POINT OF VIEW
A nation divided? Don't believe it! by Niall Ferguson
LE MONDE | 04.11.04 | 14h10
The United States is irreparably divided? In reading certain commentators, the most nervous on the theme of the election, one could think that Americans were two fingers away from a second war of Secession. Time magazine intoned this week:" The victor inherits a nation divided, divided on the question of its place in the world, of its fundamental values, of its future direction".
On one side there seemed to be the Republicans in the rural center of the country, symbolized in red; on the other, in blue, the Democrats on the strongly urbanized coasts. The presidential campaign of this year was so rude, one tells us, that these two Americas are more separate than at any time since the second world war.
The two Americas supposedly at war are brilliantly caricatured in my favorite film of the year, Team America: World Politics. The Republicans are personified by the antiterrorist group Team America, which destroys with trigger happy, though inadvertent, ease the Eiffel Tower and the Egyptian pyramids while trying to bring to their knees the enemies of liberty.
The Democrats do not fare much better: they are the incarnation of the limousine liberals and sentimentalists of the Film Actors Guild of Hollywood, who allow themselves to be convinced by the deranged North Korean dictator Kim Jong- il to attend a peace conference.
Is this truly the state of the union in America today? It is certainly true that, since the month of March, when Kerry became the Democratic candidate, he and the president were generally equal in the polls. It was evident, some weeks before the election, that Bush could count on most of the states extending along the geographic center of the country, from Montana to Texas, and most of those in the South. Kerry, for his part, didn't have to worry about the West and great part of the Northeast.
And it seemed also a little closer to evident that the issue of the election would repose on the choice of a small number of undecided voters in a small number of wavering states without speaking of the important number of new voters that the polls habitually ignore.
Whatever the outcome, the idea became pervasive that America was torn by this election along a fundamental fault line. Having passed a great part of the last months on the highways of the country, I am content to be able to announce that the civil war does not seem imminent. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the notorious political polarization of the United States is truly nothing to worry about. It could even be worth celebrating.
We have witnessed a demonstration of the vitality of democracy in a land which fundamentally abides in every corner. For a "non- resident foreigner" like me, which signifies that I pay taxes without representation, the thing most striking in the vast homeland is not political division, but the astonishing homogeneity.
Does there exist any other place in the world where one can cross 4000kilometers (for example, Miami to Seattle) and find little different from beginning to end? The same Starbucks, the same Walmarts, the same 4x4, the same people?
Yes, Americans put themselves in all their state for the presidential election and yes, there are some real differences between the candidates. But what Americans have in common remains far more important than the differences.
All around everyone shares a faith in democracy, where these signs "Joe Machin for the school board" one sees all around, without speaking of the 16 California propositions. Americans have also in common a true ambivalence on the subject of the global power of the United States.
Despite appearances, it is not a matter of a fight between imperialists and anti- imperialists, because a small minority of Republicans want more than a military presence of short duration in Iraq.
Americans are not all fundamentalist Christians, but most of them are Christian in the way that most Europeans are secular. They are not all favorable to the war in Iraq, but they remain a remarkably patriotic people, passionately convinced that their system of government is the best.
Even the red and blue electoral maps are deceiving. On meets Republicans in Manhattan and Democrats in Texas. And there are fluctuating states with a nearly equal number of Republicans and Democrats in 15 states out of 50. It is necessary as well to remember that 11 states only went to one of the parties during the last eight presidential elections. Yes, Jimmy Carter won Texas in 1976, and Ronald Reagan won Massachusetts in 1980.
Another important point: the fact that the political division in America cannot be reduced to ethnic or religious divisions of the type that are often the cause of violent conflicts in other countries. Naturally, it is probable that evangelical Christians support George Bush. Meanwhile, Catholics are very equally divided. All the same, everyone knows that black Americans are massively Democratic (although maybe less less so in recent elections). On could foresee that they would vote at least 80% for Kerry. Latinos are shared by the two camps.
The more important point concerning the supposed polarization of today is perhaps that no one seems ever comes to blows. If one compares it to the situation in Great Britain in the 1980s, there is not polarization at all, not to speak of a number of countries which went directly from elections to a veritable civil war in the 1990s. More precisely, what happened Tuesday has simply shown that the Americans have at last attained a normal level of political engagement after decades of feeble participation.
As I write these lines, they are forming long lines throughout the country as a token of each American before the polling place. There has been a resurgence of political mobilization in the parties: one of my neighbors took a plane to Arizona just to ready for the election. Call this polarization if you want, but is it really bad is activism replaces apathy?
In my opinion, the measure that most speaks to this new political vigor is the extraordinary health of American political satire in these last few weeks. It is not a matter of Team America alone. The other evening, in the course of an extremely popular show with Jon Stewart, the Daily Show, there was a witticism in which the impassive Stewart said to viewers: "Florida has been warned by God four times during the hurricane season that it should not reproduce."
Nothing could be said to stop new litigation. Be tranquil, however: a country which can laugh at this type of thing isn't ready to engage in a war of mutual destruction.
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