If nothing else, at least Hillary Clinton’s “comeback” victory at last week’s Democratic primary in New Hampshire injected a little drama into the arcane process by which Americans elect their head of state. Or at least, that’s how the media saw it. “Both the Democratic and Republican campaigns look healthier than they did at the start of this week,” declared the Globe and Mail last Thursday, each having “set the stage for precisely the sort of battle needed to make decisions of such enormous consequence.”
Of course, for outsiders — and for many Americans — the nature and function of the primary elections are rather mysterious. How is it that voters in predominantly white, rural and wealthy Iowa (30th in terms of population) and New Hampshire (41st) have such a crucial say in who’ll become the next president? After all, they may not exactly determine who will win the White House, but they do effectively decide who will not be a viable candidate.
In themselves, the primaries exhibit two key features of the American electoral system. The first is that by holding separate elections for the president, Congress and Senate and by giving each office a different specified length of term, officials are empowered by different electorates, thus limiting corruption or collusion.
The second feature is that by fixing the terms of office, so too is the timing of elections fixed. No international crisis, no sudden loss of confidence or presidential whim can hasten or precipitate an election. Even the death of a president merely elevates the standing of his second-in-command until the next election is due.
All this has, over the years, provided an aura of certainty and solidity to American politics rarely seen elsewhere in the world. It also helps explain the stranglehold that the Democratic and Republican parties have come to exercise on the electoral system, preventing any realistic independent or third-party challenge. In the process, however, differences of policy or principle between the two parties have been whittled away, leaving voters more likely to base their decision on the perceived character or reputation of each candidate.
The same goes for candidates within a single party when it comes to the primaries. Within the Republican Party, it’s understandable that none of the five front-runners — Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson — wants to portray himself as the successor to the increasingly unpopular George W. Bush. At the same time, it’s a genuine challenge to tell any of them apart on any substantive issue.
As for the Democrats, Barack Obama and Clinton initially positioned themselves as the voice of youth and experience, respectively, but as the hunt for votes escalates they will no doubt be defined by the so-called “politics of identity.” Obama’s appeal to African Americans will be emphasized, while the significance of Clinton’s gender will come to the fore. Of course, where this leaves both candidates’ appeal to African American women is anyone’s guess.
Yet what no candidate seems to want to tackle head-on is the very real and destructive legacy that George W. Bush’s two terms in office will leave behind. The America of 2008 is vastly different from that of 2000, and unless the next president is prepared to confront that fact, then it doesn’t matter who wins in November.
Bush’s legacy may be categorized as follows:
• Economic — America’s national debt is now over $9 trillion US. That’s $30,000 per citizen, and it’s growing at the rate of $1.5 billion per day. With a recession on the horizon, the next president will almost certainly have to begin his or her term by making some tough budgetary choices, but no candidate has yet detailed a plan of action.
• Environmental — with the recent election of Kevin Rudd’s Labour party in Australia, the U.S. now stands alone as the only significant opposition to Kyoto among “developed” nations. Much as America’s isolationism destroyed any chance the League of Nations had of working after the First World War, Bush will leave office with little immediate hope for an environmental truce. His successor will have to do better.
• Constitutional — not only did Bush trample cherished rights and freedoms as part of his declared “war on terror” (e.g. freedom from torture, the right to a prompt trial), but he also rode roughshod over the separation of powers in the process, weakening the independence of both Congress and the Supreme Court.
• Cultural — above all, the manner in which the war on terror has been conducted has served to desensitize Americans to the suffering of others and, more generally, to brutalize popular culture in its depiction and interpretation of gratuitous violence. Not all of this can be blamed on Bush (Columbine happened in 1999), but there’s no mistaking the marked decline of civility and compassion in U.S. culture over the past eight years.
It may be that no president can rectify all of this or provide a comprehensive remedy in a single term, but the refusal even to address these issues will render the 2008 election one of the least purposeful presidential contests of the past 60 years. On the other hand, if just one candidate can rise above the politics of identity and character to address what needs to be done, then it might turn out to be one of the most significant.
