Reflections on American Politics

Circumstances forced me to spend a long time in the U.S. recently. Since I had nothing to do, it became an opportunity for me to read and reflect on American political life and the hellish machines of men, resources and technology. Many have written about the deteriorating American situation, anticipating a moment in which the U.S. declines from its lofty heights as the only remaining superpower in the world. Whether the U.S. falls as a result of the waning elements of American power or because a new power emerges to displace or compete with the U.S., it will be years or decades before it happens. The difficulty in making sense of American politics — far from being due to a scarcity of information — lies in knowing how to sort through all of the available information and separate the wheat from the chaff. Added to this, there is a lot of noise surrounding it all, from the current debate over the health care law to the horrific weather coming from the north and east of the country, creating unprecedented low temperatures and enough snow to create the North Pole in the heart of America. In the midst of all of this, Congress is preparing for midterm elections, which will be held in November. Thus, the American people find themselves in a perpetual state of election: If not yet tired of the presidential elections, they find themselves approaching the midterm elections, and in between, there is always preparation for mayoral and state government elections. Some of these elections are no less exciting than the U.S. presidential elections, especially in cities like New York and in states like California.

This electoral system makes U.S. politics seem like a hierarchical escalation of democracy, rising from the lowest levels to the highest — like a mill that produces leaders and tests them; but in reality, it puts theories and opinions in the way of critical thought. In the Third World, especially in our Arab region where elections still mean tortuous conflict, and the federal and local governments remain separate from one another, we look in wonder at the democratic system of the U.S. When Alexis de Tocqueville went to America in the 19th century, he was surprised, just as Karl Marx, in the same century, was surprised by the persistence of U.S. capitalism. The question is whether America with its diversity of interests, will balance one way or the other. Will the country benefit from the competition of interests and become more powerful, or will that competition turn into conflict, as happened during the American Civil War? What will prevent the union from dividing (if it hasn’t already begun to happen)? To answer these questions, we need to consider the nature of the system. There is ruthless competition in politics, economics and society amongst individuals, businesses, institutions and organizations. The elite remain powerful because they seem to always be capable of generating the stability necessary for this violent competition. Technically, the elite are those who wrote the U.S. Constitution and who have maintained it through amendments and close monitoring of the Supreme Court.

But how did the political elite develop and how do they remain in power? The book “Duty” by Robert Gates, defense secretary in the second George W. Bush and first Barack Obama administrations, really struck me — not because it presented an autopsy of his work as defense secretary or explained how he managed an institution with a $700 billion budget or described how he had the capacity to destroy the world several times over, but because the story of his life is inspiring. He served under eight presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, from President Ford in the 1970s to President Obama. However, the interesting part was not the party affiliations of the presidents, but the people he worked with over the nearly four decades during which he held positions with the National Security Council, CIA and Department of Defense. When Gates came to the Department of Defense, he was already close to the American strategic elite because he had worked with most of them before. I went back to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s memoir “In My Time” and found that Donald Rumsfeld, whom Gates replaced as defense secretary, was Cheney’s boss during the Ford administration. Thus, if the top White House positions from the Ford administration to the George W. Bush administration were reviewed, one would find many interwoven links connecting one administration to another. It is much the same for the Democrats, which have links extending from the current Obama administration, through the Clinton era, and back to the Carter administration in the 1970s. The thread is always there, moving from president to president and Congress to Congress. This thread is also present in the commissions that the president tasks with researching various issues and which must be headed by two members, one representing each of the two major political parties.

The elite moves in and out of power. While in power, they influence thought through think tanks, big business and inquiry commissions. The system as it stands permits the American elite to survive and remain stable. However, at present there are two developments for which the extent of their impact is difficult to predict. The first of them is the rise in each camp — – Democrat and Republican —– of extremist groups: the tea party for the Republicans and the “progressive” group for the Democrats. The former are severely and radically conservative; the latter are extremely liberal. Both the very conservative and the very liberal attempt to pull their party and public opinion to their side, which has established a state of polarization that America has not known since perhaps the 1950s, when McCarthyism prevailed. If you add to that the horrible condition of the American media, which thrives under the drama of disagreement, conflict and tension, then the political elite begins to find itself in a marginal position that it has been trying to avoid for decades. Sometimes, this [situation] causes paralysis in the management of the government — for instance, when the Republicans and Democrats do not agree on how to deal with the budget deficit. However, it has been said American politics are like a pendulum moving between extremes but always returning, by necessity, to the middle. Perhaps this is true, but what will happen if the system is pushed past its extreme limit in pursuit of so-called ideological purity?