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.

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.