The Greatest Show On Earth?

It isn’t really the greatest show on earth though. It is what P.T. Barnum called a humbug. The US election is the man eating chicken or the mermaid sewn together out of monkey and fish parts, but on a much grander scale. It is the big lie, the one so big that we all believe it because to disbelieve would signal our own impending failure.

Right now the election is being fought mostly on the military records of the men running. John Kerry went to Vietnam, then came home and protested against the war; George Bush stayed home and supported the war. What that has to do with who would be a better leader today is debatable. Relevance is not an issue during elections.

Before November we’ll hear about peccadilloes and drinking habits and watch two men born into wealth and privilege try to show they are just like the average American. Neither comes close to any average American I’ve ever met. Neither has ever been in a position to understand how most Americans live. They might have an idea from watching Roseanne re-runs, or maybe The Family Guy, but TV isn’t exactly reality. No matter what happens this election we’re likely to end up living in some even more bizarre version of Survivor.

There’s the rub. The most powerful people on the planet are not people as we understand the term at all. They travel in different circles than the rest of us...places where mortgages are a financial ploy and bankruptcy just means that somebody else lost a lot of money. The ruling class in the United States comes from a world so different than ours that they may as well be aliens.

Why does any of this matter to Canadians? We don’t get to vote in the American election, yet we pay massive amounts of attention to it. Hugo Chavez, who is trying to change the fate of not only his people, but the fate of people all over South America, got little more than minor mention on our newscasts in the recent recall bid. Howard just called an election in Australia, and a major issue is going to be that country’s involvement in Iraq but the Australian election has, at this writing, received only brief mention.

NewsWorld is carrying the Republican convention and we’ve been inundated with US electioneering for the better part of a year now. We followed the rise and fall of Dean and the rise of Kerry. Now we will follow the confirmation of George Bush, as if it matters. After that the true nastiness begins and will run until November, with burps of resentment and accusations until at least Groundhog Day.

Will anything have truly changed at that point? Is John Kerry, should he gain office, likely to be substantially different than George Bush? Is he likely to use America’s power and wealth to make the world a better place? Will his policies and attitudes make a difference to Canada?

Not likely. Kerry is a little less likely to start a new war, but he has said he will stay in Iraq and is very likely to continue instituting that odd version of “free” trade that protects those corporate entities that donate to political parties but harm the economies of the USA’s trading partners and the average American alike.

So why is the entire world hanging on the outcome of the US election? Why is a Canadian news service televising foreign political party conventions? Why is it so important? We are told that it is by the press, so it must be, right? Wrong.

It could be important and it should be important but it really won’t be. Kerry might be more competent than Bush, just as Bush is likely better at marital fidelity than Clinton was and Clinton is a far better musician than George Bush Sr who was a better liar than Ronald Reagan who was better at running secret wars and funding death squads than Jimmy Carter who was far more graceful than Gerald Ford who was at least nominally more honest than Richard Nixon.

When was the last time it was really important who won a presidential election in the United States? Some would say it was Kennedy’s election, others would say Abraham Lincoln was the last leader of the US who was substantially different than his opponent. Funny how the most common answers are those who were assassinated in office.

Does it matter to Canada who wins the next US election? In a word, no . If Kerry wins, very little will change. You might not have to listen to Bible stories along with natural history in American National Parks and the constitution might not be changed to officially discriminate against gays and lesbians, but things will remain essentially the same.

Except they won’t. John F. Kerry and George W. Bush may not be substantially different, but it is the insubstantial differences that lead to real change. Despite their similarities in policy, Bush and Kerry are quite different in attitude. Bush portrays himself as an anti-intellectual cowboy... John Wayne in a poorly choreographed fist-fight or Clint Eastwood spitting tobacco juice on a scorpion. The fact that he comes from old money, went to an ivy-league college, avoided Vietnam because of his family’s wealth, and wrote a cheque for his famed ranch just the year before his election is not part of the myth of George Bush.

John Kerry’s personal mythology does not read much better. Kerry comes from a wealthy family, failed to avoid serving in Vietnam, protested against the war when he returned home, tossed his medals (which seem to have since re-appeared) over the White House fence, married into a family even wealthier than his own and doesn’t bother to deny what he is, possibly because he doesn’t realise what he is does not match the reality of most Americans.

There isn’t a lot of reality available in either case. The rich boy disconnected from reality and pretending to be a movie thug or the rich boy who thinks his privilege is commonplace. That leaves us looking for possibilities...a hope of US presidential elections being relevant again.

That cannot happen with George Bush in the White House. The one thing that the Bush regime has excelled in is polarising the USA’s citizenry. Ralph Nader, the Green Party, the Libertarians and other fringe candidates do not have voice this time around. If Patrick Buchanan and Ross Perot were to announce their love-child was running for office, it wouldn’t make the mainstream press. Michael Moore, a staunch advocate of third party politics and Ralph Nader, is supporting Kerry. It has become an election of being for or against George Bush.

In the short term Kerry offers very little to Canada or the world that Bush does not. He will remain at war in Iraq and will continue the “war on terror” and the “war on drugs.” He is unlikely to move away from the protectionist trade policies that have led to attack after attack on our softwood lumber and wheat and extended the BSE border closing beyond any reasonable time limit. Kerry is unlikely to back away from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. He is unlikely to try to help solve problems within the UN.

The best one can hope for from John Kerry is that, if elected, people will be able to discuss ideas and problems in a reasonable tone of voice again, hopefully opening the door for the next guy to actually try to change things for the better. That isn’t much, but it is better than the alternative.

Does any of this deserve the emphasis that we put on it? Not this time around and not in recent memory. A better policy than focussing on who is in power or who may gain power in the US is for Canada to go its own way and deal with each issue as necessary. We should be worrying about the various multi-lateral institutions we belong to and encouraging others to act in a similar fashion. Instead we are fixated on the three ring circus to our south.

We’re lining up to buy tickets to see that mermaid and will once again be disappointed when it turns out to be a monkey sewn onto a fish tail. We are rubes.