Re-Inventing America: How
About a 'McCain-Obama Ticket?
"A Republican rebel in his seventies confronting a
mixed-raced newcomer to national politics almost looks like an accidental
hiccup. It is a sign that the political apparatus no longer knows how to
respond to the nation's challenges."
Obama and McCain: Should the two be running on the
same ticket? ...
The McCain-Obama face-off is already turning the November
presidential election into an exceptional moment in American history. A
Republican rebel in his seventies confronting a mixed-raced newcomer to
national politics almost looks like an accidental hiccup. It is a sign that the
political apparatus no longer knows how to respond to the nation's challenges.
What America is waiting for is a profound renewal to heal its cultural malaise.
Both candidates embody the quest for what historian Arthur Schlesinger once
called “the vital center.” A return to a sense of proportion and cohesion for
the country around a new American project that has two faces,
one that's internal and the other International.
America is at a turning
point. As at other times in its history, it must reinvent a social contract and
a global strategy. To accomplish this re-invention, McCain and Obama are
condemned to fight on the ground of progressivism
. The difficulty is that this invention was the work
of a Republican and its full realization occurred under a Democrat. The first,
Theodore Roosevelt, is the hero of John McCain; the second, Franklin Roosevelt,
is an icon of the Democrats.
With an interminable war on their hands in Iraq and
Afghanistan and threats that its overwhelming military power hasn't managed to
contain, America feels that its role in the world must be rethought. Never has
America been so unpopular. Relations with the rest of the world will be the
unavoidable issue in this election. But America suffers another malaise which
it shares with other developed economies regarding the created class and
globalization. American capitalism is changing; undermining the equilibrium
created by Theodore’s Square Deal and erected on
a grand scale by Franklin’s New Deal twenty years
later.
Theodore and Franklin
Roosevelt: This
Year's Presidential race
is much about
resurrecting what they -
a Republican
and a Democrat - began
in the 1900s.
Under this regime, “corporate
America” assured social protection to employees and consumers under the gaze of
federal regulators. This “Fordist” model [reference
to Henry Ford's mass production], to which the spine was the middle class, was
projected externally under the Marshall Plan . This led to the reconstruction of Europe and Japan,
the creation of huge global economic institutions and the Atlantic Alliance
[NATO]. The two faces of America were in harmony: the free market and
collective security.
Each of these bases is now mutating. In order to
reinvent this American project, one must do the opposite of Bush, whose
election tactics and exercise of power were systematically partisan.
A hand must be extended. The political exhaustion of Americans can be measured
by the abysmal unpopularity of the President (Republican) and Congress
(Democratic). It's not insignificant that McCain and Obama owe their victories
to the good offices of “independent” voters. Both of them, in his own way, are
seen as a remedy to institutional blues and polarization in the public space.
The ultimate challenge of this dual-re-invention which
both candidates will have to embody is the preservation of “America's way of
life.” Addressing the growing inequalities and ensuring that the American way
of life - symbolized by the automobile and low gas prices that ensure freedom
of movement - isn't threatened by international free trade: competition from
Asia and the dependence on oil. The difficulty is that progressivism was about
truthful discourse. Today it suggests that innovation rather than foreign
competition is undermining the Fordistmodel, and that America's lack of savings and, in Bush's
words, "its addiction to oil," are what is undermining the American
way of life.
WORLDMEETS.US ELECTION FUN:
OBAMA VS. MCCAIN
John McCain, who supported a bill for progressive
immigration despite the anti-Latino mood of voters, prefers the card of the Iranian-Islamist
menace. Barack Obama, who first spoke audaciously, had to sing the song of
protectionism to reassure "blue collars" voters hit by industrial
restructuring. The re-invention of America could be the first casualty of the
electoral battle. In the end, the ideal combination for the United States would
be a McCain-Obama ticket!
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