Now down in the Southern Hemisphere, the French team isn’t doing very well and will probably fly home after only the three games of the tournament’s first round, but that is not the point. The point is rather the continued refusal by FIFA officials (i.e. from the international football organization in charge of the World Cup) to install any sort of modern technology (e.g. televised replay review) to ensure that officiating travesties like what happened to the Irish can never happen again. This only ensures, of course, that such a thing will happen again, at least one more time, and this during that organization’s signature event that draws the sustained attention of billions of spectators from all over the world – a substantial portion of whom tune in to cheer on their own nation’s team.

Sure enough, another such travesty has come along on cue, namely the denial yesterday to the United States team of a perfectly-valid third goal which would have capped a tremendous rally from a 2-0 deficit by half-time with a glorious win. Instead, the US team earned a 2-2 draw, which gave them a mere one point towards advancing further in the tournament rather than the full three to which the victory they deserved would have entitled them.

Any assertion that the Americans just didn’t deserve to win anyway, having put themselves in that 2-0 hole in the first half – even when put forward by a renowned sports journalist writing in that nation’s “newspaper of record” – is simply silly, perhaps even evidence of a tendency towards rationalization bordering on the psychotic: it was a perfectly-good goal, and neither the referee nor any other FIFA official has yet to offer any reason why it was disallowed. Little more attention is likewise due to claims that the free-kick from which the disallowed goal resulted was itself illegitimate: that is far more a matter of legitimate contention either way and, in any case, it is naturally much more important to get goal/no goal decisions right, since they’re the ones which – as here – can by themselves make a two-point difference (or even worse; see below) in a team’s tournament standing.

Perhaps the American team will be able to advance into the next round anyway. But already FIFA officials will have harvested one serious, undesired result from their blindness to the necessity of bringing in modern technology: loss of the American market. As with each of the other World Cup tournaments involving the American team, the inevitable articles have proliferated about why North American has continually been relatively immune to the appeal of “soccer” as a mass spectator sport. Nothing ever really happens on the field, supposedly; the referee keeps how much time is really left a secret; Americans like sports where they can use their hands; and so on. As of yesterday an additional and rather more serious objection to the sport can be added: that’s the game where they can’t get the decisions right, where there is absolutely nothing to prevent a team from being blatantly robbed of a dramatic come-from-behind victory. It just amounts to a bunch of athletes running around on a field involved in a crap-shoot, something completely subject to chance or a referee’s particular whim – the hell with it! And thus do prospects of enlisting the enormous population/income/marketing potential of that part of the globe in support of this “world game” become remoter than ever.

Who’s Next To Be Robbed?

Note also that at this point the World Cup tournament is still in its early stages. Another such miscarriage of football-justice can hardly be ruled out, and in exactly a week the playoff stage will start where in each game the loser goes immediately home, making the effects of any such refereeing mistake all the more irretrievable. So which will be the next country – after Ireland, after the USA (if they turn out not to qualify through the group stage) – to watch its footballing hopes and dreams betrayed as its national team unjustly loses a game under controversial circumstances? And just how much consternation among national fans and vituperation against FIFA officials does there have to be before the latter finally see the light and start making use of available 21st-century technology which can (wholly, or at least in part) make this sort of agonizing controversy a thing of the past?

There is also another, more insidious angle to what happened at last evening’s USA vs. Slovenia football match. The official in charge was Koman Coulibaly of Mali, supposedly a veteran international referee with particular experience at the biennial African Cup of Nations tournament, but clearly only present in the ranks of officials available to run games at this World Cup due to a sort of affirmative action-type policy which prefers summoning single referees from a wide range of all the world’s football leagues to tapping multiple officials from the top leagues (e.g. England, France, Spain) where the football is at its most serious. In any case, one would have to expect that referees’ pay at the “less serious” leagues – where one has to include those based in Africa – lags significantly behind. Consider this in connection with speculation that arose prior to the World Cup over the possible “fixing” of games to further the interests of powerful (often Asian-based) gambling syndicates – and the possible motives behind Coulibaly’s otherwise inexplicable (and so far unexplained) decision to deny the US team that winning goal become quite ugly indeed.

                          

That’s just the problem: Porsches do “gulp,” they don’t just “slurp.” But up to very recently no one really cared about what sort of MPG a Porsche would get – if you had to worry about that, then you certainly could not afford the car in the first place. In these energy-conscious times, however, that’s not allowed anymore: everyone has to worry about MPG, says the US government, and that includes Porsche. Or eventually it will, at least, for the American authorities did grant Porsche an exception to the requirement put out last year that all autos sold in the US meet minimum MPG requirements – that in exchange for collecting from the German company a couple hundred dollars as a “fine” for every such car that is presently sold.

But that’s a temporary exception, and it expires in 2016. For Porsche cars to meet the requirement then, the article reports, they would have to achieve an average 10% improvement in MPG each year in-between. Yes, hybrid Porsches are on the way, but not in time for 2016. And that’s when that little “fine” presently being collected balloons up to amounts that can reach $37,500 per vehicle sold.

                          

Over here in Europe, the only on-line publication that I can catch in my RSS-net handling the subject is Flanders’ leading newspaper, De Standaard. Inevitably, the piece (no by-line, just credited to the Belga news agency) is entitled Americans keep getting fatter; and the accompanying photo meant to illustrate the theme does get things rather ass-backwards. This is a somewhat briefer treatment than Neergaard’s, but it nonetheless is able to repeat for De Standaard’s readers all the main statistics: 23 states listed as having even more obese people than last year, Mississippi as always at the top of the list, etc. The Flemish piece does add a bit of new material about the impact that the authors of the report think the current financially-troubled times will have on the situation. You might think that impact on people’s health would be favorable (folks not being able to afford so much food, etc.), but you would be wrong. Rather, cheaper food tends to be less healthy, and plus we can also expect the rolls of Americans not covered by any health insurance at all to rise, in parallel with cases of stress and depression.

                          

I like to start with France, a civilization which naturally is the implacable enemy of every true “real American” cultural warrior – oooh la la Gov. Palin!

From Sylvain Cypel, New York correspondent for Le Monde (Guantanamo, financial crisis, Iraq . . .: The dossiers that await the president):

The new president intends, as he has repeated, to take during the first year of his term a series of “spectacular” decisions and initiatives. He should therefore, within the first 100 days after 20 January, give an “address to the Islamic world” designed to improve current relations and to scotch any idea of a “clash of civilizations.” But his decisions will be squeezed in a vise of, on the one side, the impact of the economic crisis and, on the other, the need to put into effect several costly [election] promises, while the American public deficit approaches $1 trillion.

And he adds about Guantanamo (a subject of interest among Europeans, you can be sure, and for quite a while):

Closing Guantanamo poses a logistical problem of unprecedented scope. Whom to set free, whom to keep in detention? Knowing that the material under secret seal held by the prosecution includes tens of thousands of pages, although one suspects that a number of the confessions have been obtained through torture. Where to place the prisoners, and on what basis to judge them equitably?

From Laurent Joffrin of Libération (It’s time):

It’s time, in fact. [Il est temps, en effet.] . . .

It’s time, in fact, to put an end to a brutal, mendacious and dogmatic foreign policy that has dug a ditch between rich and poor nations. It’s time to finish an Iraq war which has resuscitated the specter of colonialism. It’s time to stop a social policy defined by the rich, for the rich. It’s time to claim back from finance the monopoly that it had arrogated to itself on the course of globalization. It’s time to return to the citizens of the United States, through means of their elected representatives, a certain minimum influence on their economic destiny – that is, on their destiny, period. It’s time that America cooperated with the common efforts for safeguarding the planet. It’s time, finally, that the greatest democracy be incarnated not by a senator coming out of a dominating Western conservatism that is sure of itself, but by a man of the new century, of mixed culture, open to differences.

Now to Germany. From Torsten Krauel, Washington correspondent of Die Welt (What’s awaiting the new president):

Today in [US] domestic policy there are three great tasks – the stifling of the financial crisis, the transformation of the welfare state, the general refurbishment of infrastructure including ecological measures. All three areas cost a lot of money. The budget situation after the financial aid [i.e. bailout] package is so dire that the new president will have to decide immediately which of the three tasks will have to be temporarily put off to the side. The struggle about this will mark the first half of 2009. A strong faction of Democrats wishes to immediately address climate change, a just-as-strong Republican faction wants energy-autarky for the US. An even stronger faction from both parties wants to introduce national health insurance, the Democrats somewhat more insistent than the Republicans. And all politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans, want to save the credit and real estate markets right away. It’s this last that will become first priority, at the cost of climate-change and maybe even of the health system.

We can’t neglect Die Zeit, of course. Here is Andrea Böhm (The white-black president, and datelined on 6 November 08 – but then, the Die Zeit paper edition is a weekly):

Now America has its first black president, who in reality is a white-black president. And the world has, at least for a moment, “its” America back: from George W. Bush to Obama, from Saul to Paul, from the war-making superpower to the leader of the ecological transformation. About whether and how Obama will fulfill these enormous expectations, one in the next few months can certainly doubt. Right now, though, the symbolic impact of this victory takes one’s breath away.

Never before has a presidential election had so much to do, in such a dramatic way, with the myth of resurrection – that quintessentially American belief, according to which everyone, even a whole nation, after falling into the bottomless pit, can pull one/itself together and invent one/itself anew. To put it in the prosaic words of American TV comic Sarah Silverman: America has, within one election night, transformed itself from “asshole of the universe” [that's given in the original English] into a land of the politically-enthused with a “world president.” That is the global effect of this electoral victory, that might soon just dissipate – but that goes much deeper in inner-American reality.

And then from Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, their Washington correspondent Reymer Klüver (Arising from ruins):

The election of Barack Obama was for America an act of self-liberation, indeed, of self-cleansing.

Forty-five years after a black preacher spoke on the white marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial of his dream of an America without racial barriers, this land has shown once more that that can come to maturity. It has overcome hundred-year-old prejudices. Forty-five years after Martin Luther King’s great address, the Americans have made a black their president. . . .

All of this gives motivation to the justified hope that he in fact has the capabilities to lead the land in a superior and considered way – other than the case with the president still there in office. That he possesses the capacity and the will to build bridges over the moats that his predecessor wantonly has torn open and which have so deeply divided not only US society but the entire world. That he can restore to a land that in recent years has lost its direction a new confidence in its own capabilities and values.

Now to the Netherlands and Juurd Eijsvoogel (you can tell from that name that we’re not in Germany anymore, no?) of the NRC Handelsblad (America chooses a world-citizen):

After eight years of Bush, in which superpower America first was hit in the heart and then frittered away much regard and authority in the world, American voters have now opened the way for the recovery of their land’s reputation.

Yesterday they not only chose a new president, they also – although they weren’t meaning to – gave a signal to the world. With Barack Obama they have made a world-citizen their leader.

And that did not slip by the world’s attention. Did not Obama himself say, when this summer he addressed a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, that he was not only “a proud citizen of the United States” but also “a fellow citizen of the world”? That sounded much different from: who isn’t with us, is against us. Not only Americans were yearning for change, after eight years of Bush – a big part of the world was, too.

Now to Denmark: the lead-editorial from Berlingske Tidende is entitled A victory for the USA:

It’s almost too banal to say that it was a landslide victory. It was a victory that was national and that far exceeded what is normal for a presidential election – a land divided in two. . . .

The war against terror has cost much in the way of both human and economic resources. The fight has also split the rest of the world. The USA is far from alone in this fight. But the Americans have also gained a long series of new enemies, which it will cost just as many resources to fight in the future. Also, the lands allied with the USA, which normally could be counted upon to be among the USA’s friends, have begun to hesitate before the war against terror. Not because they don’t believe in it, but because the present president George W. Bush no longer has much to offer. Obama will be able to put things in the right direction again. He represents more than any other president in recent times a unified USA. This imposes both national and international obligations. The expectations for him are therefore sky-high.

By the way, you can see here an embedded interview with Berlingske’s US correspondent, about how all this US election stuff has been playing in Denmark. Of course, the actual name Berlingske Tidende is no where to be seen on the post, and is only heard out of the mouth of the Danish reporter, Karl Erik Stougaard, because such a name as that is too confusing for American ears to be captured and accurately transcribed.

Then we head across a chilly November’s Copenhagen to the edge of the Rådhusplads and the daily newspaper Politiken; foreign editor Michael Jariner’s analysis is entitled America writes history:

The election of Barack Obama does not mean that there is no longer a division between black and white, for the poverty and criminality statistics show with all clarity that there is.

But Americans have moved closer to the realization of that dream that the black civil rights activist Martin Luther King formulated 45 years ago in his famous I have a dream speech. . . .

For the night’s voting [Copenhagen time] blacks and Latinos put themselves together as a voting-group that can decide elections, and this will unavoidably rub off on the composition of the many thousand of political and administrative positions which now must be filled. It potentially has wide-ranging implications for the whole of American society.

And then to Poland, to the “election newspaper,” of course, Gazeta Wyborcza. Witold Gadomski demands that Obama must remember his promises:

The president-elect has carefully avoided answering questions about who will finance all these gifts [this refers to the many programs involving new spending cited in the previous paragraph that Gadomski claims Obama promised during his campaign - national health insurance, aid to defaulting homeowners, etc.]. To be sure, he has announced a rise in taxes, but only for the 5% best-paid Americans. He also has not occupied himself with those problems whose solution will be neither easy not pleasant for Americans – the hole in public finances and the galloping indebtedness of America, the wasteful administration of public institutions established in the last half-century for addressing the standard of living of the poorest Americans, such as Medicare, Medicaid and the “sponsored enterprises” to assist housing construction.

By the way, that Gazeta article also has a great picture of Obama at his local Chicago polling-place, looking straight at the camera in a determined, even defiant, manner and holding up his ballot. The picture is credited to Reuters, but I hadn’t seen it anywhere else; you should click through to check it out, even if all those funny letters of the Polish language somehow intimidate you.

That’s about all I can do for now – I know, I neglected Belgium, the Czech Republic, Uncle Tom Dooley, and some other countries as well, but that’s just the way it is. By the way, comments are certainly welcome via e-mail on this Andrew Sullivan format: to a great degree, I feel, it’s rather superficial, since almost all of the articles from which I took these extracts had other sections that deserved mention too. Plus, I generally like to think that some accompanying analysis from yours truly is in order – for instance, did you catch that one citation where it was clear that the correspondent didn’t know what he was talking about regarding American politics? In a nutshell – and as all long-standing €S followers (if there are any – Hi Mom!) already know – I like to go mostly with deeper but narrower coverage, rather than this more-extensive but shallower reporting.

Of course, ideally I would go with extensive and deep coverage, but certain restrictions of time, space, and finance preclude that for now. On this same subject, let me voice my suspicion that we actually have Andrew Sullivan’s editorial assisant (a certain Patrick Appel) to thank for the Election Reax post and that extract-anthology “Andrew Sullivan blog-post format” generally. I’m afraid we can’t afford editorial assistants here at EuroSavant.

                          

If we do get some sort of definitive result out of the day’s proceedings, Sabatier points out that it can only turn out one way, if you pay attention to the pollsters and other experts, namely a victory for Barack Obama. So why not go ahead and offer “four lessons” out of the American electoral campaign, as seen from a French perspective? Although, that said, Sabatier at the same time does take care to factor the possibility of a surprise McCain victory into his conclusions.

That willingness to keep a McCain victory in the picture that way is impressive, if perhaps what you could call the “price” of writing this kind of backward-looking piece while the election results are still undecided, but Sabatier does also make some good observations in his analysis. His first “lesson” (and section-heading) is “An Historical Election,” and that is pretty obvious: first serious woman/black candidates for president, the longest and most expensive campaigns, etc. It’s not until “lesson” #2 that he starts to get interesting: “A vote of rejection rather than adhesion.” If Obama wins, writes Sabatier, that will be most of all a grand rejection of the presidency of George W. Bush – and an explicit rejection of McCain, seen as closely linked to the current president. If McCain wins after all, that will similarly be due not to any of the Arizona Senator’s positive properties, but rather to a rejection of the too-inexperienced Obama in a time of great national crisis – oh, and also, according to Sabatier, a rejection by a predominantly white electorate of the concept of a black man as head of state. One important reason why this will be so, whoever wins, is that neither candidate, in Sabatier’s eyes, has taken the trouble during this campaign to give voters reasons to vote for them by truly confronting the serious issues of the time, which will after all be awaiting the winner, with well-considered and well-presented policy proposals. You can object that Obama has in fact done this, which to some degree is true, yet the Obama camp (along with McCain) really has not offered any measures to deal with the current financial crisis. Indeed, both candidates are inhabiting some sort of dream-world with talk of their various tax-cuts, in light of the clear fiscal needs of the country in the opposite direction, and this tends to reinforce Sabatier’s point.

His “lesson” number 3, like the first, is fairly obvious. Over the (long) course of the presidential campaign one fear has replace the other: the fear of terrorism and failure in Iraq has been replaced with fear of a new Great Depression. Naturally this has mainly hurt McCain, not only by drawing the national conversation away from the military and foreign policy spheres where he is said to have superior expertise, but also because of McCain’s various instances of unwise statements (“The fundamentals of the US economy are strong”) and unwise behavior in response to these economic worries.

“Red vs. Blue” Not Dead?

No, let’s rather take a look at the fourth, and final, “lesson”: “The civil war between blues and reds is not finished.” He is talking here about the great “culture war” said to have raged within the US for a number of decades now, between two different sets of principles and attitudes best summed up by “red vs. blue.” (Of course, Sabatier offers his own summary within the article of what “red” and “blue” are all about – actually, really only “red”; I assume nothing like that is necessary here to readers of this blog.) It has been the emergence onto the political scene – and (temporary) mass-popularity – of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin which has supposedly showed that this “culture war” is alive and well, followed by the “Joe the Plumber populist myth” that prolonged and reinforced it. (And yes, in Sabatier’s article it’s Joe le Plombier.) If McCain ends up winning after all, Sabatier goes on to write, that will show the continuing power of the “silent majority” upon which the Republican Party has based its power since 1968. Well yes, that would be true; however, other observers see this “culture war” influence fading in American politics, Palin or no Palin. (That’s from Salon, so if you don’t subscribe, you might have to endure a brief flash presentation.)

One footnote: We find out here how to say in French “the surge” – as in what happened in Iraq from early 2007, whose more-accurate expression in English is of course “escalation” instead – or at least Patrick Sabatier’s crack at the translation. It’s coup de boutoir, which my Larousse dictionary does translate as an entire phrase, namely as “sly hit, cutting remark.” Hmmm – so that’s supposed to be “surge” . . .

Oh, and while you’re on the webpage with Sabatier’s article – if you’re there – check out the “Video of the Day” embedded in the top-right corner. Yes, it’s none other than the video of Dick Chency giving his endorsement to McCain, with the mini-quotation there below in yellow type “I am delighted to support John McCain.” You can be sure that that endorsement resonates just as much to John McCain’s benefit with readers of Le Point – in terms of NOT! – as it did with the American public. And while you’re at it, why not click the button below that (past the box Plutôt McCain ou Obama?) where it says Quiz Présidentiel? Can you believe it: the question there actually reads “What is the American national anthem called? Star-Spangled Banner, Star-Strangled Banner or Star-Pringles Banner?” No joke: check it out yourself.

                          

In the meantime, you have the occasional foreign article about the US elections that you rather wish did not have to be there, like what we see today in the main Czech daily Mladá fronta dnes: You’ll be arrested at the polls, leaflets mislead American voters. The lede:

In the last hours before the presidential elections American voters are being flooded with dirty tricks. Misleading e-mails go to Americans, disquieting telephone calls occur, and people find under their doors slanderous pamphlets. Their purpose is to dissuade people from voting, to mislead and confuse them. A part of these tricks this year have a racist flavor due to Barack Obama’s dark skin.

The article (no by-line given) proceeds to give a pretty good list of the various don’t-get-out-the-vote schemes that have been uncovered so far; some of them I hadn’t even heard of yet.

• Leaflets which appeared in the predominantly-black Philadelphia suburbs warning people that they could be arrested when they showed up at the polls to vote if they had any outstanding local fines or judgments;
• More leaflets, this time in Virginia and featuring an authentic-looking official stamp, informing voters that the anticipated congestion at the polls had led the authorities to hold the voting over two days; Republicans would vote on Tuesday, and Democrats on Wednesday;
• A recently-broadcast e-mail in Pennsylvania, from the “Republican Federal Committee,” warning Jewish voters that a vote for Barack Obama could bring another Holocaust;
• Back to Philadelphia (you can tell that Pennsylvania is the ultimate “swing state” this time around): in another suburb, this one mainly Jewish, leaflets claiming that Obama is more pro-Palestine than pro-Israel, and including a picture – as if that proved anything -of him speaking in Germany, presumably during his extensive foreign tour of late last July;
• And over in Nevada, telephone calls plaguing Hispanic voters, coming from supposed Obama campaign staffers (so they are not robocalls), suggesting that they can just vote via telephone.

Readers should have no trouble discerning the one-way partisan direction of these fraudulent measures. The very way the electorate has changed for this election draws them out of the woodwork: the Obama campaign, in particular, has inspired a mass of what are probably millions of new voter-registrants, many of whom are young and/or black or Hispanic, most all of whom are first-time voters unfamiliar with the process. And these tricks are only what have been uncovered so far; presumably tomorrow, Election Day itself, will mark the climax of all these stratagems, whether discovered or not.

A Danish View – Mostly Correct!

Then we have a more comprehensive review of the almost-over American election process by Nils-Ole Heggland in the Christian Danish daily Kristeligt Dagblad: The world’s longest election campaign closes today. Heggland points out that this whole affair has not just run “only” for the ten months that have passed since the first primaries at the beginning of January; in actuality, the candidates had been gathering money and support – and visiting primary states, especially the early ones of Iowa and New Hampshire – for most of the previous year. (I know that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama formally announced their candidacies for president in February, 2007; Heggland does not mention this.) But if it has been a long process, it has also been a crowded one; Heggland marvels that a full 60 million Americans were involved in the primary process for one of the two main American parties, or a full one-fifth of the population.

Otherwise, of course it’s fun to pick out the things that this foreigner has gotten wrong in the short history he tries to give his readers here of the campaigns leading up to tomorrow’s Election Day. He incorrectly gives the total number of members of the House of Representatives as 438 (it’s 435), and gives the mistaken impression that governors of all fifty states are also standing for re-election tomorrow. Of rather more interest is his characterization of the two political parties: “Republicans include both strong Christian conservatives and more moderate people from the east and west coasts. Democrats stretch from union members to minority representatives to very conservative Southerners.”

And of course Heggland has to warn us that tomorrow’s election could well turn out to be a much tighter race than we can now imagine. After all, McCain “is known for his comeback-ability,” and there is always the “Bradley effect,” which he correctly explains to us as voters telling (exit-)pollsters that they will vote black, but actually voting white. Well, we’ll soon see; in the meantime, he recommends Real Clear Politics as the best place to follow the returns.

                          

(Oh, and why French and Danish today? Just following this weblog’s general modus operandi, i.e. because I felt like it, although I also had a sense of not having discussed anything French or Danish lately and wanted to re-balance things a bit.)

However, I did run across an interesting piece by Johan Vardrup, the reporter sent to Denver by the well-respected Danish daily Berlingske Tidende, entitled Republicans hold happy hour for Hillary. From its very first line in the lede (“What won’t one do to fish for votes?”) you get a clear-cut sense of Vardrup’s attitude here: Damn, these Americans truly play some electoral hardball!

The subject here is the Happy Hour for Hillary staged on Monday by the Republican Party, staged in Denver of course, in fact just about as close as they could find a suitable place to the Pepsi Center where the Democratic convention is going on. And although it turned out that the eponymous guest of honor never showed up – despite the open offer of a free beer, as Vardrup notes – the point was really to offer a congenial forum for those of her supporters still not ready to support Obama, even to the point of considering voting for McCain (one of which, a certain Debra Bartoshevich, has already done a campaign ad for McCain, although Vardrup does not mention this in the article). In point of fact, Clinton through her spokesperson made it clear that she did not recommend that this “Happy Hour” be included in any Democratic delegate’s convention itinerary. Reactions that Vardup tracked on an on-line pro-Hillary discussion forum ranged from regarding this Republican move as a friendly gesture to calling it outright manipulation.

Man Who Knows Too Much = Presidential Loser

Moving on within the Danish press, I naturally called upon my favorite Danish observer of American affairs, Paul Høi and his weblog (off the Berlingske Tidende site) American Conditions. He hasn’t quite yet filed a reaction to Hillary’s speech yet – or indeed to the Democratic convention in any respect (wise man!) – but nonetheless his column of yesterday offers a “home run” of an insight into American politics. It’s entitled Stupidity, and perhaps it’s best to skip first to the very end of the piece for a summary of his point: “My rule of thumb: The man who knows too much is always eliminated in spy novels, and the same is true – whether one likes it or not – in American presidential elections.”

The thesis is simple: Americans want as their president not somebody manifestly above-average intellectually – i.e. superior to most of them – but rather about as smart as they are themselves. From Høi’s calculations, this explains the winner in (almost) all presidential elections since the Second World War, and it also explains the lamentable state to which the McCain-Obama campaign debate has already sunk at this relatively early point. Of course that debate need have nothing actually to do with the issues! It’s far more important for victory to succeed in painting your opponent as someone “elite” – “who eats brie and sips Chardonnay,” as Høi recalls was George H.W. Bush’s description of the cartoonist Gary Trudeau once his depiction in “Doonesbury” while he was president started to grate.

Høi is honest enough to admit that this viewpoint is hardly original with him. Early in his piece he refers to a 1999 article by Jonathan Chait advancing much the same argument in the New Republic, “Why America Loves Stupid Candidates,” which was accompanied by a crackerjack drawing of candidate George W. Bush with a dunce’s cap. But this pattern allegedly holds true all the way back to the 1948 surprise victory by Harry Truman over Thomas Dewey, with only one exception that Høi is willing to admit of, that being John F. Kennedy (who, we’ll recall, barely won the 1960 election and indeed might have gained crucial electoral support from the residents of several Chicago-area cemeteries). Jimmy Carter? He positioned himself as a simple peanut farmer from Plains, GA, while in 1992 Bill Clinton took care to don a working-class, “salt-of-the-earth” mantle (as Hillary did also this year, Høi admits). The 2000 election was naturally a classical manifestation of this syndrome: quite apart from any claims to have invented the Internet (generally manufactured by his detractors), just making clear to people how thoroughly he understood it was a grievous blow to Al Gore’s candidacy. (In this connection, here’s a bonus tidbit from the article: in Danish they actually have a word for “nerd,” – it’s nørd!) And we all have had almost eight years to get to know George W. Bush very well indeed, the second set of four largely thanks to the allegedy very “French” John Kerry.

And Your “Joe Sixpack” Winner Is . . .

So which of the current candidates is likely to benefit most from this underlying dynamic? Høi thinks it will be McCain, whom he terms clearly “the most anti-intellectual” of the two main candidates. True, true, McCain has appeared far more often on “The Tonight Show,” “The Daily Show,” etc. (not to mention in a movie), and is a far, far richer man than Barack Obama – but there you go again resorting to logic, my son, forgetting that we’re talking about American politics here! All of John McCain’s money really doesn’t enter into the equation, since according to Høi what matters is not finances per se but rather demonstrating a proper non-elitist attitude – i.e. that you’re just another “Joe Sixpack.” (Another linguistic bonus here: “Joe Sixpack” in Danish is mulde-Jens, from muld meaning “sod”!) The Obama campaign recently has belatedly recognized and started to fire back on this front, such as with the ads riffing off of John McCain’s inability to remember how many houses he and Cindy have, but Barack Obama might be fatally disadvantaged here – after all, he won scholarships to top universities, and even became editor of the Harvard Law Review. And so, as ever, the American electorate might again wind up with a president reflecting them most broadly – perhaps the president they truly deserve.

                          

In the meantime, the countries of the NATO alliance struggle to come to terms with the new ruthless military face Russia has shown in this crisis. Germany now stands central in that military alliance, in the same way it has stood central for some time now within the European Union, again because of its sheer weight of population and economic power (and, who knows, maybe also its reputation for military ability in the past), which makes German commentary on these recent developments particularly interesting.

A very good contribution comes from Jochen Bittner, who writes a weblog, called Planet in Progress, that is carried off the Die Zeit webserver. For his essay entitled Good bye [sic], Putin, he takes as his starting-point that old saw about NATO’s purpose (attributed to the Alliance’s first Secretary-General, the 1st Baron Ismay, that it is “to keep the Americans in, the Soviets out and the Germans down.” But things have changed since back in those days, especially since the break-up of the Soviet Eastern European empire in 1989 and the break-up of the Soviet Union itself two years after that. For one thing, there has been no further need to keep the Germans “down” – the EU has itself done quite a sufficient job of anchoring German interests within those of Europe generally – and indeed the impulse in recent years has rather been the opposite, i.e. to motivate greater German involvement and influence within NATO – in the interest of gaining the additional German troops and money such greater involvement would necessarily bring with it, you understand.

Russians Still Out?

So no more “Germans down.” That’s fine, but an even more remarkable turn-around in Baron Ismay’s aphoristic formulation involved “Russians out”: no more were they to be kept out, they were rather to be invited in! Yes, NATO policy towards Russia during the Yeltsin years (especially as espoused by the Americans, as Bittner point out) was actually one of the “Open Door.” This did not extend so far as actually offering NATO membership (although I can remember how that option was certainly discussed, as incredible as that may seem today), but did still mean considerable cooperation and co-involvement – as long as Russia started behaving itself in politically-acceptable ways, of course. At the bare minimum this meant peaceful conflict-resolution in accordance with the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 (together with various subsequent accords which reinforced the same point).

Now, with their actions in Georgia, the Russians have grossly violated that expected standard of behavior. And quite naturally the existing mechanisms of NATO-Russian cooperation were put on hold yesterday as a result at the Ministerial session of NATO’s North Atlantic Council, as the NATO collective statement made clear to Russia that “we cannot continue with business as usual.” Have things turned around so complely that it is time to return to the old days of having NATO focus on keeping “Russians out”?

To that Bittner says “yes,” but with good reason, namely the justification Moscow has used for its Georgia intervention: protecting Russian passport-holders outside of Russia’s own boundaries. This is revealed in an editorial the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dimitri Rogosin, wrote for the International Herald Tribune (Washington’s hypocrisy, in English), writing “As for the defense of our citizens outside the country, the use of force to defend one’s compatriots is traditionally regarded as a form of self-defense. Countries such as the United States, Britain, France and Israel have at numerous times resorted to the use of armed force to defend their citizens outside national borders,” going on to cite incidents such as the intervention of Belgian paratroopers in Zaire in 1965 and the US attack on Grenada in 1983.

Protecting One’s Own – Outside

But there is a problem here with Ambassador Rogosin’s reasoning, Bittner says: the intervetions he cites have involved the evacuation of a country’s citizens outside national borders, not the conquest of the territory in question. Yet it is that latter “right” that the Russians now claim – and, if you think about it, it’s quite a frightening “right” indeed, employable at their discretion to invade the Ukraine, the Baltics, and any number of the other states in Russia’s “near abroad” which in the past where subject to the authority of the USSR, and which Russia presumably would like to have back.

It’s this “right” that the world has seen before, namely in the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 to “protect” the ethnic Germans there, made possible by the capitulation of the Munich Agreement with Britain and France and which of course proved to be just the next step in the Nazi plan for the conquest of its neighbors in Central Europe. (This is an argument which we have seen before here when discussing the reactions to Georgia from the Czech press.) It’s simply ethno-imperialism, and it’s ramifications are just as frightening in 2008 as they turned out to be back then.

One country that has not been intimidated so far is Poland, and in fact it seems that the signing of the agreement with the US to set up the missile defense base there was speeded up in response to the Georgia crisis. That action is regarded approvingly by Nils Kreimeier of the Financial Times Deutschland, who writes in his commentary article A Shield at the Right Time about the curious contradiction lying behind the US-Polish arrangement. Ostensibly, that missile base (as well as the supporting radar installations in the Czech Republic) have nothing to do with Russia, since it’s ridiculous to think that it could have any effect on any nuclear attack Russia might want to launch against the US or any other enemy. But on the other hand, it’s quite apparent that they must indeed have something to do with Poland’s neighbor to the East, as the Poles have found itself on the receiving end of military and even nuclear threats from the Russian military of a sort that have not been brandished on this continent since the bad old days of the Cold War. More to the point, those basing agreements that the Polish and Czech governments have recently signed with the US mean valuable security reassurances for both countries in these times of increased uncertainty and threats. That can be seen in that aspect of the agreement with Poland that will have US anti-aircraft and anti-missile Patriot missiles, manned at first by US troops, stationed on Polish soil – a clear violation, by the way, of assurances made to the Russian government in connection with the admission of Eastern European states to NATO that there would never actually be US or Western European troops stationed in those countries. Nonetheless, that Poland and the Czech Republic have in this way contracted directly with Washington, rather than being satisfied that their NATO or EU memberships already protected them sufficiently, is also a very interesting aspect to this development.

Finally, Andreas Schwarzkopf in the Frankfurther Rundschau (Together Against Moscow) has a look at the galvanizing effect on NATO Alliance unity that the developments in Georgia has had. Going into yesterday’s North Atlantic Council meeting there had been worries expressed over the division in opinion among NATO members about how react, with the US together with Eastern European states wanting to take a hard line while the others, particularly France and Germany, seeking a softer diplomatic line. What finally emerged – in the form of the statement quoted in part above – he judges to be a decent-enough compromise, although there must be follow-up. In particular, an end must come to the disunity within European ranks that has greeted each attempt up to now by Vladimir Putin’s government to intimidate its neighbors, from the cyber-war unleashed against Estonia in the spring of last year to natural gas cut-offs to Lithuania and the Ukraine. In order to let Russia know without any doubt that violence or economic threats will no longer be tolerated behavior, the West itself must change, too. The Eastern European states must be put on a shorter leash, made to understand, as Schwarzkopf puts it, that “revenge is a poor counselor.” And the US must change its policies back to be willing to work with its allies in a multilateral framework.

                          

At least these papers definitely provide an alternative take on happenings in the public sphere, both national and international. For instance, the dilemma the Nederlands Dagblad finds itself in with its coverage of the “Pray at the Pump” movement in America (Supplicants see lower gas prices as answered prayers) is particularly delicious. At bottom, you realize that they must be sympathetic to folks like Rock Twyman, discussed in the article, who is so confident in the power of mass public prayer that he began “Pray at the Pump” last April to get Christians to assemble at gas stations all over the U.S. of A. to join hands and pray aloud for lower prices. And what do you know: gas prices have recently headed downwards. “There is no one else for us to turn to than God,” Twyman is glad to tell journalists. That flaming secularist, Jay Leno (not called such in this article: that’s my own ironic characterization) had the gall to pick out Twyman’s movement as the butt of jokes, but not only has the latter been proved right, he also has shown himself willing to include Leno in his prayers at his home-base Shell station in Northwest Washington, DC.

On the other hand: Perhaps the very idea of praying to lower prices is absurd on its face, regardless of whether subsequent developments seem to justify it or not. Indeed, whoever is the Nederlands Dagblad writer here (the attribution is only to the paper’s “church editor”), s/he is willing to raise some pointed questions. Perhaps some people pray the opposite way, i.e. for higher gas prices, for the sake of the environment: which way would God rule on this one? And if you want to pray, aren’t there rather more-deserving causes to pray for, like for the hungry, the war refugees, etc.?

Then sometimes these Dutch evangelical publications really amaze with the sensitivity of their antennae to obscure doings by their American counterparts. How about the medical journal Archives of Surgery, for example? Ordinarily this sort of journal publishes articles with sexy titles like Evaluating the Degree of Difficulty of Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgery, but the Reformatorisch Dagblad somehow recently picked up something in its pages rather out of the ordinary (Americans trust God more than the doctor). This has to do with the recently publication in Archives of Surgery of an article, Trauma Death, that reveals that 57.4% of people (and even 19.5% of medical professionals) “believe that divine intervention could save a person when physicians believe treatment is futile.” Again, it probably took an explictly Christian newspaper like this one to be looking for news like this in the first place, but it’s also true that it’s this sort of publication where you can usually detect between the lines something of an approving attitude towards attitudes and behaviors that many others (certainly most Europeans) would find rather bewildering.

UPDATE:Whoops, here’s another one – that is, a Christian-oriented national newspaper – but it’s Danish: Kristeligt Dagblad, or “Christian Daily.” Let’s see if I can remind myself to check whether it, too, goes off-line on the Sabbath. Anyway, I’ve got it covered for you.

                          

Pimp it purple!

It would seem that, just as the American market for “normal” (that is, generally huge) automobiles that are gasoline-driven and made to take out on the road alarmingly shrinks, the demand for golf carts that are a cut above standard-issue is booming, especially in the US but also in Asia and in Europe. That’s the message of this article by Spiegel correspondent Tom Grünweg, who concentrates his attention (although not exclusively) on the Hawaiian-based firm Luxury Carts. (Special bonus: A clickable series of ten pimped-out golf cart photos! Check them out!)

One Michael Hruby (a Czech name, BTW) is chief proprietor at Luxury Carts, and has been running the business now for ten years. Yes, you can get your cut-down Hummer if you like: carts designed to recreate both the H1 and the H2 models are available. But so are the Cadillac Escalade (Hruby’s best-seller), the Mercedes CLK, the Bentley Continental, the Dodge Ram Truck, and all sorts of other models as well. Make no mistake, the treatment Hruby gives them ensures a faithful recreation of the desired original vehicle not only on the outside, but also when it comes to the interior – leather seats, a killer sound system, the works. Of course, you pay for the privilege: The elementary tricked-out model (called “La Benz”) already goes for $16,000, the Bentley Continental will set you back $22,450, and it generally gets more expensive from there. (And then add another $2,000 for delivery, unless you happen to live in Hawaii.)

Still, Hruby sells hundreds of these golf carts per year, and total sales in the US from all makers amounts to some $600 million yearly. Oh, and the laws in most American localities also permit such carts, as “Neighborhood Electric Vehicles,” to be used on the street like any other vehicle – so that the recapturing of one’s former Monster Hummer experience can (almost) be complete.