Alan Fisher
As we travel around the USA with the presidential candidates, there is a fascination with the fascination of the foreign media in the process.
I’ve just stepped off the trail with Mitt Romney in a trip which took me from the southern part of Virginia to Wisconsin and Ohio, then on to New Hampshire. I’ve covered his campaign rallies in Nevada and Iowa and places in between. Normally there is a large contingent of US media outlets: the TV networks and news stations; the influential and not so influential newspapers; and the must-read websites. Then there are the ‘foreign media’. Obviously there are global channels like ours, but in the past few days we’ve been joined by South Koreans, Brazilians, the French, Italians and British and a plethora of stations from central and south America.
Standing in an engineering factory in Ohio, a mother of two asked which channel I was from. I told her and was pleased to see a flicker of recognition. Her son watches us online. She then asked where others were from and as I ran through the list, she asked why so many people were interested in the race to the White House.
The winner will have to handle a poor financial situation, a difficult but improving unemployment problem and a growing national debt. He will have to address the stalemate in Congress where Republicans and Democrats spend so much time demonising each other that little gets done. That’s reflected in the pitifully low approval ratings for Congress. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008 and a long-time senator from Arizona described it as the ‘worst Congress ever’.
He’s right. This latest Congress was the least productive in modern history, passing just 80 bills and laws, the lowest number since they began keeping records in 1947. And if you add the time spent in debates, the number of reports produced and the votes taken by members of Congress and Senators, less was accomplished in 2011 than any other year in American political history.
But that is all very domestic, and doesn’t quite explain the international interest in the US presidential election. The idea of the American president being ‘the leader of the free world’ is perhaps anachronistic. The US has stayed well away from bailing out European countries in financial crises. Mitt Romney often spits out that he doesn’t want the US economy to become ‘like Greece’. Developing world economies are more closely linked to events in China than the US. The idea that US influence will eventually bring Arabs and Israelis together to hammer out a Middle East peace deal seems to fade with each passing day.
Yet, the president is still in charge of the world’s biggest economy. When America hit problems in 2008, it almost sunk the entire global economy. A growing American economy will help global trade.
Often the tone of the approach to international crisis is set by the USA. When the French president talked about intervention in Libya, it only happened when the Americans jumped in. Conversely, if the White House decided to intervene in Syria tomorrow, other countries would troop in behind. America has pushed, cajoled and dragged other countries into imposing sanctions on Iran and its nuclear programme and it has led the way into bringing Myanmar back from international isolation.
One poll conducted by Gallup in 30 countries found that 42% of people wished they could vote in the US election, a number which grows substantially for young people. Nearly two thirds of people said the US president has a great impact on their lives in their own countries. Polls show most Europeans believe that it is ‘desirable’ to have American leadership in world affairs.
There is, across the globe, a great love and a great resentment of the USA. Once in Pakistan I had a taxi driver who spent 20 minutes berating and criticising the USA for its global foreign policy, then he asked me if I knew any way he could get a visa to America because that is where he wanted to live with his family: ‘So much opportunity’, he told me.
The reality is that America is picking its leader for the next four years, but it is also picking a global leader. And that is why the world is watching.
Tuesday am
Alan Fisher’s final despatch of the campaign:
By early on Wednesday morning, we should know who will be the president of the United States for the next four years. The complication, of course, may be that in a very tight election, one close call could lead to an extended recount. The two campaigns have already placed hundreds of lawyers in contentious areas around the country, ready to take action if required. However, if the result is clear-cut, we should also have the answer to questions thrown up by the election process over the past few weeks.
1. Momentum or maths
The Romney campaign has argued since the days after the first presidential debate in Denver that it has growing momentum and that will be enough to sweep their man to victory. The Obama team insists that it holds a lead in most of the key swing states and so has a much better chance of getting to the 270 electoral college votes they need to secure victory. They say that has been unaffected by the late Republican surge. Both can’t be right.
2. Enthusiasm or organisation
The Obama team organised perhaps the most effective get-out-the-vote operation in American political history in 2008. It was a significant part of the effective landslide win over John McCain. The Democrats insist that they’ve built on that, tweaked the parts that needed tweaking and have had four years to make it even slicker. The Republicans had less time to get their ‘ground game’ in place because of the extended primary process. Lessons have been learned by the right and their operation is much sharper and better organised than in 2008 but they believe the key is that Mitt Romney has energised their base support: more people want to vote against Barack Obama than want to support him. There is always the possibility that the two could cancel each other out.
3. Where did the independents go?
While American politics has perhaps never been as polarised and divided, there are still thousands of voters who carry no party affiliation. Instead they cast their vote after listening to the candidates, following the campaigns and then voting for the person they believe will do the best job. In 2008 Obama won the independent vote by a large margin. This time Romney seems to have the advantage. That doesn’t always translate into a win. John Kerry won the independent vote in 2004 and still lost. If Obama holds on to a lot of independents, he might thank Superstorm Sandy. The overwhelming view is that he handled the crisis well, and the pictures of him working with New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, a strong supporter of Mitt Romney, would have helped. Independents like the idea of politicians working together to get things done.
4. Are there more swing states than we thought?
This election will essentially be decided in around eight to 10 swing states. However the Republicans spent the last week talking up their chances in Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, which were thought to be safely in the Obama camp. They invested a lot of energy and money in these states, and Mitt Romney even held a rally in Pennsylvania two days before the election. His team argued they were hopeful of making a breakthrough there which would give them another route to the coveted 270 figure and expand the electoral map. In the last five presidential elections, no Republican has polled more than 43% in Pennsylvania. If Romney’s team are right, the map we’ve all been studying for the last nine months changes dramatically.
5. Will young voters continue to turn out in huge numbers?
There is a myth that the 2008 election saw a huge surge in young voters, driven by excitement for Barack Obama. The reality is that the turnout of people aged 18-29 was only 1% greater between 2004 and 2008. The difference was that Barack Obama won that vote nationally by more than 30% while John Kerry cleared just 9%. Polls suggest that enthusiasm among that group has dropped off. The Obama campaign has spent a lot of time on college campuses trying to inspire that vote and get it behind their man. How successful they’ve been we’ll see on Wednesday.
Alan Fisher is an Al Jazeera correspondent
