George W
Bush almost certainly will win another term as president
of the United States, as I have predicted all along (Careful what you
Bush for, August 3). That surprises outside
observers of US politics, who can see that the Democrats
are cleverer, better dressed and better looking. It is
just the sort of Americans who know they are neither
clever nor good-looking who will vote for Bush.
Bush supporters are the sort of American one
never meets. Through the media as well as through
personal contact, Asians and Europeans meet the United
States in the person of its coastal elite: academics,
journalists, clerics, entertainers, and the
technological avant garde. The sort of American traveler
one meets in Hong Kong, Singapore or Bangkok probably
will vote for John Kerry in November. Fewer than one in
six Americans owns a passport, and those are found
disproportionately on the US coasts, colored Democratic
blue on the electoral maps. The elite enjoys the frisson
of cultural difference and will travel thousands of
miles to patronize quaint foreign cultures. By contrast,
provincials from the inland states (colored Republican
red on the electoral maps) take their holidays in Las
Vegas or Disney World. For them the gambling-casino
replicas of the Eiffel Tower or the Venetian canals are
just like the real thing but without the inconvenience
of strange tongues and customs.
Bush voters
really do look worse (obesity is an inland disease in
the US), dress worse, and are less likely to have
attended a university than Kerry voters. But Bush voters
are the sort of people who believe in their heart of
hearts that America was founded to protect the likes of
them - unlikely the clever and attractive people who can
fend quite well for themselves. That is the source of
their patriotism.
Outside the United States,
Senator John F Kerry reportedly enjoys a 5-1 preference
over President Bush (If the world could
vote, it's Kerry in a landslide, by Jim Lobe,
September 10). That emphasizes how great a gulf
separates Americans from the rest of the world.
Political tourists who wish to understand the
United States should seek out a medium-sized city
somewhere in the country's interior, the sort of place
no tourist ever would visit, and attend its Fourth of
July festivities. There they will encounter a passion
for country unknown on the other side of the Atlantic,
and unimaginable in the Southern Hemisphere. Government,
in the experience of the peoples of the world, has been
an instrument by which the wealthy and powerful
oppressed the weak. The passionate patriotism of
ordinary Americans springs from their conviction that
the American state is the shield of common folk.
To Europeans, patriotism implies a
near-racialist nationalism of the sort that sent hordes
of soldiers to butcher their fellows during the two
World Wars of the last century. American patriotism
belongs to a different species. Governments, in the
experience of most of the peoples of the world, exist to
help the rich and powerful oppress the weak and
helpless. Whenever the representatives of the weak have
taken power, they turned into oppressors. Europeans
never have loved their governments; love of country
means love of one's race and culture, the narcissistic
self-worship of tribalism.
The United States, by
contrast, is populated by the descendants of individuals
who decided to cease to be Europeans (or whatever) so
that no one would be able to push them around. That is
why Americans own guns. By some accounts the number of
guns in circulation exceeds the number of Americans.
Americans do not use their guns, contrary to popular
myth. If the violent behavior of certain minority groups
is excluded, Americans commit the same proportion of
violent crimes as do Europeans. But an armed population
will accept only so much abuse. Gun control, by the same
token, is a liberal obsession (the Drudge Report
observed that Kerry sponsored legislation that would
have banned the make of shotgun that he accepted as a
gift from trade-union supporters in Pennsylvania).
Among such people, the president's simple
message resonates mightily. Two World Wars taught
Europeans that there is no good or evil, only the
insidious jealousies of contending peoples. God
therefore is on no one's side, and the alternative to
mutual butchery is negotiated compromise. Senator Kerry
and the US coastal elite believe the same thing, namely
that enlightened specialists can interrupt the tragic
destiny of peoples and save the world from itself.
That is an alien intrusion upon the American world
view, which began, almost biblically, by separating good
and evil. The oppressive English monarchy was evil,
while the self-governing English colonies were good;
slavery was evil, while the system of free labor was
good; what immigrants left behind in the old country was
evil, and what they found on American shores was good.
Nazism was evil, democracy was good; the Soviet Union
was evil, while America was good.
Attacking
President Bush for his failure to win European support
for his Iraq venture may be the stupidest idea ever
advanced by a major-party presidential candidate in a US
election. Jokes about French cowardice were standard in
the American repertoire for half a century before the US
invasion of Iraq. "What's the salute of the French
army?" (Raise both hands in token of surrender.)
After the end of the Cold War America's
strategic interest in Europe withered away. As Muslim
immigrants replace the infertile Europeans over time,
European and US interests will diverge. It is
meaningless to speak of America's "European allies" at
this juncture. It is much more likely that the Europeans
will become America's enemies a generation from now as
Muslims emerge as a new majority.
Once attacked,
Americans want to fight back. George W Bush may have
attacked the wrong country (which I do not believe), and
he may have mistaken the US mission after the initial
fighting was over (which I do believe), but Americans
are quite willing to forgive him. They understand that
it is hard to track down and destroy a shadowy enemy,
and do not mind much if the United States has to trounce
a few countries before finding the right ones.
The attractive, witty and affluent elite who
support John Kerry cannot bear the idea that the
overweight, dull and impecunious commoners of Middle
America will give Bush a second term. I am reminded of
the fictional Franz Liebkind in Mel Brooks' 1968 movie
The Producers. Brooks' slapstick Nazi complains,
"Hitler was a better dancer than Churchill; Hitler was a
better dresser than Churchill; Hitler was a better
painter than Churchill: he could paint a whole apartment
in one afternoon, two coats."
As for the other
countries of the world, it is an inconvenience that
George W Bush will pursue the "war on terror" to its
bitter end, namely civilization war. It doesn't matter.
They don't vote. My advice: suck it up and prepare for
the second Bush administration.
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George W
Bush almost certainly will win another term as president
of the United States, as I have predicted all along (
