Soul America There is much more at stake than leadership in the war on terror. Conor O'Clery on the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans
Larry Gatlin, the country singer from Texas, is warming up the crowd. "We're not the bad guys in this deal, we're the good guys," he cries, to cheers from the packed stands of the basketball arena. Then the star of the night walks in with a slight swagger, and the stadium erupts in shrieks and whistles and shouts of "Woof! Woof! Woof!" For several minutes he stands at the podium, smiling and shrugging, before he can speak.
This overwhelming welcome is typical of the reception George W. Bush gets on his campaign appearances. He is loved and revered by his followers in heartland America. In his speeches he extols his record on jobs, schools, healthcare, the economy, taxes and energy, but it is the war on terror which raises the decibel level again. Because of his resolute actions, "America and the world are safer", he repeats several times, hitting his open palm on the podium to the rhythm of the words. Afghanistan is now an ally; Pakistan is helping to round up terrorists; Libya has abandoned nuclear weapons and Saddam Hussein has been toppled. He always links the war on Saddam Hussein to the day America was attacked by al-Qaeda.
"Do I forget the lessons of September the 11th and trust a madman?" he cries.
"No!" they shout.
"See, you can't talk sense to the terrorists."
"No!"
"You cannot negotiate with the terrorists."
"No!"
"We must engage the enemies around the world so we do not have to face them here at home."
"Yes! USA! USA!"
America goes to the polls on Tuesday after the most dizzying, frenetic, vituperative presidential election in memory. What is at stake for those who turn up in their tens of thousands at rallies such as this one in Saginaw, Michigan is clear: they like his resolute leadership and the fact he appears to be a man of God. After three years, the outrage of 9/11 has not gone away for many Americans. They fear for their country, encouraged by dire warnings from Washington of more attacks. They believe unquestioningly that the fight must be taken to the enemy and that Iraq is part of that fight.
The distortion of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq, the failure to supply enough troops, the shaming of the US at Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties at home, the loss of prestige abroad, the death of 1,100 US soldiers in Iraq, the spreading insurgency in Iraq, none of this has shaken their faith.
At every Republican rally I hear the same refrain, from speakers and participants: better to fight them over there than here. The alienation of peoples around the world counts for little. Instead, one often encounters open hostility to Europe, and the perfidy of European countries is cited as a reason for backing the president. "The very fact that France is supporting Kerry is enough to make me vote for Bush," said a top FBI official I met in Dallas. "A win for Bush will send a message to the terrorists that America is committed to winning, but if Kerry gets in we will look weak."
But there is much more at stake than leadership in the war on terror. A civil war for the soul of America is being fought at the hustings.
Bush gets cheers and foot-stamping when he vows to stand for "institutions like marriage" and for "a culture of life in which every being counts", code for opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights. At the Saginaw rally, a man tells me as he leaves with his family: "Security, abortion, gay marriages, those are the issues that interest me, that's why I like Bush."
In Lancaster, Pennsylvania this week, at another Bush rally, a woman who is an accountant told me, "He stands up for what he believes in and he doesn't back down". This attitude explains why so many working Americans support a president whose party is opposed to their economic interests. The most passionate supporters for a president who gives tax breaks to the rich and favours the big corporations are often found in the most impoverished counties of rural, white America.
Bush's pro-life stand has made him an automatic choice for many working class Catholics in key states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania who refuse to support a pro-choice candidate like John Kerry. Concerns about lost jobs, growing child poverty, the increase of five million people without healthcare (to 45 million); these are all secondary to their fervour for the Bush agenda of "compassionate conservatism".
Some 42 per cent of Americans today describe themselves as "evangelical". In the words of the Rev Jerry Falwell, the TV evangelist who said 9/11 was God's judgment on America, "a spiritual explosion is underway" in America. When Bush says, "I believe God wants everybody to be free", he signals that he believes he is doing God's work. When he says, "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity," supporters of the separation of church and state get worried.
The Democrats, among them city-dwellers, the cultural elite (as talk show host Rush Limbaugh calls the media and Hollywood), and the urban poor, have watched the events of the last four years unfold with a feeling of being cheated. They see George Bush as a president who only got the presidency through a shameful decision of the US Supreme Court to stop the Florida recount, and who has since run the country as a cocksure partisan. His Vice President, Dick Cheney, told journalist Bob Woodward that the notion of a restrained presidency lasted about 30 seconds. Bush showed his hand when he appointed conservative John Ashcroft, who has a record of insensitivity to human rights abuses, as attorney general. After 9/11, he pushed the Patriot Act through a compliant Congress that among other provisions allows officials to check library records to see what people are reading, and held hundreds of undocumented immigrants in custody without trial for months.
The president put neo-conservatives in charge of Pentagon. He threw his energies into tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, shifting the taxation burden from those with wealth towards those who work. He took a projected budget surplus of five trillion dollars (€3.9 trillion) over the next decade and saddled the country with a federal deficit that will exceed $400 billion (€314 billion)this year. He weakened environmental protection with executive orders drafted by industry lobbyists, refusing to regulate carbon-monoxide emissions despite an election promise to do so and signing an order that weakened restrictions on mercury emissions from power plants. He made it illegal to import cheaper drugs from Canada, again breaking a pre-election pledge. He failed to fully fund his No Child Left Behind Act, the one bipartisan initiative which even Senator Edward Kennedy supported. He has restricted federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research and appointed conservative judges to the bench. The Democratic list of complaints is endless.
There was a period after the attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001 when the country was united behind the President. George Bush enjoyed overwhelming public support for his invasion of Afghanistan. He convinced Americans that taking down Saddam Hussein was the necessary next step in a war on terror. He went ahead ignoring warnings from allies, and advice from the State Department, the CIA and the army chief-of-staff Gen Eric Shinseki. Americans were told as a fact, and wrongly, that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons, that he had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was linked to the 9/11 attacks. Assurances that Iraqis would strew flowers at the feet of the US troops and the region would embrace democracy and make peace with Israel proved to be equally misleading. No one in the administration paid with their jobs for mistakes and blunders in a war that has cost the lives of more than 1,100 US soldiers and in excess of 10,000 Iraqis.
Many Democrats simply can't get their heads around the possibility that, given all this, their fellow-Americans could possibly re-elect President Bush. I have heard people say, half seriously, they would move to Canada if he wins. What particularly bothers them is that America's prestige in the world will remain at a low point. They are also concerned that whoever is president in the next four years is likely to get to reconfigure the nine-member Supreme Court. Only one of the current members - Clarence Thomas - is under 65, and Chief Justice William Rhenquist is 80 (this week he was hospitalised with thyroid cancer).
Bush has expressed admiration for Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, both of whom oppose Roe v Wade, the ruling that legalises abortion. If Bush gets a second term he could erase the six-three majority for Roe and abortion could be outlawed again by individual states. In a second term Bush would also pursue a ban on gay marriage. He would also try to make the tax cuts permanent by getting Congress to remove the expiry date of 2011.
A year and a half ago, when the Democrats began to look around for a challenger to George Bush in 2004, they were faced with the almost impossible task of finding a candidate capable of unseating a commander-in-chief when the country was at war. On May 3rd, 2003 I went to the university campus in Columbia, South Carolina, where the first public debate was taking place among nine Democrats who had tossed their hats in the ring. I came away with two strong impressions. One was that I had not seen a future US president there. None of the nine were particularly impressive. Senator John Kerry, at times aloof and detached, squabbled with Howard Dean for saying that he hadn't the courage to "stand up to the issues". Dean was needling him for voting for the Iraq war. The other impression I took away was that Dean had the most passionate support from students there because of his opposition to the Iraq war. It wasn't a cause that enjoyed widespread support at the time. The war was seemingly won.
Just the week before that, President Bush had proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" on an aircraft carrier. He was enjoying ratings of more than 70 per cent in the polls.
As the Democratic primary campaign warmed up, however, things began going wrong in Iraq. The anti-war lobby grew in size and influence. Dean surged in the polls. By the autumn he had an army of young people raising money via the Internet and had won some heavy endorsements, including that of Al Gore. He articulated both the anger of Democrats who had never reconciled themselves to the legitimacy of the Bush election and who hated Bush for imposing a radical right agenda. A few days before the Iowa caucus, Dean seemed a certain winner. But then the dynamic changed. Iowa voters took another look and began to wonder if Dean was electable. They wanted someone with a better chance of defeating Bush who could match him on national security. They turned to John Kerry, who could point to his service in Vietnam (as he did endlessly). The Massachusetts senator had staged strong closings during his Senate campaigns.
At a Kerry rally in Des Moines a Vietnam veteran told me that Kerry was like Sea Biscuit, the famous horse that could always beat the favourite by reaching his peak at the right time. A few days later he was proved right. He did a "Sea Biscuit" in Iowa and Howard Dean's campaign imploded with his famous scream. Kerry's message also resonated with most Democratic voters. He promised to roll back tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, invest in healthcare, and restore America's respect in the world.
By February this year Kerry had wrapped up the nomination. The usually fractious Democratic Party united behind him to pursue the goal of dumping the President. With America split down the middle between Democrats and Republicans, it seemed that the most energised party would win. In covering four US presidential elections I had never seen Democrats so energised as during the primary elections and it suddenly looked like Bush would be beaten.
By March, Kerry was enjoying a 52-44 per cent lead over the President. It helped that Bush's credibility had begun to erode. The head of his Iraqi Survey Group, David Kay, had returned to tell Congress, "We were almost all wrong" about weapons of mass destruction. The 9/11 commission found that the Bush administration had ignored warnings about a terrorist attack, and that there had been no working connection between al- Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Every week it seemed, the White House was accused of new deceptions, on the environment, health, global warming, mercury emissions, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry. New questions were raised about Bush's incomplete National Guard service.
As it began to look as if the election would become a referendum on Bush's record, the Republicans took steps to make it a referendum on the challenger. Bush's campaign adviser, Karl Rove, organised a blitz of negative ads depicting Kerry as someone who flip-flopped on issues and increased taxes. Misstatements by Kerry were recycled into campaign ads, such as his comment, "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it," when trying to explain his protest vote against a war requisition. Rightwing columnists made a career sniping at Kerry's uneven record, ignoring, or perhaps remembering, Kerry's courageous work to expose US involvement in Central American dictatorships and his pursuit of Oliver North for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal.
After the Democratic convention in early August, a campaign of character assassination began against Kerry. An organisation called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, led by veterans who could never forgive Kerry for speaking the truth about US atrocities committed in Vietnam, set out to discredit his voluntary wartime service, and even his wounds, one of which has left shrapnel embedded in his leg. A loophole in election law allows wealthy individuals to give unlimited money to independent groups known as "527s" - both sides used them extensively - that could vilify the opposition as long as a specific candidate is not endorsed. At the Republican Convention in New York, Kerry was savaged by fellow Democrat Zell Miller.
Later Dick Cheney made the outrageous prediction that the US would be more likely to be attacked again if Kerry were elected president. The Massachusetts senator threw everything but the kitchen sink back at Bush, also stirring fear by warning pensioners, wrongly, that their social security would be cut as soon as Bush was sworn in again. By the time the three presidential debates took place in late September, Kerry was behind Bush by more than 10 per cent?? But he won the debates, partly because he had been painted in such lurid colours that viewers tuning in were surprised to see him appearing presidential. Once again Kerry displayed his gift for closure, and in the final days of the campaign he drew almost level with the president.
The world now waits the outcome with unsurpassed interest. Bush could surprise his allies by appointing a new team and reaching out in his second term. Kerry is committed to restoring American prestige; his greatest challenge would be not just Iraq but the Middle East, where America's good offices have been squandered.
Nothing much will change in Iraq no matter who wins. Both Bush and Kerry face a problem in its way worse than Vietnam, because to withdraw precipitously and leave anarchy behind would make America more vulnerable than it is at present. Such considerations didn't arise with a North Vietnamese victory.
It is also worth noting that the last time an election was held when America was at war was in 1972, when Nixon won a second term despite the country's anguish over casualties and Democratic anger with his presidency.
In the United States, a win for Bush would consolidate social gains made by conservatives, while Kerry as president could change the cultural landscape towards a liberal perspective. Whoever triumphs will inherit a bitterly divided America, a growing deficit, an uncertain economy and huge problems in reforming healthcare and creating new jobs. Whoever would want such a job?