Armageddon election??...

[smiles 0]

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/041101/w110154.html

Quote

Next president faces tough job uniting Americans, fixing world alliances
05:06 PM EST Nov 01
BETH GORHAM

WASHINGTON (CP) - Whoever wins the White House is in for a rough ride.

He inherits a deeply divided country embittered by one of the most brutal U.S. election campaigns in decades.

It's a legacy of two camps at war over the contentious leadership of George W. Bush and whether Democratic challenger John Kerry would do a better job resolving the urgent issues Americans face.

With Iraq in chaos, the potential for another terrorist attack at home and a reputation in decline around the world, Americans have a lot riding on the outcome of Tuesday's vote, which is far too close to call.

"I've been calling this election the Armageddon election," says pollster John Zogby.

"Each side is saying, essentially, that if the other side wins, it's the end of the world as we know it.

"We have had close elections before, but . . . seldom have we been this polarized, this angry and this unwilling to accept the winner of a close election if it's the other guy."

How the race is resolved will be critical, analysts say, after a 2000 election marred by accusations of voter suppression that was decided by court battles and a five-week recount.

Bush lost the popular vote but managed to win the White House, a result that enraged Democrats who are determined this time to dump him.

The absence of another election nightmare and a clear win of both the popular vote and the Electoral College system that determines who takes each state would help restore legitimacy to the Oval Office.

Still, there will likely be some lingering discontent with the outcome and wide gaps to bridge on Capitol Hill no matter who wins, say observers.

"Some of the heat goes out of the system when we pass through election day," says Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the independent Brookings Institution think-tank.

"After Tuesday, most Americans will go back to their own concerns and they're not overwhelmingly the concerns of the nation.

"But it will be a very difficult time for the next president. I don't know how much goodwill there is."

If Kerry wins, says Hess, he likely won't have the money to pay for his plans to improve education and provide health-care coverage for up to half of some 45 million Americans who don't have it.

And he'll almost certainly be facing a Republican-dominated Congress, although there's a slim chance Democrats could win a Senate majority.

"You'd have a divided government. That may not be such a bad temporary solution," says Hess.

"If Bush is elected, it's hard to say his life is any more comfortable. He may face a somewhat less contentious international community. They're practical people. They may not like him, but if he's the president, they have to figure out how to deal with him."

Moises Naim, an analyst at Foreign Policy magazine, says Bush would try harder in a second term to collaborate with Europe and the United Nations after angering much of the world by invading Iraq last year without UN approval.

And despite enormous expectations that Kerry could heal some of the bitter disputes with key allies, his prospects for attracting more global support in Iraq are uncertain.

He could find his promised internationalist approach constrained by a new security threat, says Naim, or face even more American involvement in Iraq if violence escalates.

"All recent U.S. presidents have learned the hard way that despite their immense power, they remain at the mercy of uncontrollable global forces that render their personal views and campaign promises largely irrelevant," says Naim.

"But it matters immensely who gets elected," he says, and not just to Americans.

"The anti-Americanism out there now touches everybody's life and threatens the whole multilateral system in the world."

For their part, some Americans are "actually agonizing" over who they will choose, Zogby told a recent briefing.

"It's going to take some very strong leadership on the part of the president to restore a sense of confidence, a sense of stability, a sense of unity to a nation that will have to be healed."

© The Canadian Press, 2004

SMiles