It’s been two weeks since the US presidential election, but what really happened, and what impact does the outcome have? To shed light on the issue, the Centre for the Study of the United States at the Munk Centre for International Studies hosted a panel discussion last Friday entitled “An Analysis of the US Presidential Election 2004.” The panel discussion was led by Professor Theodore Lowi of Cornell University, Professor Megan Boler of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, and Alan Freeman, the Globe and Mail’s Washington correspondent.
The panelists emphasized the impact of the media during the campaign, US foreign policy on Iraq and the war on terrorism, and the impact of the re-election of the Bush administration on Canada-US relations.
“It ain’t who won, stupid,” said Professor Lowi in his opening statement. “It’s what won!” He proceeded to argue that by re-electing the Republican Party, the US public is not getting what they think they voted for. According to Lowi, the Republicans no longer stand for the traditional beliefs of free market, liberalism and capitalism. Instead they have become the equivalent of the “British Conservatives of the 19th century” who believe in government tutelage to create a “morally whole society” and quash internal dissent.
Lowi went on to say that Kerry and the Democrats did almost everything right with the exception of his reference to the ‘middle class,’ which connotes segregation. The reason the Democratic Party did not win, he said, is because it cannot: That is, not until the Republicans lose, and he speculated that will only come with their disintegration. Lowi described the Republican Party as a hegemon that can last for decades but is full of fault lines along which it will eventually crumble. He predicted that with this present re-election the fault lines will begin to be visible among the party members as dissent will no longer be suppressed.
Following Lowi’s argument, Megan Boler looked at the effect that the media had on the presidential campaigns. She argued that the mainstream media has been “systematically muzzled” by the Bush administration and has fed inadequate and misleading information to the public. Furthermore, she said, the free media has had to give an “uncritical representation of the Bush administration” in order to conceal the glitches. Boler went on to note that the media has thus far failed to report on the six congressmen who have filed for an official investigation into the 2004 election, or on voting irregularities in the “swing state” of Ohio.
Alan Freeman countered that he does believe that Bush won the election. Relatively speaking, he noted, Bush received more votes from Catholics, Hispanics and married women, especially those with children. Greater emphasis on family and religion accounted for this increase in votes, he said. Freeman noted that 64% of the American population that went to church more than once a week voted for Bush and 58% who only attended once a week voted for Bush. Lowi also argued that the Republicans won on “moral clarity.” The Democrats, Freeman argued, realized the importance of God and religion too late.
An audience member asked if the Iraq war was manufactured and was based on a moral imperative to rid the world of evil regimes, Lowi said that it was, but that the frightening thing was that Bush truly believed in all that he was saying. He believed in his moral superiority and his right according to scripture to purge the world.
