November, 2002

It wasn't a sweep, but Republicans gained control of the Senate and maintained and broadened their control of the House, so it might have well have been.

Disaster for those of us who don't support the reversal of most positions upon which George Bush ran for office?

Maybe.

But this president is popular beyond reason and has, by using that popularity adroitly, is now in a position to have his way with tax breaks, court appointments, war and the power politics that attends the threat of war. The far right have at last have erased Bill Clinton's times and have their chance to prevail. The most powerful country in the world will exert its self-will, unencumbered, the footprint laid down with virtually no dissent.

We have yet to see how that plays out.

Thomas L. Friedman made a magnificent point in his November 6th New York Times editorial, "The American Idol." He was writing about Bill Clinton's reception in Berlin at the dedication of the Brandenburg Gate just last week. He made the point that, for the Germans, Clinton represented all that was optimistic and positive about America, focusing within his own naive optimism the world dream of American populism. He goes on to speculate that it's American soft power, in the form of that naive optimism, that our enemies really fear. Friedman's closing line is:

"We have to find a way of defending ourselves from others' weapons of mass destruction without losing our own weapon of mass attraction."

Read that again. It's a statement worthy of Jefferson or Lincoln. It's a magnificent construction, a writer's enlightened moment, because of its clarity, its truth and its timeliness.

We've had numerous occasions in our history when the current government blundered around, did stupid things, being in the pocket of the money guys of the moment. Indeed, whether the Bush administration falls into this category is merely a point of view and open to conjecture. 67% of Americans seem to think not and that's a considerable base of support. We always survived our history because that weapon of mass attraction remained in place.

World opinion willing, because the essence of our attraction is distilled from world opinion, it will survive this as well. Who knows, it may even flourish.

It seems to me that the United States floats upon the last tide of optimism, borne out of the astounding events of the years since the fall of Communism. Breathtaking opulence among the moneyed classes, absolute military domination in a world with no other force but ours and science-fiction advances in technology all took their turn at making us believe the American era was without limit. The world truly lay at our feet, either for the plunder of consumerism or the fashioning of free and interactive societies. The choice was ours.

That we have chosen frivolously may be evidenced by the horror of September 11th, an increasingly damaged physical environment and the near collapse of a misdirected and woefully corrupt stock market.

There were those who rested against their oars at the crest of that tide and wondered. They have been replaced at their stations in the just-past election and now the boat will be pulled furiously in the President's direction. It's not a route he laid as a candidate, not a direction agreed by debate or even serious consideration, but one that smacks of old world imperialism and the drive to empire. We're not yet acting but still reacting, knee-jerking our way into uncharted territory, our own revered and sweat soaked freedoms trailing behind us like a rag at the rudder.

A strange direction for we Americans and I feel a chill in the wind.

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