Only several days are left till the final verdict is passed on the relative merits of two finalists in America’s most expensive ever electoral circus. It has been so much fun this time: we have enjoyed a parade including a liberal shrew, a token preacher, a plastic equity guru, a dallying populist, a septuagenarian grouch, a half-black upstart and finally a puck-loving but animal-hating diva.
THE CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN (AND THEN DISBANDS)
The onset of the financial crisis messed up the strategies which, amidst fear mongering, would have perkily punted the same “values” message that had brought George W. Bush to power. But the slump in measurable values of homes and pensions has since shifted the rules of the game considerably. So much so that most of the intellectual elite of the country has now embraced a candidate whose official stance on trade would, in other circumstances, make any economically literate voter squeamish.
Will Obama win? The common view is now that the result will hinge on the voting decisions of the independents. Sarah Palin was supposed to rally Hillary’s troops, and she aptly appealed to them in her first public appearance as a vice-presidential nominee. As we now know, the thrust proved short-lived and she instead galvanized the numerically important, yet ideologically isolated minority whose voting record had helped to run the country aground. The independents may be displeased with Obama’s ‘otherness’ as much as with Palin’s increasingly Fascist, ‘shrill, baby, shrill’ wailing tones. Palin’s rallying calls point to an ‘enemy within’, whereby she utilizes sliding signifiers and exploits connotations of fear and alienation. These speeches would make a poor reading as a propaganda piece. But chopped up into an engrossing “call and response” ritual, they confirm the troops in their conviction that someone, somehow must prevent the inevitable.
But is Obama’s win really inevitable? He is close to victory, even though a well-timed video tape from Osama bin Laden could, yet again, help the Republicans and mire the US troops for years to come. Barring such a catastrophic development, the odds against Palin and her presidential running mate are high. Many independents may have now fallen under Obama’s unquestionable personal charm, his calm demeanor, and smooth-as-silk delivery in the otherwise inconclusive debates. Obama’s supporters stress the professionalism of the faultless campaign as a proof of his considerable managerial skills. Yet there are still many others who need another ‘ticking point’ to mark the Obama-Biden slot at the top of the ballot. Will the fear of Obama’s “past associations” trump the genuine fascination with this ambitious young man? Will the scare mongering of a “socialist” tax policy really frighten the middle class?
To be true, the red flag of “socialism” in America is an argument that is just inane and vacuous as Western Europeans’ congenital rejection of “religion” in politics.
Just as Europe’s political ethics is rich in references drawing on religious traditions, so did the US government, on occasion, assume a larger role in the country’s economy than it has been the case since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. As the turbulent Paulson era is now drawing to a close, the battle against “socialism” appears to have been lost without a single shot, regardless of Republican distaste for the ‘Swedish’ solution. Indeed, despite triumphant anti-Americanism on the European left, we may now all be in the same, centrist, boat, whether in America, Sweden or elsewhere. In the third quarter of 2007, the Swedish automaker Volvo received 41000 orders for its trucks. This year, in the corresponding quarter, the same company received barely 115 orders. The collapse of transaction flows in the ‘real economy’ - in America, in Asia and in Europe - should serve as a timely wake-up call against any exploitation of the allegedly contrasting interests of the Wall St and the Main St, la rue, la calle, dajie and die Strasse.
A BIG RISK OF A SMALL GOVERNMENT
It is the market circumstances, still not fully recognized by the proverbial Joe in the street, that have radically altered the plausibility and feasibility of the grand fiscal plans touted by either party with relation to health care, education and other policies. In an effort to save its financial market, the US government has so far only injected an equivalent of about 6% of GDP. When Japan hit the curb in the early 1990s, the country spent closer to 25% of its GDP to finally put the economy back on track. But Japan’s asset values have never recovered to pre-bubble levels and it might, just as well, take a lot longer than commonly assumed for America to return to the 2007 level of asset wealth.
The comparisons with Japan’s balance sheet recession are ubiquitous, but misinformed. For one, unlike Japan, the US is not a net saver, which will make all the talk of ultimate rescue of its economy reliant on external sources. Japan’s stagnant demography made its growth highly dependent on its trade account and on income from overseas investments. The United States, even at dollar’s low last summer, still had nothing much to export. It will not be able to solve its current conundrum through the turnaround in the current account.
Equally importantly, America does not benefit from the social cohesion that characterizes the racially united and monolingual Japan. Over centuries the Japanese society has perfected a team spirit that only island nations can aspire to (shimaguni konjo). I still recall the shock of the sudden confrontation with homeless people around Shinjuku station and in Ueno Park in Tokyo. Yet at the depth of the economic slump and labor market losses, local shops organized distribution of foodstuffs within 48 hours of expiration. In a country ravaged by periodic natural disasters, a sense of common destiny was just too strong for anyone to remain indifferent.
THE “R” ISSUE
As I visited poor black neighborhoods in the American South last weekend, the memories of Japan’s deflationary decade loomed again. Persuaded by committed friends, I participated in a last ditch pre-electoral “canvassing” effort. Our role consisted in knocking on doors that we would have otherwise never knocked on. And these were ‘doors’ that barely knew the fruits of America’s economic boom of the last 16 years.
Granted, these are not slums. Many of these modest houses are ‘owned’, which, as we now know means little more than a call option of ownership of the mortgaged property. Many others have been foreclosed. Yet something else struck us when we tried to elicit the response from behind those rickety doors. Many pre-electoral statistics rely on a somewhat automated arithmetic and plug in the numbers of African American population as ‘natural’ Obama’s supporters. They could yet prove mistaken.
Race is a big factor in this election – for better or worse. Many so-called ‘liberals’ (a term curiously referring to left-wingers in the US, but denoting free market apostles in continental Europe) would probably care much less for a Democratic candidate, were it not for the racial symbolic of his rise and a potentially cathartic impact of the election on the depressed black population. Similarly, most, if certainly not all African Americans would rather vote for a black candidate if given a choice. A numerically more important, though less vocal group of white voters may have an issue with a candidate representing a racial or a linguistic minority.
The racial divide remains one of the defining factors of the Democratic Party’s predicament in the Southern United States. Jimmy Carter’s parenthesis notwithstanding, the conservative vote swung away from the Democrats since Lyndon Johnson signed the Anti-Segregation Act in 1964. And whereas before African Americans were not allowed to board the bus through the same door as the whites, today they do not share public buses with white folks at all. The Civil Rights movement may have triumphed. The not so civil economic wrongs could not be so easily unwound.
DON’T MOPE COZ THERE IS THE HOPE
Walking from door to door and listening to the deeply accented lingo transported directly from the pages of ‘Huckleberry Finn’, I could not escape the feeling that, for many of my accidental interlocutors, an act of voting for an abstract, Washington DC-based position will require an extraordinary personal effort. An effort to switch on the ubiquitous TV blare. An effort to lurch out of the dark bedroom. An effort to leave the familiar neighborhood. An effort to profess a view.
This is not a population accustomed to, or indeed required to make an effort in the first place. We are far, very far from Emersonian self-reliance. As we tried to explain to these half-illiterate people how to mark the ballot, it dawned on me that an act of INDIVIDUAL effort in an abstract (as opposed to physical) task is without precedent in their personal experience. The vote will take place only if and when the organized groups, the local churches, the campaigners or the community organizers provide the necessary assistance to the people who do not, in usual circumstances, take the extraordinary initiative to leave the ghetto.
And then there was hope. A 7-year-old girl opened the door and dragged her mom to the porch. While we were trying to make sure that her mother could understand the intricacies of the arguably confusing presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial ballot, the little girl flourished, flaunting with pride her experience of the ‘vote’ she had already exercised at school. The school game was supposed to prepare the young Americans for their future rights. Flushed, but proud, the little lady confirmed to us that she had ‘voted’ for O-ba-ma. There was no sense of otherness in her scintillating voice. But there was more hope in this statement than in the raucous mass rallies.
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