In 1969 Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau was in Washington meeting with US president Richard Nixon. Trudeau was also invited to speak at the Washington Press Club, during which he said: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
That part of Trudeau’s speech, albeit light-hearted, has always defined Canada-US relations. The elephant analogy is also applicable to world-US relations. In the months and years ahead will America be a gentle giant or turn rogue and unpredictable?
Wendy from Wenatchee Washington, Buford from Baton Rouge Louisiana, or the more than 160 million of their fellow eligible American voters have their own country and the world’s future – fate? – in their hands. Truth be told many Americans don’t care what’s beyond their borders. That would be fine by me if we were talking about Belgium.
Frightening questions, and the answers may be more scary
This article was written on the eve of the US 2024 presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. I look at the 538/ABC poll for 3 November and am surprised – concerned – Harris edges Trump by a mere 1%. The dwindling margin of undecided voters, or those opting not to vote, may yet tip the election one way or the other.
Considering the ideological differences, not to mention the conflicting personalities and rational (or irrational behaviour) of the two presidential candidates, this begs several questions:
Why is the choice between Harris and Trump too close to call? What’s there for undecideds to actually decide? What’s wrong with America? Is the populist right-wing campaign and tactic of this election a harbinger of campaigns to come in Europe and the rest of the Americas?
Consider the untruths coming out of the Trump campaign and their candidate’s mouth, perhaps Joseph Goebbels nailed it:
“The bigger the lie the more people will believe it … a lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”
Thanks to the founding fathers, the US has an electoral college
Ask an American who they voted for in the last presidential election. If they respond, for example, “Joe Biden”, wait a second, snort, and reply haughtily, “No you didn’t”. Once you explain the reality, understand that it’ll be hard for someone who believes they live in the greatest democracy to accept there’s a flaw in that belief. While they’re trying to process this revelation, you might want to check out the exits.
On Tuesday the popular vote counting across each of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia (DC) will begin. Then again, it might never end. Fact: a US president isn’t directly elected by popular vote. Each state is allocated electoral votes equal to its two senators plus the number of congressional delegates it has in the US House of Representatives. Along with three electoral votes for DC there are 540 up for grabs. Whichever candidate wins a state’s popular vote, they take all the state’s electoral votes.
Fun fact. A presidential candidate can win the national popular vote but lose the election by failing to win the majority of the 540 electoral votes. Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton, 2016, will attest to this disbelief.
The US is not alone in first past the post (FPTP) winner take all voting. UK general elections, unlike those held by the devolved nations, maintain FPTP. Then again, why should Westminster change? Labour and the Conservatives have had a stranglehold on the House of Commons since 1922 thanks to FPTP.
All a candidate needs is to have more votes than the others on the ballot, even if it is just 30% of the total vote. In the 2024 UK general election only five seats of 650 won with a 50% majority. Proportional voting would threaten their mutual hold on the reins of power.
This issue sounds strangely familiar
According to a Pew Research Center survey, both Harris and Trump supporters have the economy as their number one priority. From there, the two camps widely differ. One big bugaboo MAGA Trump folk like to bang the drum about is immigration.
On the inner wall of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty is a plaque bearing the words of Emma Lazarus’ sonnet The New Colossus. The most quotable part being:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
There’s room for an asterisk below the plaque: ‘Some conditions may apply. Not applicable in all states, especially Florida, Texas and Iowa. See the US Immigration Legal Resource Center for current status and map.’
Was the second amendment misinterpreted?
When I moved to Dallas I was asked by my colleagues if I owned a gun. Gun shops are as prolific as hairdressers and nail bars on a UK high street. It seemed everyone had a gun: pizza delivery people, postal workers, store owners. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the nice Jehovah’s Witness couple had a 10mm Glock 20 tucked under the Watchtower leaflets.
It’s an American’s right to bear arms. I had that right as well. As long as I had two important pieces of paper: a Texas driver’s licence and cash. What the founding fathers wrote in the Constitution of the United States of America also applied to me. I had the right to bear arms.
But let’s say, for sake of argument, was ‘the right’ misinterpreted? It was hot in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, just four years after the British surrender and peace treaty ending the Revolutionary War – or as some English parliamentarians likely called it – the War of Good Riddance.
George Washington, not yet president, convened a group of delegates from the original colonies to draft a constitution. In the sweltering heat and dust of 1787 Philadelphia, delegates dispensed with decorum and removed their jackets and rolled up their sleeves. Interrupting the penning of the sentence about a ‘well regulated militia’, a delegate yelled, “Put that in. We have the right to bear arms! Bloody heat.”
The return of the ugly American or time to heal
In the 1958, Eugene Burdick and William Lederer wrote The Ugly American, a political novel that was adapted into a film in 1963 starring Marlon Brando.
I remember the US in the 1960s; a teenager being kept home from school as the world was on the knife edge of nuclear war, political assassinations, race and anti-war riots, freedom marches, draft dodgers fleeing to Canada, cities on fire, university campuses a hot bed of anti-government protests, and President Lyndon Johnson calling in the various state national guards to restore order.
Every year the American troop commitment to the Vietnam war rose along with the body count. And American students backpacking through Europe on holiday would sew Canadian flags on their jackets and packs not wanting to tarnish The Ugly American.
The 1960s changed America and the world as much as Al-Qaeda did in just one day, three decades later. The 2024 presidential election will also be a defining moment, for better or for worse. The campaigns could not be more diverse. The polls may be close, but the candidates are poles apart.
It used to be within a half a day following the closure of the last poll that there would be a clear winner. We could then get back to football or complaining about the job and the managers we worked for. I was asked, when will there be a decision after Tuesday night? A long time from now.
I hope the polls are wrong and Harris wins by a significant margin in the popular vote as well as in the electoral college. If she wins by the narrowest of numbers, the divide in America could well be significantly more damaging than the 1960s and 9/11 combined.
If Trump wins, the elephant is rogue. “God bless America” and good luck to the rest of us.
I leave you with Bohemian Trumpsody. Enjoy.
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