had commented in detail on the Gambling Bill, the PMS pointed out that the Gambling Bill had been included in last year’s Queen’s Speech.”

There is an interesting piece of opinion research available today from the Programme on International Policy Attitudes. The document itself is not long, and worth reading, but the take-away is that the Bush and Kerry supporters questioned don’t merely disagree on matters of policy or principle, they disagree on some fundamental matters of fact. Facts subject to partisan difference include whether Iraq was involved in 9/11 (Bush supporters: yes, Kerry supporters: no), and whether the world supports the Iraq war (Bush supporters: yes, Kerry supporters: no).

It’s just a pity that Jacques Derrida isn’t around to appreciate this.

There are a few theories floating around as to the reasons for this strange disjuncture. These range from “the Bush supporters have been deceived by the Government”, to “George Bush’s supporters are a horde of ignoramuses“. The last is a pleasing historical echo of John Stuart Mill’s description of the Tories as “the stupid party”.

My guess is that those polled are engaging in a bit of reverse-justification: they know the political mast they’ve nailed their colours to, and they have to mangle the facts to get to the answer they had already thought of. Rather like the reverse of this opinion poll (RealAudio file) from Yes-Minister.com.

There are times when even a politophile (or whatever you’d call it) just wants to fold his tent and slip away. Just stroll away from the issues that matter, and try and have what fun I can before the end comes. I’m getting that feeling again as the US election hurtles ever closer, and Salon writes two terrifying pieces.

That Ron Suskind piece in the New York Times Magazine today is worth reading in full. It reinforces one of my central political views, that easy agreement is dangerous, and powerful people agreeing with each other is even more dangerous. Debate is not, to put it another way, a means of gaining agreement for the right view, it is a way of making the policy (or whatever it is) better, just by talking it through.

The president who comes across in Mr Suskind’s piece is solitary and proud. Perhaps these are appealing traits in a leader – they seem to have played well in kings and princes throughout history. But is it a Christian attitude? I’m sure I remember singing something in my school chapel that went:

When I survey the wond’rous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride.