With one more day left in the race to election day in the U.S., there seem to be two prevailing emotions in the air, depending on whether you find yourself in America or outside of it.
For those participating directly in the presidential vote, the reigning attitude is one of near-absolute resolve in their choice. If one may believe The New York Times’ recent article on the effect Friday’s bin Laden tape has had on the minds of voters (i.e. not much), it appears that many Americans have known who they would be voting for long before the presidential race began.
But for the rest of the world watching the spectacle of what is probably the most crucial vote of our collective lifetimes unfold from their impotent positions outside, the general spirit is that of nervous anxiety, as well as a sickening sense of approaching doom. With the race still far too close to call, and the fate of the entire world, developing and not-so-developed alike, hanging in the balance, even the less politically inclined feel the urge to twitch and nail-bite their way through exhaustive CNN binges.
For this newspaper, it has been difficult to know exactly how to respond intelligently to an ostensibly foreign issue, which in a perfect world of clearly demarcated nation-states should concern us only indirectly, but that on the contrary seems to be more important than any rivaling “domestic” concern.
Looking back to the way we handled earlier presidential elections is less than illuminating. Back in the halcyon days of 2000, The Varsity featured almost no coverage of the Bush v. Gore contest. Space was largely devoted to the upcoming Canadian federal election, which was also taking place that November, as well as a more local election occurring at the same time, the Toronto mayoral race. The November 2, 2000 issue, for example, featured a lengthy profile of recently deceased then-candidate Tooker Gomberg, but neither endorsements nor denouncements of either U.S. hopeful.
Even after the election turned into a month-long Supreme Court battle over recounts and hanging chads, we didn’t consider it important enough to displace a story about the NDP. The American election, though a source of entertainment, was still going on in a foreign country.
As colleague and Varsity pundit Sean Kirby put it, “it was a simpler time.”
Now non-Americans are plagued with the uncanny fear that their fates are, in a very real way, in the hands of a few hundred voters in swing states like Iowa.
This sense of discomfort was palpable enough in the U.K. for British citizens to send tens of thousands of letters over ten days to undecided U.S. voters urging them to vote Bush out, in a controversial campaign staged by The Guardian newspaper this past month.
Mostly, though, we’re simply looking on in dread at the unfolding drama, which quite likely won’t be over when polling stations close Tuesday night if 2000’s tight race is any indication. We’re resigned to the acute sensation that we’re like traumatized children, watching powerlessly as Daddy beats Mommy, yet again.
When America goes off to vote, many of its citizens will do so unaware that their calm self-assuredness arises from their lucky position in the eye of a global storm. They will happily tell the desperate British letter-writers to ‘mind their own fucking business,’ blind to the scorched detritus left behind by the past half-century of America’s “business.”
But then again, one day-one day, China too will have an election.
