Election 2004

Two great races on the same day. The Melbourne Cup and the U.S. Presidential Election. I know which one I’d rather be watching. But the outcome of the other one has implications for the entire world, not just a few punters in Victoria. I wish I could vote here. In fact, I wish the world could vote in an election whose result affects us all.

We can only hope that common sense prevails and the majority of the American people (and their weird Electoral Collage system that can override the will of the people) make the correct choice for their future and ours.

The longer I’m here and the more I’ve seen of this election process, the more I despair of America ever coming to grips with a realistic perspective of their importance in the world as a whole. The current administration seems to operate with a 1950s mind-set reminiscent of the Cold War era. There’s “Us” (the US) and “them” – the rest of the world and the enemies within. And wherever they look, America sees its enemies as it suits them to do so. At the moment, GW and his neoconservative mates, Rumsfeld, Cheny, et al have fixated on Iraq as the problem. Never mind North Korea or any other nation who, since America’s pre-emptive war on Iraq, has decided to arm themselves in case they’re attacked by this military superpower that is being run by maniacal war barons, fighting in the name of freedom and democracy.

And here’s the irony (which, by the way, Americans do not get). This flag-bearer for democracy who, they would have us believe, invented and perfected this particular form of Government (umm… what was that about the Greeks?) are barely capable of running a free and fair election themselves. It’s an organisational debacle. People are marshalled to the wrong polling places by partisan volunteer polling staff, voter registrations are disallowed because they’re on the wrong sort of paper, and no-one can be certain they’re even on the electoral roll. There are a bevy of lawyers from each side ready to contest every single dodgy result posted. By dodgy, I mean a result that doesn’t go their way.

I can’t imagine there’ll be a clear cut result tonight, but I hope there is. And I hope a new President is elected who has a clue about foreign policy. Not that that will change the all-American ethos of self-interest by any great measure, but it’s the best hope the rest of us have.