.COMment: Outside the US there is little desire for an attack on Iraq, but there, two in three support the idea. The US media don't tell Americans about this or about George Bush's increasingly poor reputation abroad.
'Two in three of the American people support an attack on Iraq," reported Dan Rather at the top of a CBS news bulletin last week. Cut to a small mid-west town where large people voiced their opinions. "Just get 'im and blow 'im up," said a middle-aged female shopper. "We gotta take 'im out," said a 20-something bloke. "Even if it costs American lives?" "Yep, even if it costs American lives." An elderly man simply said: "I support the president. We've gotta defend freedom."
So went the suspiciously lopsided vox pop. Three of four interviewees were used to illustrate the reported two-in-three ratio. Only one person - a 40-ish man - was screened cautioning against an attack. The town looked like the backdrop for the road movies of a generation ago or one of those aggressively nostalgic Levi's ads. Pictures of it, you felt, should have cued some old rock or country classic. It looked frozen in time and for the most part, sounded it too.
The CBS reporter added that an impending attack against Saddam Hussein wasn't a main topic of conversation in the town. Holding up a copy of the latest edition of the local newspaper, he pointed to the lead story. That concerned some controversy affecting juvenile baseball. It wasn't clear if the lack of engagement with the outside world was to be deplored or celebrated. The town was still part of a time in which, to its people, the US was effectively the world.
Anyway, next up for Dan Rather was a package about "Iraqi opposition" - marching soldiers, columns of tanks, Saddam Hussein on a Politburo-style podium, that sort of standard stuff. Then came a report about criticism of George Bush's "Homeland Security TIPS Program". Intended after the September 11th attacks last year to raise a "volunteer army of citizen lookouts", civil liberties campaigners say it is just a "PR gimmick" that risks turning the US into a "society of snitches".
Two technology stories followed. One was about technical problems on a US military helicopter. The other concerned a safety scare on a passenger jet. Then it was back to Bush's "war on terror" and a report about Sima Samar, the former Minister for Women's Affairs in post-Taliban Afghanistan. She's already been ousted for being too Westernised but she continues to campaign. "All the scheming warlords simply haven't conquered this woman for peace and justice," gushed the reporter signing off. "Dan."
With the 25th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley now passed, the US is preparing to commemorate the first anniversary of the September 11th horror. As with the CBS town, the Bush administration seems marooned in the past, harking back to the unchallengeably dominant America of Elvis Presley's prime in the 1950s. Throughout the 20th century, the US continued to represent the future - it would always foment new frontiers - but in less than a year it seems to have fossilised alarmingly.
Seismic jolts to the US economic system - Enron, WorldCom and Xerox among them - have compounded the sense of grievance felt by ordinary Americans. Bad enough that you believe your country's economic success attracted murderous attacks by terrorists but when the system is spewing out millionaire thieves from within, it's harder not only to defend it but even to want to defend it.
How great can it be when some sleazeball in a suit steals your pension? There are, of course, financial predators in every country; we've bred a small but crack team of them here. But the scale, leadership role and fundamentalism of the US economic system places it in a unique category. As a creature of big business, especially the oil business, George Bush can only perpetuate the system that is cracking. In spite of CBS's questionable report of a two-in-three approval for an attack on Iraq, unconditional support for him is slipping.
Two days after CBS's story, a Fox TV poll reported just 50 per cent approval for an attack on Iraq if it should mean American casualties. Nonetheless, perhaps Bush feels he needs a war to boost his ratings. After all, it is axiomatic that in time of war, Americans customarily support their president. Yet such support is conditional and has a limited shelf-life. It is also axiomatic that in contemporary US politics, it's the economy that counts above all.
More scandals about corporate theft could only weaken Bush and his administration. Their fundamentalist mantra of "market good, bureaucracy bad" already sounds dangerously primitive and even a war would dominate the news for just a limited period.
There's also the risk that a devastated Iraq or a dangerously unstable Arab world might well backfire on the US and the rest of the world. But it is the cancer from within - corporate kleptocracy - that poses the gravest danger to America at present.
It's understandable but not convincing that fundamentalist free-market evangelists insist the corruption is the work of a few rotten corporate apples.
Public opinion in the US has already forced Republican politicians to wear grave faces and praise corporate reform even though they were utterly against such "interference" throughout their careers. Indeed, Republican senators have voted in favour of an accountancy practices' reform bill that they opposed just months ago.
Such necessary reform has been achieved because of public opinion. Sure, it's public opinion motivated by ordinary people - about half of all American adults own some shares - but it is public opinion generated by media stories. The US media, especially television, is much maligned even though there exists a layer of regularly excellent publications which no European country can equal. But it's the likes of CBS news which continues to carry real clout.
It's one thing to refer to the president of the United States as "the leader of the free world"; the networks do it so often that it has become acceptable. But if the "leader of the free world" were to consult that world (whatever he believes it to be!) he would find that the followers implicit in the description of his role do not really want to follow him at all. Quite simply, there is very little desire, outside America, for a military attack on Iraq.
The US media still don't tell American citizens about George Bush's unimpressive following abroad.
The CBS model is to look into the country's "heartland" and lead a bulletin with a package on a vox pop. Fair enough, in one sense - except that if Bush wants to be considered the leader of the free world, the free world ought to be free to voice its opinion. Isn't that the spirit of democracy, so regularly and flagrantly invoked by US presidents to justify policy decisions?
Not only that, but the influential networks would do well to tell all Americans - including the "heartlanders" - just how Bush is viewed from abroad at present. No country has a perfect media and aspects of America's - especially its First Amendment - are far greater than ours.
There was always a danger of "back to the future" with the appointment of George Bush 2. But the extent of regression is alarming. With the help of an insufficiently critical media, he could yet isolate and museum-ise a country that has long been the most dynamic on the planet.