Globalist: In Texas, an America lost on Europe
Roger Cohen International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
CRAWFORD, Texas The "Western White House" is what locals call this town that is little more than a bulge on the highway. In that George W. Bush has spent close to eight months of his presidency at his sprawling ranch nearby, the description is not as far-fetched as it may seem.
Crawford has prospered since Bush bought his spread five years ago, adding several gift shops, but to say the place is humming would be an exaggeration. The town has more banks than grocery stores: one of the former and none of the latter. Its hub is a gas-station-cum-restaurant called The Coffee Station, whose menu - hamburgers, apple pie, chicken, potato salad, hot dogs and lemonade - is affixed to the wall. People around here like to keep it simple.
Jo Staton, who modeled clothes in Paris in the 1960s, is now dismayed by the French. She presides over one of the souvenir stores that have sprung up since Bush was elected and left his home state for the nation's capital, saying he was going to take "a lot of Texas with me." Among the goods she sells are Bush paper dolls and mugs and T-shirts emblazoned with the words "There's a Cowboy in the White House."
"Iraq is not a mistake," Staton said. "We can't let them do to us what they did in New York." Like many Americans, she sees the war as retribution for Sept. 11. Never mind the details. "I loved my time in France and I just don't know why they are not behind us."
Although tiny, Crawford is not insignificant in understanding Bush's America, the one often lost on Europeans, because the president is a man true to his word. He did, as he vowed, take a lot of Texas with him to the White House. Among other things, he took a deep devotion to God, a distrust of welfare, a belief in self-reliance and an attachment to the armed forces. He also carried with him what T.R. Fehrenbach, a conservative historian, calls "a certain Texan belligerence."
In his office in San Antonio, Fehrenbach keeps a pistol in a desk drawer. The right to carry guns is important here. Texas spent a lot of the 19th century fighting, against the Mexicans, against the Indians. That belligerence has its roots. Texans joined the United States in 1845 as a sovereign nation, a distinction to which they remain fiercely attached today. The state, much changed and diversified, nevertheless retains something of its frontier bluntness. If somebody gets executed, and half of all executions since 1976 have taken place in Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia, the feeling here is that people generally get what they deserve.
Bush, of course, is a child of Northeastern privilege rather than of Texas. But the oil of West Texas enriched his family and he has the passion of the converted. To drive through part of this vast state is to understand the cornerstones of his conversion and makes clear that the current estrangement between Europe and the United States is at its deepest level about culture. The flash points have been varied, from Iraq to the environment, but the cultural chasm constant. Texas is a land of certainties; Europe has learned to be wary of fervid conviction. Texas sees right and wrong where Europe sees gray areas. Texas prefers to keep it simple; Europe favors the nuances. Texas likes action, Europe institutions. Texas supports the troops, period. Europe wants to know what the troops are doing.
It is Sunday on the road north of San Antonio and the parking lots outside the churches are full. Electronic signs say the Lord will give victory. "Pray for our Troops - Join Operation Prayer Shield," exhorts a bumper sticker on a Chevy Suburban, a very big vehicle that does not look big here because it is in good company.
A billboard advertises the gun show at the Heart of Texas fairgrounds. What light relief there is from God and guns comes from a country music station. "I don't love you any more," sings one crooner, before adding: "Trouble is, I don't love you any less."
No town could love Bush more than Crawford. There are American flags in the plant pots and one big sign on Main Street says: "We will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail." Not far away is Fort Hood, a huge military base. Close to 100 of its troops have been killed in Iraq.
At The Coffee Station, Steven Ervin and his wife Mary are enjoying a meal with their friend Dorothy Smith. They are eating onion rings - not on the wall menu - and they offer them generously. Ervin, a retired school superintendent, likes the president. "Bush is a Texan," he says. "You can depend on him doing what he says he'll do, he makes things rather simple, and he's not a Slick Willy."
What of Iraq's unfound weapons of mass destruction? Not a big deal, Ervin says, because "we know Saddam Hussein used them and then moved them." Moreover, Smith interjects, the Iraqi dictator was "a horrible man, a bad person and behind terrorism." Ervin expects America to be in Iraq for three to five years.
Mary admires Bush's faith. "Religion here is incredibly important," she explains. "I don't know anyone who does not believe in God. And if you did not believe, I doubt you would be brave enough to admit it." That the president said this month that "freedom is the Almighty's gift" and America had an obligation to spread it to the Middle East bothers her not at all.
In their way, the Crawford diners have framed the terms of what will be a bitterly contested American election. As seen from Texas, it will pit the straightforward against the slick, supporters of the troops against doubters, small-town America against metropolitan America, church-going America against a more secular America. On its outcome, in turn, may hinge the future of the Euro-American cultural divide.
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