It is much too late for this US election to be “the most important” of the past century.
That election was 2000. When you look back over the past eight years and see how much the world changed demonstrably for the worse solely due to the incompetence, ignorance, stupidity, greed, mendacity, laziness and ideology of George W. Bush and his administration, it becomes obvious.
When you look at how in the past eight years, the US has become so ill-prepared to deal with its own, let alone world, difficulties, it becomes more obvious.
Bush foolishly attacked Iraq in response to the attacks of 11 September 2001. The result has been a diversion from the real battle against terrorism in Afghanistan and the creation of a great recruiting ground for terrorists (Iraq) and a purpose for them to be recruited.
From the Iraq fiasco, coupled with the Bush ideology of tax cuts for the rich, stemmed the huge blow-outs in the US Federal Budget. From that, coupled with the Bush ideology of less regulation for big finance, stemmed the present financial crisis.
And worse is to come. Stemming from the financial crisis will be an inevitable unwillingness to deal with humankind’s most serious threat – climate change.
Put it down to the 2000 election result.
It is difficult to point to any election in the past century where the opposite result would have (most probably) resulted in such a profoundly different and better outcoome for the world.
It is not a Democrat-Republican question. It is not a question of left-right. There have been good or passable presidents on either side of those divides.
Rather it is the failure of the man – his failure to lead well, or lead at all. That failure stemmed from ignorance and stupidity. Sorry to be blunt. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton had their moral failings, but neither was stupid or ignorant.
Bush’s ignorance and stupidity meant he has not been able to resist bad advice – in the way that, say, John Kennedy could resist the hawkish advice of his military and some Cabinet members in the Cuban missile crisis.
How did American get to this state? A democracy fails when a majority of the ruck of votes reacts favourably to those seeking office saying “Vote for me, I am one of you.” Leading a great democracy requires more than being “one of the ordinary folk”. It requires extraordinary knowledge, education, intelligence and moral purpose. And those qualities should be sought out by voters.
Instead, the sound bite, the quick vision and appeal to emotion replace thoughtful consideration. How else did the man who went to Vietnam and acted bravely, John Kerry, get painted as the war coward last election, and yet, Bush, the man who evaded the call-up, got portrayed as the war hero.
I think the rot started with Ronald Reagan. He had intelligence and moral purpose, but he hid it and pretended to be just one of the ordinary folk. Since then ordinariness, or at least the appearance of ordinariness, has been seen as an asset for a presidential candidate.
Surely, after Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, the economic convulsions and the climate skepticism, Americans are not going to be fooled again.
Obviously, some people think it possible. How else would the Republicans have picked Sarah Palin as candidate for Vice-President?
She may be a wonderful woman, but if her 72-year-old President falls over, does she have the intelligence or sagacity of an Eisenhower, Kennedy or Reagan not to lead America into calamity in the way Bush has?
After someone has led the Vandals or Visigoths to smash something up, surely you do not get another Vandal or Visigoth to repair the mess.
An unfortunate element of the US system is that a President can only serve two terms. That amendment to the Constitution came into force in 1951. Only Franklin Roosevelt has served into a third term, before he died in 1945.
The rule has not served the US well recently. For a start, Bill Clinton might have sought a third term and we would not be in the mess. But more importantly, Bush will not be defeated and his policies and actions repudiated.
This is why I thought that it was better that Peter Costello not take over from John Howard: it was important that the electorate repudiate the worst elements of the Howard years. In a similar way, it would have been better for the electorate to defeat the economic cavalierism of the Whitlam Government in the ordinary course of events rather than have Governor-General John Kerr make a folk hero of him.
So, in America in a month’s time perhaps the worst President in the nation’s history will leave behind him a nation stained by a war predicated on weapons of mass destruction that did not exist and resulting in events like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal; a nation up to its armpits in debt through war and government imprudence; a nation spurned instead of respected by much of the world; and a nation crippled into inaction on climate change. He will leave not as a defeated man rightly rejected by his nation or his party, but in constitutionally enforced retirement.
Surely Americans will not allow that to enable his Republican successor to wash his hands of the past eight years and pretend that he can bring “change” to Washington with a heartbeat-away Vice-Presidential candidate whose knowledge and understanding of the world seems so eerily similar as that of the stumbling George W Bush in 2000.
Surely, American voters will not be fooled again. Surely, to borrow Abraham Lincoln’s words, the some of them who are fooled all of the time will not constitute a majority on November 4.