When 59 million Americans backed President Bush this week, many on this side of the Atlantic wondered if they were all mad. Novelist John Connolly finds out why middle America believes it is right.
The Republicans I know and with whom I am in reasonably regular contact bear no relation to the caricatures currently being peddled by some sections of the media. They're smart and funny. They drink beer. They watch R-rated movies. I think some of them have sex. They're not dumb. They didn't vote for George W. Bush just to spite the rest of the world, or even to spite millions of their fellow Americans. They did it because they believed that it was the right thing to do, and maybe they have a point. As a woolly liberal, I have an obligation to listen to their side of the story. After all, it's what woolly liberals do. That's why we make such good losers.
But I decided not to meet any of my Republican friends in the US during the final week before polling. The election would have been like the elephant in the corner of our conversations so instead I stayed in touch with them by e-mail, and we pretended to be tolerant of each other from a distance.
Admittedly, some are easier to be tolerant of than others. There's the bookstore owner in Wisconsin who harks back fondly to the glory days of Richard Nixon, and who owns not one but two SUVs yet still doesn't understand why the US has to be nice to the Saudis. There's the nice lady in Pennsylvania who believes US intervention is necessary in foreign lands but who needed me to explain the concept of a duty-free to her, as she'd never been in an airport. They're lovely people, despite their views, and there are a great many others like them, but in their ignorance they give a skewed impression of American Republicanism.
Nashville, Tennessee - despite the arrest of an Iraqi on illegal arms charges there last September - probably doesn't figure very highly on the list of serious potential terrorist targets. Randy and Joyclyn, who live in Nashville, are middle class, witty, media-savvy (if sceptical about the mainstream news outlets), and I'm pretty sure that they have had sex.
"Bush was re-elected because he's the person most Americans trust to keep them safe," says Joyclyn. "But another major reason was the question of moral values. Whether you agree with them or not, Bush appealed to an overwhelming majority of Americans who believe he represents their values. A statement I've heard several times is that Bush is the same man Saturday night that he is on Sunday morning, which is a perfect indicator of his appeal to 'good' people."
Nashville, along with just about anywhere in the US that lies between New York and Los Angeles, is sometimes referred to, presumably disdainfully, as "fly-over country", and its natives are acutely aware of how they are perceived at the coastal extremes.
"This region of red states comprises a middle class that is patriotic, independent, optimistic, thinks their happiness is in their control, and disdains arrogance from their leaders, foreign countries and the media," says Randy. "They want to know their family is safe; they want to keep some of their earnings, make sure their taxes are spent wisely; they want to own a home, attend Friday night football games and Sunday morning services.
"They would rather see the war on terrorism waged away from American soil. They do not want another act of terrorism on American soil and they do not really care what the French or Germans have to say about it. "
Randy and Joyclyn believe that Bush did not lie about Iraq; that he may have acted on poor intelligence information from other countries, but that ultimately he was right to invade; that Saddam was trading favours with countries, and organisations, that were either tolerant of, or actively engaged in, terrorism; and that weapons of mass destruction may yet be found.
They believe that the scandals at Abu Ghraib prison were terrible and damaged the reputation of the US, but Joyclyn has also watched the footage of the beheading of the American hostage, Nick Berg.
"When I saw that, I felt we should be playing the video on a constant loop so the rest of America could see what these monsters were capable of," she says. "That's the image that will last a generation, not a few accused terrorists with panties on their heads."
Say what you like about the Republicans in power, but they are committed. Some of them may be committed to things that many Europeans find abhorrent - environmental rape, democratisation at the point of a gun, the sacrifice of civil liberties at the discretion of John Ashcroft's justice department - but at least it's commitment. John Kerry couldn't even commit to the possibility that one or both of his daughters might have taken after him in some way. He came across as a ditherer, and that was fatal.
Bush doesn't dither. He may stumble over his words, mangle English into unrecognisable forms, even, as in the televised debates, seem incapable of engaging in a modest level of intellectual discourse under pressure - but he doesn't fool around. He appears to make decisions, and in a country that sees itself as existing on a war footing, that's important. Americans may not be entirely certain about who they should be at war with, or why they're at war with them, but they're at war with someone, somewhere, and in a war situation a wrong decision is more understandable, perhaps even more forgivable, than no decision at all.
The conflict in Iraq may not be the promised cakewalk for the US, but better to be fighting over there than in one's own backyard. Americans firmly believe themselves to be under threat, and after September 11th, who can blame them? Bush won by convincing them that they'd be safer under him than under the other guy.
So Iraq and domestic security inevitably played a part in Bush's victory. As for the rise in unemployment, which the Democrats believed would work in their favour in the industrial heartland, Republicans would argue that Bush has spent three years trying to make up for job losses suffered as a consequence of 9/11, and that the figures are skewed as a result. And what about those infamous tax breaks which principally benefited the top 1 per cent of the population? Surely there must have been a degree of anger, even among staunch, middle-class Republican voters, at this perceived inequity?
Well, no. Apart from a general tolerance for wealth creators among Republicans, and their oft-repeated assertion that the top 2 per cent of earners in the country pay 90 per cent of taxes, the middle classes also benefited from Bush's tax plan. "Everyone who paid taxes in this country got a cheque in the mail," says Randy, "We got a cheque and a reduction in our tax bracket. Before the cuts, our tax bracket was higher because of the marriage penalty. Though we are married, we have no children, so that we paid a higher tax rate than if we were single, which was a big financial disincentive to marry."
"I would say Randy and I are solidly middle class," says Joyclyn. "We don't want for a lot, but under Kerry's new specs, we got lumped into the supposed 'upper class'. Our tax cut would have been rolled back, and our marriage penalty would be put back in place. Kerry would have cost us money, plain and simple."
Let's leave Nashville for a while and head east, noting curiously along the way that it was those states that are probably most immediately at risk from potential terrorist attacks - California, and the north-eastern seaboard - that voted for Kerry, while the considerably less accessible but apparently more security-conscious "fly-over country" went for Bush.
My friend Chris is a Republican from Boston. In fact, he's a liberal Republican, a term which probably requires a short explanation, as in Kerry's liberalism lay the seeds of his undoing.
It may be hard for Europeans to understand the power of the word "liberal" when used as an insult in the US. In Europe, liberals are generally tolerated, even the ones who allow their kids to call them by their first name. But in the US, the word "liberal" carries real force when used negatively, and it hurt John Kerry. Arguably, the real division in the US today is not between Democrat and Republican, but between liberal and conservative, and between urban and suburban-rural areas. Bush courted the religious right from the start, invoking at every opportunity the name of God and reiterating his belief that he is permanently engaged in the Lord's work, thus implying that his opponent was probably working for the other side.
Despite the initial hiccup caused by revelations about his wild youth (and wild manhood) in the 2000 campaign, which might have cost Bush up to four million evangelical votes, they duly acknowledged Bush as one of their own. His cautious approach to stem-cell research and his opposition to gay marriage and abortion - all viewed as part and parcel of the liberal agenda - ensured that the 2004 presidential election was not only about party politics but also about personal morality. With the Protestant right emphasising the importance of making a stand on moral issues, Bush was the candidate who stood to gain from its involvement. Kerry, to put it crudely, was screwed, doubly so when his views on abortion also drew the ire of sections of the Catholic hierarchy.
By and large, then, it doesn't take a great deal to be branded a liberal in the US. Mainly, it just seems to involve not being a total bigot.
But Chris is a serious liberal Republican, and he was the kind of voter the Democrats needed to target if they were to capitalise on the growing unease with the influence of the evangelical right on the Republican party agenda. In Chris's case, they succeeded, and he voted Democrat, even though he was uneasy about Kerry's flip-flopping tendencies. But the reasons behind his decision show the disparate views that exist in a Republican party that is most easily dismissed as a conservative monolith.
"I grew up in a Catholic household," he says. "I'm married and I have a child. And yet I believe in gay marriage. I believe in a woman's right to choose. I believe in stem-cell research. I believe in free speech and I believe in protecting the environment.
"Over the past year or so, it became clear that I'm not a part of this new Republican party. This new party is primarily about values and not issues. That means no gay marriage, no abortion, no stem-cell research, and no free speech. This election was about God - your version of God versus my version. We've officially become a religious state."
So were 59 million people right? Well, 59 million people believed they were right, and they believed that George W. Bush was right too. In the face of an initially hesitant and unconvincing Democratic candidate, at a time of conflict and terror, they opted for force and decisiveness. Offered the choice between a liberal who favoured gay marital rights, abortion, and increased stem-cell research, and a conservative who was diametrically opposed to such measures, they went for the family-values guy.
In the end, perhaps the re-election of George W. Bush as President of the United States can be summarised in one simple axiom: nobody ever got into trouble for saying no.