JIM YOUNG/REUTERS

PRESSING THE FLESH: Kerry joins hands with running mate Edwards in New Mexico.

A Nation Divided
	While Kerry's campaign gears up, America is split over whether Bush is a strong leader or a liability
	By MICHAEL ELLIOTT

Posted Sunday, July 11, 2004
To paraphrase Walt Whitman, a U.S. election contains multitudes. The long, drawn-out campaign—the primary season, the spring offensives, the summer punctuated by the drama (however scripted it may be) of the party conventions, the mad dash from Labor Day to the finish line, the debates, the breathless (and, as we know from 2000, sometimes inaccurate) projections of state-by-state results by TV anchors, all add up to a political carnival in which, like a Brueghel painting, there are enough details to satisfy any tastes. All elections matter. The U.S. presidential election, because it chooses the leader of the nation whose policies will shape much of the world for the next four years, matters to everyone.

The U.S. enters the last stages of this year's campaign as a nation divided. Polls have consistently shown—reprising the razor-close margin of 2000—that the electorate is pretty evenly split between those likely to support President George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, and Senator John Kerry, his Democratic opponent. But this is a not a case of a division between equal numbers of those who shrug their shoulders and those who are looking forward to an August at the beach. On the contrary, Bush has polarized the U.S. into camps of those who love the President—who believe that, since Sept. 11, 2001, he has shown steadfast leadership at a time of great peril—and those who hate him—who believe that his Administration has been dangerously mendacious and driven by ideology, and who regard the war in Iraq as a diversion from more pressing targets in the struggle against terrorism. President Bush is a man who sees the world in black and white, and who is seen back by it in the same way. The extraordinary success of Michael Moore's polemical film Fahrenheit 9/11 is testimony to the extent to which some Americans just do not believe anything the Administration says. Yet for a President who has led the U.S. into a controversial war that has so far cost 877 American lives, Bush remains popular among significant segments of the electorate. His sense of right and wrong, his determination that the U.S. must take the fight to its enemies, all resonate with Americans who place a premium on the defense of their nation's vital interests.

Iraq—the choice to go to war there and the way the country's reconstruction has been handled—will be a key issue in the election. In one sense, this is not surprising. Iraq has been more difficult and more bloody than anyone in the Administration led the American people to expect. The revelation of abuses of Iraqi prisoners displayed an ugliness to the war that shook even those who supported it. Yet in the grand sweep of history, it is rare for an issue of foreign policy to dominate a presidential campaign. American elections tend to be fought on matters of domestic policy—the economy, stupid—and candidates have generally acceded to the old adage that politics stops at the water's edge. At least as regards Iraq, this year is different.

U.S. policy toward Asia has not yet become an election issue. During the Democratic primaries, both Senator Kerry and his running mate, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, made much of the "export" of American jobs to India and China, but once he had won the nomination, Kerry reverted to the internationalist, free-trade policies for which he has long been known in Washington. It will be interesting to see if the presence of Senator Edwards on the ticket leads to a revival of tough talk on trade and an appeal—which failed to win Al Gore the White House in 2000—to old-fashioned populism. But whoever the next President will be, he will have a substantial Asian file to handle—the rise of China, the need to end North Korea's nuclear programs and defang tensions between Beijing and Taipei, the continuing battle against Islamic extremism in Southeast Asia and Pakistan, and the urgent need to complete Afghanistan's fragile reconstruction. Americans will decide whether President Bush or Senator Kerry is the better person to handle all those challenges. Asians will be hoping that when the votes are counted—hanging chads and all—the U.S. will be able to unite around its leader and convince the world—much of which resents the way the U.S. deploys its power—that America's limitless energy will be a force used for the good of all.

	Premium Content