AMERICANS RE-ELECT GEORGE W. BUSH AS WORLD LEADER
Turkish Probe
November 7, 2004
On Nov. 2 Americans of voting age decided upon not only their own
president, but also by definition the world leader for the remainder
of the globe. In re-electing George W. Bush with more votes than ever
recorded before for a presidential candidate in U.S. history, each
and every one of the 120 million or so voters in the United States
decided the short-term fate of much of the world as well as their own.
But was there really a choice? The answer may be “yes and no.” Yes,
there was a choice — but the choice was limited to only two: Bush or
Kerry. Yes, for the world and the United States Bush was the devil you
know with Kerry the unknown. Yes, Bush was known regarsding his fight
against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Kerry — the unknown
quantity — proved not good enough in what was essentially a wartime
election for a trial and error period of 1,460 days in the White House.
The election campaign ended on Nov. 2 neck and neck in a real
photofinish race with the United States divided right down the middle
intellectually and emotionally — as was the case in the presidential
election of 2000. Indeed, when Americans woke up the following
day to find they had as yet no clear winner and no president, many
feared it would be a repetition of four years before with merely a
change of venue; Ohio instead of Florida. As the day wore on, common
sense prevailed and with or without Ohio, John Kerry could not win,
whereupon he accordingly — and graciously — conceded defeat to the
winner, George W. Bush.
As the voting shows, the ordinary U.S. voter could not easily decide
which of the two — Bush or Kerry — was the better bet for them in
this the highest participated election in U.S. history. So it was a
gamble to foretell the popular vote, and even the crystal balls of
the exit polls proved to be wildly wrong in predicting a landslide
victoryfor John Kerry.
Americans are, generally speaking, a predictable and basically
conservative people, and their antiquated election system is the
same. Indeed, it is so complex that even they cannot understand
it, varying as it does from state to state with different rules
and even different ways of voting. In no democratic country in the
world is there anything like this mind-boggling U.S. electoral system
whereby the president is not chosen directly by the number of popular
personal votes, but by the number of Electoral College delegates on
his side. Many Americans have proposed changing this archaic system,
but to no avail. It is not the ordinary man in the mid-West or the
South who determines the next U.S. president, indeed this was the
first time since 1988 that a president received a majority of the
popular vote in addition to an Electoral College majority — this
time by almost four million votes.
In 2000 George W. Bush was announced by the Supreme Court as the winner
by a margin of only 527 votes in a country of 270 million people, Al
Gore with half a million more votes than Bush having been previously
declared the winner by the media for at least three hours. This time
every effort was made to show the system to be fair, not to rush into
a disputed decision or give Michael Moore more material for a sequel
to Fahrenheit 9/11, busy as he was with his cameras around the Florida
polling stations. In addition, for the first time ever and because
of 2000, some 100 Organization for the Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE) representatives, including three Turkish members
of Parliament, monitored the elections for possible irregularities
and vote rigging as if the United States was a developing country,
not the “leader of the free world.”
In addition to choosing the president, this election was also to
decide the 435 members of the House of Representatives and one third
of the Senate. The Republican majority in both houses of Congress,
the Senate and the House of Representatives was also at stake, but in
the event the majority in the House of Representatives was increased
from one to five.
A figure of 270 of the total 538 Electoral College delegate votes
were needed to win the presidency, with the votes being given en
bloc to the winning party in each state. This cutthroat race which,
like that in 2000, had the extra candidate Nader factor, making a
difference this time of two percent as opposed to one percent last
time, was not an easy win for Bush. Like his opponent, he spent
about $ 500,000 on attack advirtisments in this the most vitriolic
and expensive election in U.S. history; about $ 5 billion.
In this wartime election, it was the swing voters who finally
decided the winner on the platform of security and the fight against
terrorism. They were to vote either (i) not to change horses in
midstream or (ii) for Kerry as the “fresh start for America,” to
quote Kerry. To the question asked in the U.S. media, “Is Kerry of
the same timber as Roosevelt, Kennedy or Clinton who built alliances
as commander in chief for a safe and secure United States and the
world?” over half of the United States said “no,” and less than half
said “yes.” Thus Bush, the incumbent, won his case, with half of
America thinking he was the right candidate to represent the heart
and soul of the country, and the other half thinking him to be the
wrong choice for a more secure United States and world.
This was an election fought on the threat of terrorism and about Iraq,
though there were shades of the original Puritan immigrants of some
four hundred years ago with the continual zealous proclamation of
“Christian and family values” throughout the campaign which doubtless
also played a considerable part in the outcome. The question was which
of the two candidates represented the heart and soul of the United
States; Kerry or Bush, with even the fringe issues of gay marriages
and stem cell research entering the equation. In this frantic race no
stone was left unturned by either side, and it seems that the balance
was finally tipped by the evangelical community in Ohio which were
a 23 percent factor in the total votes for Bush there. To quote a
voter in the critical state of Ohio, “The people of America are far
more biblically centred than is generally realised.”
We also witnessed the last minute TV intervention of Osama bin Laden,
doubtless designed to influence the election in Kerry’s favour, though
it turned out to have the opposite effect, making many Americans
vote for Bush to show that they would not be intimidated. It is an
irony of history that President Bush should have Osama bin Laden to
thank for his unintended support and for four further years to spend
searching for him.
With up to 16 million new and young voters, these first timers
were expected to tip the gold scale balance in favour of Kerry,
but the results show young voters to have been the same percentage
in this frantic race as in that of 2000, and no more. Al Gore had
won 90 percent of the black vote in 2000 and in this election 18 to
24-year-olds, Catholics, singles and Hispanics were expected to vote
for Kerry, with two to three percent of voters undecided on the eve
of the election.
>>From an international perspective, when all is said and done,
we, the silent majority outside the United States, ordinary America
watchers, friends, allies and partners can only stand on the sidelines
as well-wishers, though our common future is closely bound and at
stake, as was the case in the Afghanistan war after Sept. 11, and as
it is now in the chaotic Iraq war. The first priority of President
Bush in his second term should be to solve the Iraq debacle, which
he owes to the Iraqi people, and perhaps it is not a vain hope that
he will heed the advice and warning of his friend Tony Blair to seek
“reconciliation in a fractured world,” to “recognise that this will
not be achieved by military might alone”, and to “find a just solution
to the Palestinian question, the source of so much resentment in the
wider Middle East and the reason for the roots of so much terrorism.”
But have we seen any multilateral, rather than unilateral, leanings in
this president so far? Did President Bush care to ask his NATO allies
for their opinion before his “pre-emptive strike” against Saddam? No,
he did not bother, as he already knew the answer. Did he care about the
advice of the United Arms Inspectors when they asked for more time to
search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? No, he did not. So Bush
in his first term as president acted alone for the United States most
of the time as a Texas lone ranger, despite the hotch-potch “Coalition
of the Willing” that he founded, minus Turkey, as makeshift partners
in the war against Saddam. In his new term in the Oval Office, his
friends and allies will require from President Bush more understanding
than imposition, more co-operation than independent action.
As regards Turkey, the Turkish Parliament’s decision in March 2003
to opt out of the Pentagon’s military plans to invade Iraq from the
north was a political shock for the United States, coming just three
short months after Bush and Erdogan showed themselves in the White
House photo sessions as “arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder” friends
and strategic partners in peace and war, with Bush patting Erdogan
on the back as “an honest man who can be trusted.”
After the March parliamentary rejection, in the eyes of the U.S.
public, Turkey was branded as a traitor, although conversely in Europe
it was praised for its “democratic decision.” President Bush was
reportedly so angry that he did not want to hear mention of Erdogan or
Turkey again. He and his administration seemed unaware that even if the
parliamentary motion had been passed, neither Turkish public opinion,
nor the leaders and people of Iraq, approved a Turkish presence or
intervention there, and that refusal of the motion caused considerable
popular relief in both countries.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was not welcome in Washington DC for many
months, with the official line being that, “Turkey had disappointed
and let down the United States in Iraq.” The Kurdish-U.S. strategic
partnership replaced the Turkish-American alliance and partnership
of half a century’s standing, and it took nearly a year to put
Turkey-U.S. relations back on track and convince President Bush that
Turks were not renegade friends or traitors to the U.S. alliance and
interests because of their (mistaken) democratic vote against a joint
Turkish-U.S. intervention in Iraq. But this is all history now.
While the Bush period of 2000 to 2004 saw a marked improvement in
Turkish-U.S. Trade, now balanced at around $ 7 billion, the Bush push
into Iraq has cost Turkey a loss of trade and investment in that
country. It has also endangered regional stability, with increased
Kurdish influence and power over U.S. policies bringing the threat
of civil war to northern Iraq. This is a matter for great concern
to immediate neighbour Turkey and other countries in the area with
Bush’s threat of Iran and Syria as an “axis of evil,” or rogue states,
creating shock waves in the region.
The abiding heritage of the Bush first-term administration, with
the help of crusader and freudian slips, was to revive the “those
who are not with us are against us” dictum, and especially with the
“axis of evil” doctrine to encourage anti-Islam attitudes in the
wake of Sept 11, while in turn provoking a surge in anti-American
attitudes throughout the world. His next target must be to correct,
ameliorate and change this perception. As Christiane Ammanpour put
it, “President Bush is spectacularly unpopular outside of the United
States.” The continental rift between the United States and Europe was
blamed on President Bush and his policies, with continental Europe
generally preferring Catholic French-speaking Kerry. Among the many
bridges that need to be built, President Bush needs to build them
with the European Union.
Where Turkey is concerned, it must be granted that President Bush
genuinely and vocally supported Turkey’s candidature to the EU,
though his active help proved somewhat counterproductive by hurting EU
leaders’ pride and sensitivities as they considered he was interfering
in their business. But it must have been Bush’s definite push for
Turkey in Helsinki which helped to guarantee its candidacy. It should
be mentioned, however, that Turkey’s getting closer to the EU does not
necessarily mean that she is moving away from the United States. On
the U.S. Armenian lobby’s continuing claims of “genocide,” President
Bush did not appease them but stopped at the “tragic events of 1915”
so as not to hurt Turkey’s deep sensitivities, while candidate Kerry
was on record for his pro-Armenian sympathies, and reportedly had
to be educated as to where Turkey was, what Turkey is good for, and
why it is detrimental to Turkish-American relations to recognise the
“crime of genocide” as claimed by some Americans of Armenian origin.
Bush, on the other hand, showed that he was educated and informed
on Turkey. While friendships are basically between countries, not
incumbent party leaders, it is a big plus that he and Erdogan have
such good chemistry. Even if it was only skin-deep, he and his wife
charmed Istanbul and Ankara on their visit to the NATO Summit in June
2004, praising Turkish food, especially the pear dessert, and the
“beautiful country,” though security considerations did not allow his
public relations efforts to go as far as that of President Clinton and
the famous picture of the baby clutching his nose. While in Turkey he
also took the opportunity to market his greater Middle East Project by
giving prominence to Turkey as a model for a democratic and Islamic
country which, while doubtless well-meant, created many ifs and buts
in Turkish minds as well as in Arab and Islamic countries.
Israel and Russia preferred Bush to Kerry for the reason that they
see him as a leader in the war against terrorism. The Arab world and
China, on the other hand, blamed George W. Bush for being pro-Israel
and responsible for the Iraq war and showed preference for Kerry.
Turkish leaders were careful not to make their secret choice public,
though it was implied that they preferred to see the man they knew
in the White House, rather than have to start all over again.
President Bush was returned to power in an election to a great extent
dominated by the three “Gs” — God, Guns and Gays, but most likely
the deciding element was simply that “he is a likeable guy” and
“one of us,” the preferred image of the ordinary American.
So welcome back, George W. Bush, as president-elect, in the hope of
a safer and more peaceful world where the United States takes more
trouble to integrate and co-operate and win the hearts and minds
of all the citizens everywhere, including that half of your country
which voted against you and your policies.
Yuksel Soylemez