An Election for the World

Tuesday, Nov. 6 has been described rather accurately as the day the U.S. faces its most important crossroads in a very, very long time. And just as in the past — for example, the presidential elections of 1932 and 1980 — it concerns contrasts, fundamentally about a relationship that has always been complex and often explosive in American politics: the relationship between the state and its citizens.

If the incumbent Democratic president Barack Obama is elected in November, it will indicate that Americans accept that the state — or more specifically, the federal government — has a responsibility for basic welfare. Obama’s greatest domestic policy triumph, severely criticized by the right, is of course an almost comprehensive health insurance reform.

Should Americans instead elect Republican Mitt Romney, it will signal the reverse: The state should draw back and allow citizens to look after themselves. Seldom has this Republican ambition been as clear as it is with Mitt Romney. He believes that almost half of voters, 47 percent, are “dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims.”

The campaign is entering into its most intense phase — the first TV debate will be broadcast on Wednesday — and a lot may happen. However, for the moment, it seems that Obama has the upper hand. He has stretched his lead over Romney to 51-43 percent according to the Pew Research Center and 50-44 percent according to Gallup. Besides, he leads in several of the states that may be decisive: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, among others.

It is remarkable. With official unemployment at 8.1 percent — in reality, it is significantly higher — it ought to be nigh on impossible for Obama to renew confidence. Furthermore, on the issue of employment, the successful businessman Romney has decent credibility. When a Pew survey recently asked which of the candidates is best at “improving the job situation,” the results were even: 46 percent answered Obama and 45 percent Romney.

If one dives into the flood of opinion polls, one soon discovers that the voters prefer Obama in so many areas that it more than outweighs Romney’s strengths. Here are several examples — with Obama’s and Romney’s percentage figures respectively — from a survey that Pew conducted in mid-September:

Connects well with ordinary Americans: 66/23

Good judgment in a crisis: 51/37

A strong leader: 51/38

Dealing with health care: 52/39

Shares my values: 50/40

Honest and truthful: 48/34

The choice belongs to the Americans, but it goes without saying that even other nations are influenced by the result. The U.S. may be sorely tested by its deepest crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s, but it is still the world’s largest economy with the world’s most powerful military apparatus.

The American presidential election, however, is not decided by foreign policy. Nine out of 10 voters regard the economy as one of the key election issues, but only six out of 10 name foreign policy.

Does it matter for the world who becomes president?

Barack Obama, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has, since his inauguration in January 2009, restored some of the confidence that was shattered by his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. U.S. combat forces have left Iraq, and a withdrawal from Afghanistan has commenced. On the whole, he has handled foreign policy challenges with a balanced thoughtfulness: relations with China, the turmoil in the Arab world, Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

However, Obama has not been averse to following Theodore Roosevelt’s motto: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

The stick has been used against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya as well as against Osama bin Laden and suspected terrorist bases.

Lately, in Iran’s case, Obama has sharpened his tone. Last week, he spoke before the U.N. General Assembly and stressed that the time for diplomacy “is not unlimited.”

With Mitt Romney as president, the tape would be rewound. It appears that he surrounds himself with advisers from the neoconservative circle that caused such woe under George W. Bush, including the archreactionary John Bolton, Bush’s U.N. envoy.

That Romney has a so-so international reputation was confirmed during his trip to Europe and the Middle East this summer, when the verbal mishaps came one after the other. To a Swedish observer, he appeared as the American right-wing answer to Håkan Juholt.

Romney managed to annoy Britain, America’s most important ally in Europe, with clumsy comments about the Olympics in London and explained far and wide that he had been informed about the situation in Syria by the head of the British secret service MI6, which violates elementary diplomatic etiquette.

In Israel, he said that Jerusalem is the country’s capital. However, the U.S. and the international community do not recognize Israeli claims to Jerusalem — the U.S. embassy is in Tel Aviv. The Palestinians reacted with dismay and were not calmed when Romney let slip that the difference in the “economic vitality” of Israel in comparison to that of the Palestinian territories is due to “culture.” Not a word about how the Israeli roadblocks and restrictions hamper movement and growth.

When Libyan rioters on Sept. 11 attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, killing the American ambassador, Romney accused the Obama administration, completely without grounds, of sympathizing with the attackers.

The foreign policy differences between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are, as stated, not insignificant. But every American president, regardless of party affiliation, must relate to America’s actual capacity. And here, there have been fundamental changes since 2001 when George W. Bush was proclaiming the “war on terror,” not only with the support of America’s mighty military power, but also from an economic position of strength, which has now been thrown away.

National debt is out of control and is the equivalent of 103 percent of the GDP. For the fourth consecutive year — the U.S. fiscal year ends today, Sept. 30 — the budget deficit exceeds $1 trillion. Growth is anemic. Competitiveness has been weakened: The U.S. was ranked as the world leader by the World Economic Forum in 2007, but this year it landed in seventh place. Roads, bridges and railways are deteriorating: U.S. infrastructure is ranked in 23rd place, between Spain and Chile.

The crisis has almost reached existential dimensions. The “American Dream” so central to American self-perception has begun to crumble. Average life expectancy among the less educated is falling, and social mobility today is lower than in Western Europe.

Americans have been down for the count many times, but have always made a comeback. The pattern seems to be repeating. Over the next few years — perhaps decades — the U.S. must prioritize its own development. This does not mean that the superpower should withdraw from the world — isolationism is impossible in the age of globalization. However, economic realities will force America’s leadership, whether it is Democratic or Republican, to make tougher international prioritizations.

The U.S. has begun to focus more on the Pacific and the rapidly growing strategic rival China and less on Europe, which must take greater responsibility for its own security. During the air offensive against the Gadhafi regime last year, the U.S. helped with critical contributions, but left it to the British and the French to lead the operation.

Already in December 2009, in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Obama made it clear that there are limits to U.S. commitments:

“As president, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means or our interests.”

The epoch of American hegemony, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the financial crisis in 2008, comes to an end. The United States remains as the power factor, but new players and lines of conflict impress an ever-increasing influence on a world that is moving away from being unipolar toward being multipolar.

This year’s presidential election will determine whether this sensitive-but-inexorable process over the next four years will be administered by a thinking president or a thoughtless one.

In the spring of 2007 during the Republican nomination battle before the election of 2008, Mitt Romney was interviewed by the conservative TV channel, Fox News. He was asked what his favorite novel was and answered: “Battlefield Earth.”

The book was published in 1982 and was written by the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. It concerns how the Earth in the year 3000 has been conquered by aliens who plunder the planet for its mineral assets. Mankind, threatened by extinction, fights back under the command of Jonnie Goodboy Tyler from the Rocky Mountains.

In five weeks, Americans will go to the polls. The decision is theirs. However, they must excuse the rest of us if we are a little nervous.