Published on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 by the Sydney Morning Herald / Australia
Letter from America
by Christopher Selth
Dear Margo,
I have found myself in what feels the bizarre position of travelling in the US at this time. It is bizarre in that I am witnessing the US election campaign and talking to Americans, at the same time as the nuances of what is going in Australian election are lost to me. Of course there is virtually no reference to Australia in the US media.
A while ago I wrote a long piece about Mark Latham and the new politics. What I have encountered in the United States is a totally different interpretation of new politics. It is an interpretation which I find frightening. I am not clear the extent to which it applies to Australia, but I am sure in some sense it does.
Speaking to a range of Americans of course I have seen a range of attitudes.
They seem to fall into two broad camps. One is that George W. Bush is incompetent. This view has been given to me by both Democrats and lifelong Republicans. At the risk of being accused of elitism, what the Bush critics share in common is a relatively high level of education. They come from largely professional backgrounds.
The other view is not so much that George is strong, as his advertising would have us believe, but that a strong America relies on simple absolutist policy prescriptions.
In spending times with friends and family in the US I have seen a level of fear that I found disturbing. In one instance, for example, crossing the border to Mexico was seen as too dangerous in the post September 11 world. What I have experienced here in the US is a sense of "siege". It is a function of terrorism, and on going significant economic and cultural changes. Social researchers have identified that the belief that anyone can make it in America regardless of where they came from is now being questioned. These are similar forces to those that engendered One Nation.
Possibly the biggest fear, transcending any of the specific issues, is the overarching complexity of the new world. It is too hard to digest, let alone manage. So the politician who delivers the message that the answer is simple, embodied by simple slogans, wins!
Kerry committed the ultimate mistake when he said at the Democrat convention that reality is complicated. This is not the message that a population suffering future shock want to hear. So whilst to the professional classes such a claim is simply stating the obvious, a Kerry world is indigestible to those seeking refuge from a world they don't understand.
I know that other readings of Kerry's relationship with complexity are possible. Too much appreciation for complexity might be read as equivocation. It can be seen as an alternative to indicating a policy. Alternatively it can be seen as a justification by politicians for why they haven't taken on specific problems. Independent of whether or not Kerry is guilty of these charges, such readings do not explain what I have seen talking to a wide range of Americans.
Now the biggest thing expected of the President by certain Americans is to deliver a simpler world.
So there seems little debate. It's just about shouting slogans. Bush declares that he is strong and that America is richer and safer with virtually no reference to supporting evidence. These claims are paraded around as fact. A vote for Kerry is going backward, but backward on what? Bush presents policies with no reference to his track record. Scrutiny is minimal. Pigs can fly.
The Kerry camp has been caught flat footed. They have been naive enough to hope that facts mattered, facts such as the exploding budget deficit, the widening gap of rich and poor, the collapse of America's international reputation, global warming, and the quagmire of Iraq. Instead now they are also driven to populism. Equally those of my friends from more professional backgrounds don't understand how an election can have so little to do with reality. There is a real sense of fear in this group, and I repeat they are both Democrat and Republican voters, that the new politics is one where informed debate is dead, and facts don't matter.
Of course, maybe it was always so. A great politician, and now even my Republican friends speak admiringly of Bill Clinton as such a creature, can present complex ideas simply, whilst still retaining nuance. In the absence of such leaders we are seeing politics move into a terrifying place of empty platitudes where facts are too scary to be permitted.
Is this the new politics? I return to Australia soon with bated breath.
Regards
Christopher Selth
Christopher Selth is a former head of international equities at BT. He wrote A new politics and the culture of fear for Webdiary in April this year, a brilliant essay on the state of our polity.
