21 - 27 December 2000
Issue No.513
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 21 - 27 December 2000 Issue No.513 |
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The US elections and the Middle East
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
By not challenging the Supreme Court's controversial decision to halt the Florida recount, a decision which effectively destroyed his chances of reaching the White House, Al Gore brought to an end the protracted and acrimonious US presidential election of 2000. Bowing to pressure from some members of his own party to concede defeat, he delivered a gracious concession speech, calling on the nation to rally behind the new president. Closure of this painful chapter in America's history allows the president-elect and the losing candidate to turn to the arduous task of healing divisions created by the marathon election and avert the threat of a still sharper partisan divide in Congress. With his concession speech, declared a prominent Republican senator, "Mr Gore has earned the respect of the American people."
In his speech, Gore acknowledged that "what remains of partisan rancour must now be set aside, and may God bless [his opponent's] stewardship." The Republican camp could not have hoped for more. And when the president-elect's turn to speak came, he saluted his defeated rival, promising to change the tone by emphasising consensus instead of confrontation. "I was not elected to serve one party," said America's 43rd president, "but to serve one nation."
Elected in extraordinary circumstances, Bush will be under enormous pressure to prove his mettle right away, without enjoying the grace period usually accorded to a new president. As the first president since 1888 to take office without winning the popular vote, he is facing a public which, according to the polls, questions the fairness of the outcome. He won the key state of Florida by just 537 votes out of six million cast, and then only thanks to the Supreme Court decision to halt the manual recount. Gore, for his part, won the nationwide popular vote by more than 300,000 ballots. Elected by the narrow margin of one electoral vote, Bush will need to build confidence and a mandate for his leadership without any delay. Meanwhile, a number of politicians and journalists have vowed to complete the recount on their own. If they manage to prove that Gore did in fact win Florida, this could seriously destabilise the Bush administration, if not institutionally, at least as far as its credibility is concerned. Moreover, Bush has to overcome suspicions that he took office by obstructing a reliable recount of the Florida vote, a state governed by his younger brother Jeb. In the words of a Federal High Court judge: "We may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential elections."
With Congress narrowly divided and his own mandate shaky, Bush will have to foster some kind of bipartisan cooperation. He is expected to appoint Democrats to one or more important cabinet jobs. But he owes his election to the conservatives. To succeed, he will have to keep right-wing Republicans happy even as he courts the centre. Liberals like the prominent Senate Democrat John Breaux of Louisiana maintain that "bipartisanship is not a theory but a necessity." But how to implement this necessity effectively ? And is it entirely up to Bush and his collaborators?
Although the bipartisan theme figured prominently in Bush's acceptance speech, it remains to be seen whether this will prove no more than rhetoric or whether it will be translated into the policy priorities of the new administration. Moreover, much will depend on how the Democrats behave in the opening weeks of the Bush presidency. Already there is dissent within party ranks over Gore's decision not to contest the Supreme Court ruling. Prominent civil rights activist Jesse Jackson has publicly rebuked Gore for conceding when he did, denouncing the court's decision -- and hence the Bush presidency -- as "democratically illegitimate." He has compared Bush to Slobodan Milosevic and the court's decision to that handed down in the infamous Dred Scott case of 1857, which ruled that slaves were not citizens and was one of the sparks that set off the Civil War.
However, if the Democrats try to undercut Bush's authority by continuing over a long period to question his right to be president, they could easily trigger a backlash. Bush must focus on common ground with his Democratic opponents, and win bipartisan passage of some major piece of legislation to show that he is willing to come to the middle. But there is still debate within the Bush camp about what that piece of legislation should be. What to do with the contentious issues that were central to the presidential campaign? How to tackle issues such as abortion and sweeping tax cuts in a spirit of reconciliation? With very little room for manoeuvre, Bush cannot afford to be tied to such sharply divisive issues as gays in the military, for instance, which bedevilled Clinton in the early days of his presidency.
Foreign policy issues will not be any easier for Bush than internal problems. A man who has travelled abroad only three times, with the exception of a number of trips to Mexico, will not find it easy to achieve anything sensational. He must now handle an increasingly assertive Russia, a Middle East in full crisis and enormous divisions within his own party about how to deal with China.
To assess the difficulties Bush will have in trying to pass from confrontation to cooperation with the Democrats it is necessary to look into the real reasons behind the unprecedented bitterness of one of the most turbulent and lengthy presidential elections in American history. Can the furious five-week battle for the White House, which so passionately divided the two rival parties and, indeed, the entire nation, be explained only in terms of a legal or constitutional row over which of the two candidates was more deserving of victory? Or are there deeper reasons which, in the context of an exceptionally close race, kept the two candidates in the race as long as they could continue to fight it out in the courts?
A number of factors could help explain the virulence of the presidential elections of 2000. One is the defeat of George Bush at the hands of Bill Clinton in 1992, which reflected something more than the traditional shift of power from Republicans to Democrats or vice-versa. For the first time, it appeared that the well-entrenched ruling elites, the representatives of white America, had lost their grip on power thanks to the votes of various minority groups -- blacks, Jews, Hispanics, women and gays -- which went to the man they saw as the representative of their interests. The simmering resentment of establishment America, which was a millstone around Clinton's neck throughout his eight-year tenure, boiled over into a no-holds-barred fight to regain its hold on power. After a long and arduous battle, the traditional America elites have succeeded in staging a comeback, to the dismay of minority groups. This explains why a spokesman for one of those groups, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, reacted with such vehemence to the Supreme Court decision.
Then there is a personal settlement of scores between the Bush family, a typical WASP family the Republicans see as embodying their America's traditional values and leadership, and Clinton the usurper. Rumour has it that the president-elect himself was a reluctant contender for the presidency who only agreed to run under pressure from the Republican power brokers.
Another fact that, rightly or wrongly, the Arabs will be keen to underscore is the issue of Israel in the US presidential equation. Gore is known to be more biased towards Israel than any previous presidential candidate and is the first in America's history to pick a Jew, Senator Joe Lieberman, as his running mate. His choice is particularly significant at a time when the Palestinian problem reaches its most critical stage and the entire Middle East peace process hangs in the balance. Does this mean that Bush, for whom the Jewish lobby in America did not vote, will be any closer to the Arab position towards the conflict? So far, and before the electoral campaign began, the Republicans in Congress have been no less supportive of Israel than the Democrats. Indeed, it was a Republican congressman who came forward with the resolution to relocate the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Will unreserved support for Israel become the issue on which Republicans and Democrats can set aside their differences and pave the way to reconciliation?
True, the Bush family and its closest associates and advisers, notably James Baker and Dick Cheney, have strong links with the American oil lobby, which, in turn, has interconnected interests with the Arab oil states in the Gulf. The ferocity of America's electoral battle can be indicative of the concern felt by various US lobbies, including the oil lobby, at the preponderance acquired by the Jewish lobby at a time when Israel's future and its relations with its Arab environment are being decided. But contrary to the Democrats, Bush would be closer to Netanyahu than to Israel's Labour Party leaders, if Netanyahu returned to the political scene. That is why the Arabs would do well to count more on themselves than on any outside power to protect their rights and not repeat the mistake of building hopes on playing one foreign party off against another -- for instance, Barak against Netanyahu, as they did when the former became prime minister in 1998.
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