The world is watching

November 7, 2006

I was talking to a friend of a friend after the 2004 election who said international opinions of Americans dropped far more after Bush’s second presidential campaign than after his first. The guy, whose family is from India, told me that people around the world follow U.S. elections and were aware of the fact that Bush came in second in 2000, but for a variety of reasons, managed to become president anyway. For this, the world was regretful, but their overall opinion of Americans didn’t suffer (much.). After all, most of us had the good sense to vote for someone else. Bush was, in essence, an accidental president.

That changed in 2004. We had a chance to set things right, but a majority of Americans wanted another four years. For this, the Indian friend told me, the world was less understanding. People started questioning our judgment and values as a country. 2000 wasn’t the electorate’s fault, but 2004 was. We had a chance to make a positive difference in the world, but we chose not to.

As Newsweek’s Howard Fineman noted today, we have one more chance — and the world is watching.

Call it the Borat Election. As Americans go to the polls today, they speak not only to themselves and their government, but also to the world. Across the planet, people want to know: do Americans still see the world the way George W. Bush does? Do they still accept (or tolerate) his theory of how to achieve peace and security? Or have Americans come to view him the way comedian Sacha Baron Cohen — slyly, through his Borat character — does: as a rootin’-tootin’, boorish fool who breaks every lamp in the antique store?

Do we believe in the president’s war in Iraq, or not? The world wants to know. It will react accordingly.

No pressure, America, but today could be a small step towards repairing America’s image in the world.

Voters are angry about the loss of American life and treasure, but many of them also worry about whether we are losing something just as precious, and as critical to our security: our sense of commanding moral mission in the world. Affluent corporate executives who tended to adore the president’s tax policies began (about a year ago) to tell me that they had come to dread their trips to Europe and Asia. “I hate having to endure a two-hour lecture before getting down to the sales discussion,” one CEO told me in California this fall.

The war, in other words, has become an impediment to sales.

The new generation of American college students is the most internationally minded ever, but their freedom of travel — a cherished right that Americans assume extends to the whole planet — is under threat. Does that matter? Only if we want to lead the world in the 21st century.

I think we do, but we’ll know more in, say, nine hours.

Thanks CB. Nine hours might be a bit optimistic in this climate, but yeah hopefully Bush is an anomaly born out of not only 9/11 but of Republican political hegemony. I wouldn’t judge a citizenry over what 52 % of voters do, but the effect on other countries is the same as if everyone voted for him.

Well I’m off to the Coast Guard station to vote. If I see them loading Dems onto coast guard cutters, I’ll be back sooner than expected. Good luck everyone.

  • Only a Republican in America would believe you can have a global economy and a unilateral foriegn policy and not have any conflict there. The world is right about this election and the last 2 as well. I wonder how imposed isolationism will go over with the pro-business GOP base?

    Stupid Fu&)(*S!

  • The fact that there’s any uncertainty about the result already reflects poorly on Americans, from a global perspective. How much more blatantly corrupt & incompetent must our leaders be before we reject them?

    And now I’m worried that anything less than “Not a single Democratic-held office was won by a Republican!” will be spun as a victory for the GOP.

  • “I hate having to endure a two-hour lecture before getting down to the sales discussion,” one CEO told me in California this fall.

    aw, poor widdy baby. fuck him; i’m sure he doesn’t give a shit when counting his bucks back in the States.

  • I disagree with your post only in that the 2004 election was stolen just as the 2000 one was, only the Republicans had grown more sophisticated in their chicanery during the intervening four years.

    What I don’t understand is – in countries like the Ukraine and Mexico, people take to the streets in huge masses and wage epic battles against the authorities when they feel elections have been stolen from them. Here in the “land of the free,” the news media tells everything is fine, don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain rigging the votes, and go back to your regular programming to see who’s ahead on American Idol.

    Boy George says he wants to bring democracy to Iraq. I say let’s restore democracy to America.

  • Yes the world is watching and this time I think we will act like Americans and do the right thing. This time it is not about party affiliation, it is about facism, and most Americans know it. At least that is my wish and belief today, and I will cling to that wish/belief until I am proven wrong. Carpetbagger says I have nine hours. . .

  • I’m one of those foreigners (Cannuckistani) who is watching this eleciton the way one watches Canada in the World Juniors Championship (much better than the NHL) which is very seriously. What happens down there will affect us up here. Afterall, the fundy fiscal nuttery that is today’s Republican Party has been exported to us and we are at a political crossroads ourselves–hopefully, we’ll make the best possible choice…

    Spending time on websites like TCR and watching TDS and the other TCR, prevents me from turning into my father, who after the 2004 election, ranted about how ALL Americans are boneheads. I replied to him that the only ones are those who typically have an R for Repub after their name. He’s also given his American friends both barrels for reelecting Bush, in particular after one of them admitted to voting for him.

    I hope that you guys can deal with what Bush has done to the US and send these idiots back to the outhouses from where they emerged from. Of course, we can’t come out and say it publicly because it really is your fight.

    I never thought I’d say this, but I miss Bill Clinton. I was never a fan of Bill Clinton, but after the last six years… Sigh.

  • people take to the streets in huge masses and wage epic battles against the authorities when they feel elections have been stolen from them

    There actually was a lot of this during the Innauguration in 2001 as protesters faught running battles with police the entire route of the parade and Bush was roundly and repeatedly booed by the crowd. I think Michael Moore showed some of the footage in Fahrenheit 911, but the corporate new media chose to show very very little of it and glossed over it in the commentary that day. That should have been a big tip-off very early on, but most people actually had no knowledge of it.

  • Here in the states, we’re constantly bombarded with meaningless propoganda about the War on Terror. Once the discussion moves beyong US borders, however, it seems that the topic is America’s War OF Terror—and I find myself the unwilling citizen of a terrorist State.

    If I don’t like it, I’m told, then I should move to Canada.

    I will not give the filthy little mongrels who want to steal MY country that priviledge; their honor to declare me yet another cobblestone, a bit of bitumen in their “Road to Reichdom.”

    Today will demonstrate victories against the Republikanner Beast; yet, those victories, no matter how many or how great, represent but the first skirmish in what is destined to be a very long struggle to break the bonds of tyranny in which the United States now find herself shackled.

    Let the Roves and Mehlmans; the Frists and Hasterts; the festering pestilence that is the Right know this: That a State of War currently exists between the United States of America—and the vitriolic hate that dares, under the banner of the Republican Party, to call itself American.

    And this State of War shall continue until fictory is fully achieved.

    CB, tell your friend that not all Americans are going to lie down for the criminal in the White House….

  • hopefully Bush is an anomaly born out of not only 9/11 but of Republican political hegemony.

    Kevin Phillps wrote sometime in 2001 that the results of the recent election represented the last gasp of the conservative movement. Here’s hoping by this time tomorrow we have a better sense of how right he was.

  • I don’t know if the world is watching, but I sure am ! And crossing my fingers – If I had any religion, I would even pray for you… Which is kind of stupid, candidly, since the weaker the USA are ( and your beloved president is very good at that ), the stronger Europe is, on a short term. But I am for long term relations 🙂

  • nice polite republicans told me this morning that jimmy carter is down in nicaragua watching their election. so what international body is watching ours?

  • Live comedy from a safe distance.

    It only occurred to me a week ago that what I really come here for is entertainment. I used to believe it was deep, passionate — compassionate — aggrieved concern about the tragic decline of the greatest show on Earth, surfing, searching, delving, hounding links into every nook and cranny of the endless, infinite diversity which is the magnificent, magnetic, mesmeric us and a. Then, in a moment, I saw it for what it was : entertainment.

    We take ourselves too seriously. The world may be watching, but it’s pretty resilient. It sees what’s going on, can shake its head or laugh as it chooses, but it’s not hanging onto America’s coat-tails. You can be fairly sure about that. You don’t need to worry about “[y]our sense of commanding moral mission in the world”. No one is asking for your moral intervention. So you can relax and get on with your own thing, as they used to say.

    I think the world still loves Americans, but it’s become tarnished with fear and resentment. I have my own ideas about where that comes from, and I guess you do too. It’s the hardest thing in the world to see ourselves as others see us, but it’s always worth trying. In the limbo before the results it’s nice to read a post like this.

  • “That changed in 2004. We had a chance to set things right, but a majority of Americans wanted another four years.”

    What a pile of MERDE.

    We caught them stealing the election in 2004, and paid $125,000 for a recount which Bush Campaign Chair/SecState Blackman refused to give us, even defying court order and the threat of contempt.

    When WE stop lying about the facts, maybe education will actually function as it should. It’s bad enough that the media and the major blogs declared the election over while the contest was still going on.

    I’m disgusted with you.

  • “What I don’t understand is – in countries like the Ukraine and Mexico, people take to the streets in huge masses and wage epic battles against the authorities when they feel elections have been stolen from them.” –David M

    Damn, what a shock. Nevermind that WWII, Chernobyl, and Stalin radicalized people in the Ukraine, and that their constitution was eight years old when they rebelled against a stolen election, or that Ukraine is a single state with smaller gov’t units at the city level, and that the major cities refused to acknowledge the supposed results, and that the Mexico rebellion DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to change the election. Nevermind the obvious differences in these societies.

    US bashing at its finest, David.

    • Comments are closed.