The Nightmare
Goes On
By Jonathan Freedland
04 November, 2004
The
Guardian
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. 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.
For 12 hours that
fact was obscured by the fate of Ohio, and the desperate Democratic
desire to see if that pivotal state might be wrested from Republican
hands. By late morning the challenger John Kerry realised it was a vain
hope. This was no Florida 2000.
For George Bush
had done more than rack up the requisite numbers in the electoral college.
He had done what he signally failed to do four years ago, win the popular
vote - and not by a sliver, but by a 3.5m margin.
Bush had also achieved
what no one had managed since his father in 1988, winning more than
50% of the vote. But, of course, he had outdone his father, becoming
a member of that surprisingly small, select club of presidents who have
won two full terms.
That alone would
ensure that this first decade of the 21st century would become the Bush
era, just as the 1980s belonged to Ronald Reagan, and the 1990s to Bill
Clinton. But there was more.
The Republicans
expanded their presence in the 100-seat Senate from 51 to 55 seats,
beating Democrats in almost every close contest and toppling their senate
leader. They increased their majority in the House of Representatives,
too. Under Bush the Republican party has won clear control of both the
legislative and executive branches of the US government - with a mandate
whose legitimacy no one can doubt.
But the Republican
revolution will not stop there. A subplot to this week's drama has been
playing out at the Supreme Court, where the 80-year old Chief Justice,
William Rehnquist, has been incapacitated by thyroid cancer. Few expect
him to serve for much longer, giving President Bush the chance to appoint
a successor. A social conservative, such as White House counsel, Alberto
Gonzales, is a likely nominee.
Other vacancies
on the bench are imminent. Once filled, Bush will have overturned the
court's wafer-thin moderate majority. The court could set to work unravelling
a 50-year settlement that has asserted the rights of women, black Americans
and, more recently, homosexuals. Opposition to affirmative action or
abortion rights has, until now, been a minority position in America's
highest court. That could change. And the conservative takeover of all
three branches of the American government (executive, legislative and
judiciary) would be complete.
So George Bush will
be no footnote to history: he is instead making it.
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. The White House is not about to ditch the approach
of the last four years. Why would it? Despite the mayhem and murder
in Iraq, despite the death of more than 1,000 US soldiers and countless
(and uncounted) Iraqis, despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction,
despite Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration won the approval of the
American people. If Bush had lost the neo-conservative project would
have been buried forever. But he won, and the neo-cons will welcome
that as sweet vindication.
So it will be full
steam ahead. "There are real threats that have to be dealt with,"
Danielle Pletka of the impeccably neo-con American Enterprise Institute
told the Guardian yesterday. Iran would not go away - indeed, Ms Pletka
warned, "force might be the only option" - nor would North
Korea. "We can't all pretend that the world would be a prettier
place if only George W Bush was not the president."
There were plenty
of people around the globe who used to think precisely that way, hoping
that the past four years were a bad dream which would end yesterday.
Now they have to navigate around a geopolitical landscape in which President
Bush is the dominant, fixed feature.
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.
Democrats need to
stare long and hard at that map and at this comprehensive defeat. Exit
pollsters, who failed so dismally to predict the result, made some telling
discoveries. 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. 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.