2012 Differences Between USA and Canada

Hi,

this was an opinion piece in the Toronto Star and I have to agree that I am also puzzled by the election in the USA.

I also think that the piece in the NY Times on American exceptionalism gets at a crucial point that America will have to come to grips with: God is not on America's side and never was. If you are a Christian he is on the side of the righteous, buthardly behind groups. Is god a chauvinist?

"Americans have one of the lowest participation rates in elections — only about 50 per cent in the presidential race. Yet they are very much engaged in politics. They do tune into their leaders’ televised debates — 68 million for the first Barack Obama-Mitt Romney encounter, 65.6 million for the second, and 59.2 million for the third. If Obama loses the election, it may be because he was listless in the first encounter and barely there in the third, thereby allowing his weak and vacillating opponent to catch up to him in the polls within days.

Several reasons have been proffered for Obama’s failure at such a crucial moment, despite his brilliance, command of detail and personal integrity and discipline.

It’s said that he does not relate to ordinary Americans, the way Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan did. That he is an elite intellectual who does not enjoy getting down and dirty with opponents. That he got thrown off in the first debate by Romney’s aggression — “probably no one has talked to him like this since his election” in 2008, said CNN’s David Gergen, former adviser to four presidents.

Or that Obama is just fed up with the Republicans’ extreme partisanship, their brazen distortions of his record and their own flip-flopping on key domestic and foreign issues.

Tough, say the critics. American elections are not a gentlemen’s joust but rather bruising battles where winning, by hook or by crook, is all that matters.

There’s also the economy, stupid. No American president wins presiding over high unemployment. Never mind that Obama inherited a mess and has put the economy on its way to recovery.

 

Still, it boggles the Canadian mind that the American electorate would take Romney seriously, despite all his inconsistencies, empty Cold War rhetoric and dedication to the same catastrophic economic prescriptions as George W. Bush’s.

Half the lectorate doesn’t seem bothered as to how Romney would balance the budget while planning to spend $2 trillion more on defence and giving away $5 trillion in tax cuts, mostly to the wealthy.

Not just the Tea Party types but tens of millions more have been sold the lottery dream that they, too, can get rich like Romney and Co. if only the government got out of the way and taxed less.

And that the way to gut government is to hand it over to a guy who made a success of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City by taking a $400 million federal subsidy, and whose running mate, Paul Ryan, is attacking Obama’s $90 billion alternative energy program after milking it for his home state.

And that the way to create jobs is to hand over the reins to the man who shipped jobs to China.

And the way to solve the crisis of 46 million people having no medical care and tens of millions more having the barest minimum insurance is to kill Obama’s universal care and bring in vouchers for even more privatized care.

And the way to help the 47 per cent who don’t pay taxes and whom Romney holds in disdain is to have them at the mercy of the generosity of the rich. As related by Ryan, didn’t Romney tell a fellow-Mormon whose two kids were paralyzed in an auto accident, “I know you’re struggling — don’t worry about their college; I’ll pay for it”?

Half of Americans couldn’t care less about the other half.

Nearly half are committed Republicans and the other half Democrats. So it doesn’t really matter if Romney moves from being a pragmatist to a “severe conservative” committed to extreme right positions on abortion, contraception, immigration, etc. to now, suddenly, pivoting back toward the centre.

In foreign affairs, the transformation is even more startling. After months of warlike noises, he’s now a man of peace.

He does not want to bomb Iran, of course not. He does not want to send troops to Syria, does not even want to use American planes to enforce a no-fly zone there.

 

He agrees with Obama’s pullout from Iraq, agrees with the pullout from Afghanistan in 2014, and supports Obama’s increased use of drone attacks on Pakistan. He does not want a trade war with China.

Would a Romney be electable in Canada? To ponder that is to ponder the remaining differences between America and Canada."