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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 31, 2004
Letter to USA, VI
On Tuesday Americans vote. And if the result is anything close on Wednesday the matter is taken out of the hands of the people and put disastrously in the hands of the lawyers. We wait to see. The election result is not predictable: to begin with the turnout will be far higher than in recent U.S. elections. The polls we have been reading are all adjusted to accord with models of voter behaviour that assume previous levels of participation and much less at stake. They assume such things as that the "core undecided" will break about two-to-one for the challenger as has happened in the past. There are various other knobs and dials that must be adjusted to turn the raw material of a poll into a projection of how many will actually vote and for whom. Nothing dishonest about this: the pollsters' reputations and therefore future income depend on the accuracy of their predictions. Any bias in their models is thus more likely to be subliminal than overt: the legitimate ones aspire to raise their art to the conditions of a science. But they are helpless when all the premises upon which their models have been built are changed. And this is the case more broadly. All premises are shifting and this election will prove a watershed in American and therefore world history no matter what the result. That I believe is the one predictable thing. Another matter may be settled in advance. The American electorate is not voting blind. They are choosing between two men who are in character deeply representative of their respective constituencies. The manners mores and rhetoric of Mr. Bush resonate with conservative rural and suburban "Middle America". This America is not indifferent to him; it loves him. The manners mores and rhetoric of Mr. Kerry resonate with the more liberal and urban America of the edges. (You see these constituencies in a glance at the red/blue distribution on a map of the states; it becomes clearer still when the map is further subdivided into counties.) And this America does not love Kerry. It hates Bush. These are two Americas with much still in common but more and more not in common. Middle America remains frankly and overwhelmingly Christian; "Edge America" has lost its faith. Or rather since humans cannot live without faith in something Edge America has transferred its faith to hopes and ideals of worldly comfort. And whereas Middle America continues in the main to be self-reliant and counsel self-reliance Edge America turns to government to manage the problems of post-modern urban secular life. Middle America believes the moral verities do not change; Edge America believes they evolve and what was true yesterday can't be true tomorrow. It is allergic to moral certainties; it associates these with stupidity. And yet it has a kind of absolute and uncritical faith in its own moral relativism. There are urban forms of conservatism rural forms of liberalism but for a long time the U.S. has been developing not one but two "mainstreams". And the contrast is now stark exposed in the crisis that arrived on Sept. 11th 2001 when the two Americas came simultaneously under attack. The Democrats and Senator Kerry have gone to lengths to reassure the whole electorate that in foreign policy and even such domestic policies as tax cuts they would not deviate radically from the course upon which the Republicans and President Bush have set -- even though they disagree with it. Some measure of continuity is further assured by the facts of life. An incoming President faces the same circumstances that the outgoing President was facing. The circumstances themselves dictate many of his responses. But the overall approach the assumptions and presumptions of the two candidates are not alike and the U.S. electorate is surely wise enough to see that this is more apparent in the candidates' character and demeanour than in changeable statements of policy. In a word: Mr. Bush is "steadfast" Mr. Kerry is "flexible". These can both be virtues depending upon the circumstances at hand. But in the circumstances of today -- the world crisis in which United States alone has the power to champion the interests and heritage of freedom and the West -- steadfastness is all. To replace Mr. Bush with Mr. Kerry in the present circumstances would be like replacing Mr. Churchill with Mr. Chamberlain while Britain was at war. It is hard to believe that it could happen. I pray very earnestly that it won't. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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