Sunday - June 08, 2008

DIVIDED STATES of AMERICA ?

A comment by an editor of The Telegraph, reporting from the USA

The Divided States of America

By Simon Heffer in New York
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/06/2008
Page 1 of 3

The next five months may prove something of a shock for America - both for its political class, the two high representatives of which are now joined in battle for the presidential election on November 4, and for the American public.

Both parties to this process - the electors and the would-be elected - have, since February, had a distorted picture of what is at stake. John McCain, having secured his own nomination, simply stood back and watched his Democrat rivals tear each other to shreds. Personality superseded policy. If America is to pick itself up, all that must change.

For the past few months, since it occurred to Hillary Clinton in Iowa that she might not be the automatic choice for her party’s nomination, the real issues affecting and, more to the point, dividing America have only been seen - if at all - through the prism of the fight between the rival Democrats.

Now, the man who wants to become the 44th president must show an electorate that Time magazine last week described as “surly” that he has not only engaged with the issues that are making the lives of many a misery, but has a convincing idea of what to do about them.

Given the global nature of some of the problems - notably high oil and food prices, and America’s unpopularity abroad, caused by its role in the Middle East - this may be easier said than done. Moreover, those difficulties that are home-grown, such as the sub-prime disaster and its legacy of house repossessions and new poverty, are now so deep-seated as to have inflicted structural damage on the American economy.

Both Senator McCain and Senator Obama will present themselves over the next five months as unifiers: but the gulf between the possessed and the dispossessed is but one of many divisions that the next leader will struggle to heal.

I spoke to a prominent New York businessman - himself a member of an ethnic minority - who highlighted some of these gulfs. “Among young people, I would say 90 per cent of the ones I know are Democrats. Among black young people, I would say 99 per cent will vote for Obama.” Polls suggest that this is not merely true in wealthy, cosmopolitan New York but nation-wide.

But just as Mr McCain will need to find a means of trying to connect with the under-35s, Mr Obama has yet to show that he has anything to offer the constituency that almost secured the prize for Senator Clinton - the elderly, the white working-class, women and the significant Hispanic population.

The very nature of presidential campaigning cannot help but be divisive. This week both candidates have spoken to a meeting of the American Jewish lobby, proclaiming Israel’s right to exist and America’s duty to defend it. Mr McCain, as his rival was securing his own nomination, went straight off to Florida, a swing state with high concentrations of Jewish people and Hispanics, who had until this week supported Mrs Clinton and whom the Republicans now regard as fair game.

Mr McCain has visits planned to states such as Pennsylvania, with big working-class populations that backed Mrs Clinton. The unspoken phrase in the Clinton campaign - that because he is black, there are certain constituencies to which Mr Obama can never appeal - looks like becoming one of the McCain campaign’s main strategies. Where that leaves “unity” is anyone’s guess.

“I’d say that 20 per cent of people in this country, mainly among the more elderly who grew up under segregation, would still rule out voting for a black man on the grounds that he is black,” a former diplomat told me. “That means Obama has to get 51 per cent of the remaining 80. It’s not so tough as it looks, since most of that 20 per cent would vote Republican whoever the candidate was. But there will be some natural Democrats, notably in the south, who will go against him.”

Race, though, is hardly the main issue: that remains the economy. Because Mr McCain has not yet needed, or felt qualified, to engage on this - his distinguishing feature is as a foreign policy specialist - and because Mr Obama has had other distractions, the “surly” voters felt that no one was taking account of their suffering.

Both candidates now have apparently beefy proposals to deal with these problems: both talk of relieving the tax burden for the middle classes, of securing homes from foreclosure. How this would be funded is unclear, especially in Mr Obama’s case.

Mr McCain talks about cutting spending and reducing the size of the state: he, too, is vague about the form this would take. The Republican nominee has also suggested cutting tax on petrol, which at $4 (£2.10) a gallon is making eyes water in a country where people are used to driving long distances in cars that do 15 miles to the gallon.

http://tinyurl.com/49qy5n

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 03:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Politics •  
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