I am already hearing strange things coming from the USA in the wake of Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election. The odd rumours that he was going to plunge the USA into some kind of race war and that black people will be favoured over any others. Bizarrely people did not say when George W. Bush was elected that they feared a class war or that the super-rich would be favoured over everyone else. I was fearful up to the last that this election would resemble the UK election of 1992 at which it was assumed that the Labour Party would win and end 13 years of bleak Conservative rule. However, at the last, the 'grey man', John Major pulled off a surprise victory which led to a further 5 years of Conservative rule, whilst not as proactively nasty as the period under Thatcher, still a period of economic troubles and social division. Major was held by the eccentricities of the British electoral system just as Bush had been aided by the eccentricities of the US system in 2000. Thus, it is heartening that Obama won with such a majority, 364 of the college votes to McCain's 162, which was 94 more than the 270 Obama needed to win. The fact that he took all the Great Lake states shows the advantage for the Democrats of selecting him over Clinton. Also vitally important is the fact that the Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress and Obama will not face the opposition to policies from that quarter that previous Democrat politicians have faced.
In 1997 when Tony Blair won the election in the UK for New Labour with the largest majority in living memory people expected radical change in British society of the kind they are expecting from Obama. Of course many people had been deluded and they had elected not a Labour government but a Blairite government, which effectively was simply an invigorated version of the Major Conservative government which had just led office. Naturally the reason why Blair attracted support was that he was not radical and presented no threat to the majority of the British public who are conservative and want the status quo maintained in so many aspects of British life, even if that leads to a weaker economy and wide social division. They always see the reason in scapegoats rather than realising that the UK needed substantial change.
I feel, and I hope I am right, that Obama represents a government that actually does want true change rather than simply using the rhetoric of it. To some degree there would have been change whoever had been elected President in the USA or if there had been no outcome and the Speaker of the House of Representatives had stepped in to fill the gap. This is because Bush was utterly incompetent. He lacked the intelligence to run a company let alone a country. He did not really even effectively carry out the Republican agenda. It was embarrassing to see him speak because he simply showed up his ignorance and inability to address the office he held. Even Ronald Reagan, despite his substantial flaws, came across as slightly more in control, and that is a shocking comparison to have to make. In fact John F. Kennedy dead, would have made a better president that Bush alive, because even though his image has been augmented beyond the truth, his legend presents a better guide to how the USA should be run than Bush ever could.
Though I am not doubtful of Obama's sincere wish to change the USA, I think still faces major challenges in bringing about genuine reform. The first problem is that people are so willing to believe the lies. Hearing white Americans from states that elected Obama, commenting that he will be running the USA like an African state, shows the level of racism still prevalent in the USA. All the rumours around Barack Obama being a Kenyan were also silly. Anyone who knows the US constitution would know if that had been the case he never would have been able to stand for the position (this is why Arnold Schwarznegger can never be US President under current laws) and the Democratic Party would have never made such a blunder. Such a level of ignorance opens people up to believe whatever lies are levelled at the new president and Obama is constantly going to have to fight such ridiculous stories even before he can explain his policies. What these people do not realise is that Obama represents so many aspects of the 'American dream'. All people in the USA are immigrants. Even the ancestors of the native Americans, immigrate into the continent from Asia. Many people in the USA have ancestors of different races, Barack Obama has a white mother and a black father. Obama, his parents and his wife all benefited from the US attitude to education which sees it as a way to get on and improve yourself. So, attempts to portray Obama as somehow alien to US culture fails immediately.
The other key obstacles to Obama will come from vested interests. The US$ did go from US$1.67 to £1 to US$1.58, but we have not seen the stock exchange 'bounce' that you usually witness following a US election no matter who has won. This is partly due to the ongoing financial crisis, but also shows that the super-rich know that their man, Bush, is going and they will not receive such preferential treatment as they have seen since 2000. Bush said these people were his core constituency and his policies have been mainly to help them. He secured Iraqi oil to keep it out of the hands of the Chinese and he baled out the banks who had brought themselves down by their greed. Such policies will not be pursued by Obama. In fact quite likely they would not have been pursued by McCain. However, I will anticipate a capital flight from the USA as the big investors seek to salt away funds so that they will not be asked to contribute to social reform programmes in the USA. Bush did do one thing in Obama's favour by nationalising AIG in September. This could provide a useful basis for a reformed social insurance scheme for the USA and the stigma of 'creeping Socialism' which has long been used against real social reform in the USA can be diverted to Bush's lap rather than Obama's.
In introducing reforms especially in economic and the social sectors, Obama will face the might of US big business. Brown has seen how tough this can be in the UK when he tried to introduce a windfall tax on the very wealthy power companies here, and Obama will face similar opposition, effectively blackmailing the president by holding consumers to ransom. Both Brown and Obama need to gain state control of the real levers of the economy whilst facing condemnation that this is 'wrong', 'dictatorial' or 'unhealthy' in a 'free' market economy. Of course there is no 'free' market it is just the way those who actually control it portray it. Markets have always been manipulated, since the 1980s almost exclusively in favour of those who already have money and power so they can protect and augment that money and power and reduce the gains of the rest of society made in the 1940s-1970s. Obama will not be able to overturn such ingrained power, especially as the 'norm' now says that state intervention is evil, when in fact it can really benefit far more people than any effect of the market could ever do. It would take at least a decade to shift away from this terrible 'free' market attitude that shackles so many people to life without opportunity. If Obama was becoming president after 8 years of the Gore administration, well then, things might be different, but unfortunately this is real history not a 'what if?'. Divisive, super-rich friendly policies are so fixed into Western societies that it is going to require more than one or two terms of office to alter them.
Obama will not only face harsh opposition from those who have power but also often from the ordinary people who will actually benefit from his reforms. It is fascinating how hostile the ordinary American is to policies which would actually help them (many Britons are the same though). They have been so misled by politicians like Bush to think that anything which makes the USA a more socially equal place or at least one where the people at the bottom (the majority) do not suffer so much, is somehow unpatriotic. Too many Americans believe that they will gain through force. This is why there is so much adherence to the use of guns. People feel they buy them a place in society whereas in fact they just contribute further to the deterioration of that society. The post-apocalyptic myths are still too strong in the USA. Too many Americans believe that in a 'simpler' society they would be better off, whereas in fact, those with the power currently would be the barons of such a landscape. More Americans, whites particularly, need to see how their ancestors were exploited and had short, bleak lives. They were not successful or powerful, they were ground down in the way current working class is by the US system. Despite this somehow many white Americans in that category today see such a society as being better. Blacks look back to slavery and can see how things have improved, but whites need to learn much more how far they have come in the past century in the USA but also how much further they could go if they did not think a gun buys them a good life. Of course one great fear is that someone will assassinate Obama. Of course it will win him yet more profile in history but it will deny the ordinary American the reform they need and the rest of the World the peace they require.
For the sake of the World I wish Barack Obama all the best in trying to bring about change. However, I am not going to be among the critics in 2012 complaining that he has not changed much at all, because I am already aware of how many people with so much power and wealth, aided by the entrenched attitudes of so many others, will be out to stop him.
Showing posts with label 2008 US Presidential election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 US Presidential election. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Sarah Palin as the Manchurian Candidate
It always very frightening as someone living in the UK to watch the US Presidential elections unfold. As we speak English coverage of the events is easily accessible to us. In addition there has been a long and close relationship between the USA and the UK which means that political developments in that country, especially in terms of foreign policy and to a great extent economic policy as well, impinges heavily here. Of course US foreign and economic policies impact on almost every country, but I think it is because British culture borrows so quickly from US culture that we feel it very quickly. In fact the average British person pays more attention to what is going on in the USA than they do to France let alone Germany or our other partners in the EU which are geographically much closer. Partly this is because so much of culture in terms of music, television and movies comes direct from the USA. In fact, though, this is sometimes good in showing up our differences as American humour though it sometimes works, can also fall flat in the UK and our perception of fashion and of the rest of the world is very different. Our attitude to guns and religion, two pillars of contemporary US society are completely opposite to those of the USA and this is why the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate last week is so alarming to us.
Britain is a secular society. Most of the people who send their children to faith schools are neither devout nor regular attenders at religious services. They just like the selectiveness of faith schools. Only about 4% of people in the UK regularly attend a church service. People from other faiths notably Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism who live in the UK and make up a few million people are probably more attentive to attending, but even among these communities it is less common. Any DIY store has more people in it than any church on a Sunday in the UK and in some areas any DIY store has more Muslims in it than the local mosque on a Friday too. Tony Blair tried to make the UK more religious but most British people are not interested. We tend to see the American evangelicals let alone the fundamentalists as actually rather odd, and even quite scary. I think it is probably something to do with irony and cynicism which are so prevalent in the UK. We dislike anyone who is so certain of themselves and the message they are bringing. This is why even ardent Christians in the UK tend to adopt a far quieter tone than their US counterparts. I think it also stems from British individualism. Church means community and we are very against having anything to do with community, and as I have said before, British people do not like responsibility. They like power and to be heard, but they are unwilling to do anything in return and as any American (Christian) will tell you, a community needs people to put in as well as take out. So, when we see someone like Sarah Palin who introduced religion into the local government politics of a town of only 5000 people, then we get worried that it is going to spread even further upsetting our status quo.
As for guns, though we have far fewer gun deaths than the USA they hurt the British a great deal more. We also see a direct connection between the ownership of any guns and gun deaths, whereas the Americans, Palin in particular, see a difference between them happily gunning down bears and moose and shooting wolves from a helicopter and drive-by shootings in Los Angeles. We do not see a difference. Maybe it is because hunting in Britain has always been elitist, on privately owned land and not always involving guns. In the USA gun ownership is seen as a democratic element, in the UK it is seen as the realm of lunatics or snobs. Maybe I am wrong in this because Canada has more guns per head than the USA and the wide open spaces that the USA has but far lower gun crime.
Thus, you can see why Sarah Palin is frightening to the British. She comes across as a gun-toting fundamentalist and one who is liable to take that attitude into the foreign policy field with all the nightmare outcomes we have seen in Iraq. Of course, we have been here before. She is more articulate than George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan though sharing the same views. This is part of the problem. Bush has proven to be pretty ineffectual. In a crisis such as the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001, he just froze like a rabbit in headlights. However, that meant that the response though over-dramatic, was slightly less catastrophic than it might have been. Palin in such a position probably would have interned every Arabic-American in the country (bar those like the Bin Laden family who were close friends of the President and make great financial contributions, of course) stirring up racial hatred on a scale not seen in fifty years. If you think the Americans are no longer capable of this, you should have read what one Thai woman working in a shop on the East coast of the USA said following the 2004 tsunami. Whether clear of or oblivious to her origins, customer after customer said they felt that the people of South-East Asia had suffered the tragedy because they did not believe in God. This showed immense ignorance, as there are millions of Christians in the region anyway and where does it say God punishes unbelievers (since the Deluge) in this way? Also what does that imply about the three hurricanes currently lashing South-East USA, in the Bible belt? Anyway, the added element of Palin is that though her experience is not extensive, she comes across as efficient in a way Bush and Reagan never did. Efficiency combined with dogmatic views is very hazardous to people. Hitler was more efficient than Bush ever was, but equally as dogmatic, Stalin was equally dogmatic but even more efficient than Hitler so killed millions more and remained in power longer, thus you can why we worry over here in the UK.
Now, of course, you may say, well she is only going to be Vice-President. Who remembers anything Dan Quayle achieved or even Al Gore (he is better remembered for what he did after he left office than when in it)? I think Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice have had more impact during the Bush years than Dick Cheney (or even Bush himself). The hazard is of course, if that she may not remain vice-president for long. John McCain is currently 72. If he wins a second term in 2012 he will be 80 when he retires in 2016. Ronald Reagan was 70 when he came into office and 78 when he left and ill-health affected his career. Sarah Palin is currently only 43 and will be only 51 by 2016 so far younger at a time when you would be thinking that she would stand for President than many of her recent predecessors, Bush was 52, his father was 65 when he took office, Bill Clinton was 47. Of course with McCain's age she might take up the reins far sooner. McCain is seen as a maverick and not an extremist, certainly a more old-fashioned Republican in style than the New Right. This is why he picked Palin to appeal to the more extremist wing of the Republican party.
They have been growing in influence since the Reagan days and their policies are leading to abstinence as a state-promoted sexual policy and the teaching of creationism in a country which is turning up some of the most exciting fossils in the world. The death penalty has increased in usage year on year, guns are not being controlled and the prison population of the USA is close to 1 in 100 people in the country. With Palin in power they would not have to wheedle and persuade, their policies would become the mainstream and so shutting out the bulk of the American population. It will also hearten such extremists across the world raising global tensions and meaning that with the UK probably under a Conservative government lacking in any policies, that we too will begin to be bugged by their self-righteous, bigoted policies.
Why have I called Sarah Palin, the 'Manchurian Candidate'. Well this goes back to the movie 'The Manchurian Candidate' (1962; remade 2004). In this the vice-presidential candidate has been kidnapped whilst fighting in the Korean War and taken to Manchuria (North-East China) where he was brain-washed by the Chinese before being returned to his unit. The conspiracy is to get a Communist-controlled person to become US President. This involves having another brain-washed person assassinating the president and so his vice-president taking over, as Lyndon Baines Johnson did after John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1961. Of course no-one needs to assassinate John McCain, he may fall infirm or die of his own accord. If not Palin only has to sit it out until 2016 to be elected on her own accord. So, as in the movie we have a vice-president ready to step into his shoes and assert a more radical policy. This is what the New Right have been working on for the past twenty-five years. They know they cannot probably get one of their own elected directly, at least not for a couple more decades, but this back-door way secures them control of the White House and God help the rest of the World, when this happens.
Britain is a secular society. Most of the people who send their children to faith schools are neither devout nor regular attenders at religious services. They just like the selectiveness of faith schools. Only about 4% of people in the UK regularly attend a church service. People from other faiths notably Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism who live in the UK and make up a few million people are probably more attentive to attending, but even among these communities it is less common. Any DIY store has more people in it than any church on a Sunday in the UK and in some areas any DIY store has more Muslims in it than the local mosque on a Friday too. Tony Blair tried to make the UK more religious but most British people are not interested. We tend to see the American evangelicals let alone the fundamentalists as actually rather odd, and even quite scary. I think it is probably something to do with irony and cynicism which are so prevalent in the UK. We dislike anyone who is so certain of themselves and the message they are bringing. This is why even ardent Christians in the UK tend to adopt a far quieter tone than their US counterparts. I think it also stems from British individualism. Church means community and we are very against having anything to do with community, and as I have said before, British people do not like responsibility. They like power and to be heard, but they are unwilling to do anything in return and as any American (Christian) will tell you, a community needs people to put in as well as take out. So, when we see someone like Sarah Palin who introduced religion into the local government politics of a town of only 5000 people, then we get worried that it is going to spread even further upsetting our status quo.
As for guns, though we have far fewer gun deaths than the USA they hurt the British a great deal more. We also see a direct connection between the ownership of any guns and gun deaths, whereas the Americans, Palin in particular, see a difference between them happily gunning down bears and moose and shooting wolves from a helicopter and drive-by shootings in Los Angeles. We do not see a difference. Maybe it is because hunting in Britain has always been elitist, on privately owned land and not always involving guns. In the USA gun ownership is seen as a democratic element, in the UK it is seen as the realm of lunatics or snobs. Maybe I am wrong in this because Canada has more guns per head than the USA and the wide open spaces that the USA has but far lower gun crime.
Thus, you can see why Sarah Palin is frightening to the British. She comes across as a gun-toting fundamentalist and one who is liable to take that attitude into the foreign policy field with all the nightmare outcomes we have seen in Iraq. Of course, we have been here before. She is more articulate than George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan though sharing the same views. This is part of the problem. Bush has proven to be pretty ineffectual. In a crisis such as the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001, he just froze like a rabbit in headlights. However, that meant that the response though over-dramatic, was slightly less catastrophic than it might have been. Palin in such a position probably would have interned every Arabic-American in the country (bar those like the Bin Laden family who were close friends of the President and make great financial contributions, of course) stirring up racial hatred on a scale not seen in fifty years. If you think the Americans are no longer capable of this, you should have read what one Thai woman working in a shop on the East coast of the USA said following the 2004 tsunami. Whether clear of or oblivious to her origins, customer after customer said they felt that the people of South-East Asia had suffered the tragedy because they did not believe in God. This showed immense ignorance, as there are millions of Christians in the region anyway and where does it say God punishes unbelievers (since the Deluge) in this way? Also what does that imply about the three hurricanes currently lashing South-East USA, in the Bible belt? Anyway, the added element of Palin is that though her experience is not extensive, she comes across as efficient in a way Bush and Reagan never did. Efficiency combined with dogmatic views is very hazardous to people. Hitler was more efficient than Bush ever was, but equally as dogmatic, Stalin was equally dogmatic but even more efficient than Hitler so killed millions more and remained in power longer, thus you can why we worry over here in the UK.
Now, of course, you may say, well she is only going to be Vice-President. Who remembers anything Dan Quayle achieved or even Al Gore (he is better remembered for what he did after he left office than when in it)? I think Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice have had more impact during the Bush years than Dick Cheney (or even Bush himself). The hazard is of course, if that she may not remain vice-president for long. John McCain is currently 72. If he wins a second term in 2012 he will be 80 when he retires in 2016. Ronald Reagan was 70 when he came into office and 78 when he left and ill-health affected his career. Sarah Palin is currently only 43 and will be only 51 by 2016 so far younger at a time when you would be thinking that she would stand for President than many of her recent predecessors, Bush was 52, his father was 65 when he took office, Bill Clinton was 47. Of course with McCain's age she might take up the reins far sooner. McCain is seen as a maverick and not an extremist, certainly a more old-fashioned Republican in style than the New Right. This is why he picked Palin to appeal to the more extremist wing of the Republican party.
They have been growing in influence since the Reagan days and their policies are leading to abstinence as a state-promoted sexual policy and the teaching of creationism in a country which is turning up some of the most exciting fossils in the world. The death penalty has increased in usage year on year, guns are not being controlled and the prison population of the USA is close to 1 in 100 people in the country. With Palin in power they would not have to wheedle and persuade, their policies would become the mainstream and so shutting out the bulk of the American population. It will also hearten such extremists across the world raising global tensions and meaning that with the UK probably under a Conservative government lacking in any policies, that we too will begin to be bugged by their self-righteous, bigoted policies.
Why have I called Sarah Palin, the 'Manchurian Candidate'. Well this goes back to the movie 'The Manchurian Candidate' (1962; remade 2004). In this the vice-presidential candidate has been kidnapped whilst fighting in the Korean War and taken to Manchuria (North-East China) where he was brain-washed by the Chinese before being returned to his unit. The conspiracy is to get a Communist-controlled person to become US President. This involves having another brain-washed person assassinating the president and so his vice-president taking over, as Lyndon Baines Johnson did after John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1961. Of course no-one needs to assassinate John McCain, he may fall infirm or die of his own accord. If not Palin only has to sit it out until 2016 to be elected on her own accord. So, as in the movie we have a vice-president ready to step into his shoes and assert a more radical policy. This is what the New Right have been working on for the past twenty-five years. They know they cannot probably get one of their own elected directly, at least not for a couple more decades, but this back-door way secures them control of the White House and God help the rest of the World, when this happens.
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Has Protracted Democrat Contest Harmed or Benefited their Chances?
As the competition between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continues with the latter pulling back after Pennsylvania and with no sign of either conceding, you have to wonder whether this contest which has dragged on for months is wrecking any chance for the Democrats when it comes to the Presidential election in November. People said that John McCain becoming the clear Republican nominee early on, back in March, that he would be able to get his campaign for the Presidential election rolling. It maybe because I am seeing all of this refracted through the UK media and an aged Republican is not that interesting to write about, certainly not in contrast to the people who might be the first black or first woman President of the USA. I imagine McCain is campaigning, but that element is not getting over here. I pick up US news sites (it is difficult to interact with Windows and/or MSN and not do so) and McCain certainly is not jumping out of the headlines on those sites either. So, there may be a counter-factor, for all the seeming divisiveness of the Democrat contest and it becoming increasingly unpleasant between the two candidates, it is keeping the party in the news. In addition, issues are being discussed again and again and Democrats are turning out to become involved. People often think elections are about winning floating voters, but often they are also about making sure your ordinary supporters are not complacent or disillusioned and actually turn out to vote. Of course with the electoral college system you can have an excellent turn out in Oklahoma or West Virginia or Oregon and it count very little. You can win the overall popular vote and yet still lose as it is filtered through the state system and you can have irregularities as seen in 2000 which can also snatch away victory.
Whether the American population just gets weary of the election because of the Democrat contest is another issue. All their enthusiasm may fade due to an apparent over-dose of politics. The British population has very little interest in politics bar the end product. Most see no connection between who they vote for and the taxes they pay or the services they receive and simply blame it 'on the government'. From the British perspective the US public appear to be much the same. Wars are always difficult to deal with. Generally people like wars, but they do not like the cost or the casualties. By now all the shine has gone off the war in Iraq, but interestingly yesterday Clinton was obliged to say that if Iran developed nuclear weapons and attacked Israel she would 'obliterate' Iran. People are always far more interested in the next potential war than the current one. The tension in US politics is that Democrats are not keen on a big military but want to intervene globally. The Republicans want a big military but they do not want to be taxed to pay for it or to have it used anywhere overseas. In an age of 'police actions' and 'regime change', you have to have, as Bush has found out, both - a big military and to use it overseas and for a long period of time. I imagine Bush never expected to still have troops in Afghanistan or Iraq at the end of his period of office. Clinton has said openly that she wants to bring all US troops home and bemoans that some have been on two or more tours of duty, as if a war should only last one tour of duty and no more. Yet, she is very bullish about opposing Iran; Obama can do nothing but say the same things because room for manoeuvre in US politics is very narrow and by being who they are Obama and Clinton are already pushing at the boundaries.
In 1991 Francis Fujiyama famously said that we were at the end of history because the Cold War was over. In fact we were at the end of a phase of history, the 'short' 20th century, as Eric Hobsbawm titled it the 'Age of Extremes'. In itself it had characteristics of the previous phase the 'Age of Empires' in the growth of the continental empires - Russia and America and to an extent China and both over China and interacting with parts of the world in a similar way to the 19th century, competing with the Europeans, pushing influence into Africa, Asia and Central & South America. That phase seemed to be driven by ideologies, but as in the 19th century it was really about power and resources. In this new phase the superficial pattern has shifted away from Cold War rhetoric but the world picture is little different from the 19th and 20th centuries. Current conflicts are over control of oil. The increase of the use of biofuels is about what they called in the 1960s oil security as areas where oil is available seem often to be unstable and shake off the control of the Powers. Biofuel can be grown in most places so freeing states of that difficult dependency. Yet growth of them in larger quantities and the rise in oil prices is sending food prices spiralling, not benefiting poor countries because though they may produce focus on a few cash crops means they have to import increasingly expensive food. No doubt supplier and consumer countries will try to tie up connections to secure prices and supplies, so have we really moved on from imperialism? China is currently the most active colonial power, seemingly going out of its way to link up with the pariah dictatorship states, notably Sudan and Zimbabwe, but the USA with its involvement in different states is not far behind.
The US public tends to be most concerned about domestic issues except when their sons and daughters are serving overseas, but as all countries are finding you cannot divorce the two. Just as who you vote for impinges on your taxes, foreign affairs influence what you pay at the supermarket or petrol pump at home. It is into this world that McCain, Obama or Clinton will be elected. Yet, despite all their abilities, I think that in fact because of the limits on what the American public will accept as policy, they have little choice but to stick to the line Bush has been pursuing. The only difference may be that when a terrorist attack hits the USA in the future you will not see the President sitting in a classroom for 30 minutes, blinking and not speaking like some robot whose batteries are running flat or the proverbial rabbit caught by the car's headlights.
Whether the American population just gets weary of the election because of the Democrat contest is another issue. All their enthusiasm may fade due to an apparent over-dose of politics. The British population has very little interest in politics bar the end product. Most see no connection between who they vote for and the taxes they pay or the services they receive and simply blame it 'on the government'. From the British perspective the US public appear to be much the same. Wars are always difficult to deal with. Generally people like wars, but they do not like the cost or the casualties. By now all the shine has gone off the war in Iraq, but interestingly yesterday Clinton was obliged to say that if Iran developed nuclear weapons and attacked Israel she would 'obliterate' Iran. People are always far more interested in the next potential war than the current one. The tension in US politics is that Democrats are not keen on a big military but want to intervene globally. The Republicans want a big military but they do not want to be taxed to pay for it or to have it used anywhere overseas. In an age of 'police actions' and 'regime change', you have to have, as Bush has found out, both - a big military and to use it overseas and for a long period of time. I imagine Bush never expected to still have troops in Afghanistan or Iraq at the end of his period of office. Clinton has said openly that she wants to bring all US troops home and bemoans that some have been on two or more tours of duty, as if a war should only last one tour of duty and no more. Yet, she is very bullish about opposing Iran; Obama can do nothing but say the same things because room for manoeuvre in US politics is very narrow and by being who they are Obama and Clinton are already pushing at the boundaries.
In 1991 Francis Fujiyama famously said that we were at the end of history because the Cold War was over. In fact we were at the end of a phase of history, the 'short' 20th century, as Eric Hobsbawm titled it the 'Age of Extremes'. In itself it had characteristics of the previous phase the 'Age of Empires' in the growth of the continental empires - Russia and America and to an extent China and both over China and interacting with parts of the world in a similar way to the 19th century, competing with the Europeans, pushing influence into Africa, Asia and Central & South America. That phase seemed to be driven by ideologies, but as in the 19th century it was really about power and resources. In this new phase the superficial pattern has shifted away from Cold War rhetoric but the world picture is little different from the 19th and 20th centuries. Current conflicts are over control of oil. The increase of the use of biofuels is about what they called in the 1960s oil security as areas where oil is available seem often to be unstable and shake off the control of the Powers. Biofuel can be grown in most places so freeing states of that difficult dependency. Yet growth of them in larger quantities and the rise in oil prices is sending food prices spiralling, not benefiting poor countries because though they may produce focus on a few cash crops means they have to import increasingly expensive food. No doubt supplier and consumer countries will try to tie up connections to secure prices and supplies, so have we really moved on from imperialism? China is currently the most active colonial power, seemingly going out of its way to link up with the pariah dictatorship states, notably Sudan and Zimbabwe, but the USA with its involvement in different states is not far behind.
The US public tends to be most concerned about domestic issues except when their sons and daughters are serving overseas, but as all countries are finding you cannot divorce the two. Just as who you vote for impinges on your taxes, foreign affairs influence what you pay at the supermarket or petrol pump at home. It is into this world that McCain, Obama or Clinton will be elected. Yet, despite all their abilities, I think that in fact because of the limits on what the American public will accept as policy, they have little choice but to stick to the line Bush has been pursuing. The only difference may be that when a terrorist attack hits the USA in the future you will not see the President sitting in a classroom for 30 minutes, blinking and not speaking like some robot whose batteries are running flat or the proverbial rabbit caught by the car's headlights.
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