A polite request to America from the rest of the world

I'm pleased to welcome Gilbert Moon to AMERICAblog.  Gilbert is an old friend.  He's a barrister in London (which is a type of lawyer, and might mean he gets to wear one of those funny 1776 wigs, which I've actually seen French lawyers or judges (not sure which) wear in Paris).  Which goes to the point that Gilbert is highly educated, but British - so expect a lot of misspellings in the post below, including a ton of extra "u"s and some peculiar punctuation.  Seriously, though, I'm really happy to welcome him to the blog, and think you'll enjoy his posts.  His first is below.  JOHN
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I hold something of a minority view in the world outside the borders of the United States: I am a huge fan of America.

I admire your country's project and its people. I believe that, with some lapses, it has striven to be a force for freedom in its dealings with the rest of the World, and incurred great sacrifices in doing so. That is something that very few nations can claim. Even those who reflexively condemn America and its dealings with the rest of the World share one perspective with me: What the US does, what the US believes, and more specifically, whom the US elects to the office of President, matters to everyone. We subjects and citizens of non-America do not, of course, get a say in the presidential election, and it is impertinent of us to offer advice, but could I ask for a moment of your attention to make one point for your consideration: We are counting on you to make sure that the next President is a grown up.

Back in the mid-eighties, I attended the World Debating Championships in Dublin. I watched a competitive debate between a team from Oxford University (one member of which is now a cabinet minister) and a team from West Point. The motion was “I would not die for my country.” and the mischievous organisers asked the West Point cadets to argue in favour. The proposer of the motion was horrified. He did his best, but ultimately simply could not formulate the arguments. The Oxford team had honed their skills in the debating chamber of the Oxford Union and had perfected a style that will be familiar to anyone who has watched Prime Minister’s Questions in Westminster: a subtly aggressive combination of barely-disguised condescension and withering personal attack. The cadets were transfixed in the driving rain of disrespect. I felt uncomfortable. There was no doubt who had “won”, but the Oxford team had said next to nothing about the merits of the issue being debated. It was politics as a bloodsport. It did not do my British compatriots much credit.

Shortly afterwards, I made my first visit to the US and quickly found that my impression that Americans had little stomach for political blood-letting was utterly misplaced. I watched television campaigns which appeared to accuse an electoral candidate of deliberately releasing violent criminals so that they could kill again. Other candidates were implicitly accused of a range of moral and legal failings so startling that to be accused merely of hypocrisy and general untrustworthiness began to sound like praise. Once I’d got over my shock, I confess, I really enjoyed it. I was impressed by how engaged so many ordinary Americans were in political debate. It all seemed lively, spirited and a million miles away from the weary cynicism of my own country’s approach.

On subsequent visits, it began to lose its shine. The political scene seemed to be characterised by two entirely contradictory features: Everyone was adamant that there was a need for bi-partisan co-operation whilst the parties were becoming daily more polarised.

I had heard of Rush Limbaugh before I heard him. When I did, he amazed me. Here was someone loudly plugging a political philosophy based on fear and hate. These two emotions are powerful because they simplify everything: all your woes are the other guy’s fault and if you don’t take action he has worse in store. This toxic philosophy of fear and hate seemed to be embraced as warmly by the Left as by the Right (albeit with different hate figures substituted).

There is a tipping point at which simple becomes simplistic. It arrives when every argument is advanced for the purpose of political gain. It is the point at which the intrinsic merit of the position is secondary to the damage that adopting it can inflict. From there it is a small step to ceasing to care about the merit of the argument so completely that anything, however ridiculous and ill-founded, will do. It is difficult to communicate the bewilderment and dismay felt by observers of the American political scene, for instance, watching participants in one of the World’s truly great democracies speculating paranoically over the President’s birth certificate. But that was as nothing compared to watching the naked partisan wrangling over the debt limits that threatened to tip World markets into the abyss.

Here’s the thing: the Real World is a big, difficult place. The mind-boggling complexity of the Global Economy is such that apparently common sense measures are capable of producing unintended consequences that devastate the lives of real people around the planet. You may also have noticed that this is a time of almost unprecedented international political instability. Simplistic world views and point-scoring games are a luxury no-one can afford.

Please, we beg you, elect a grown up.

Don’t listen to people who suggest that “being clever”, or worse, “Harvard-educated” makes you necessarily untrustworthy; that the fearsome churn of unpredicted global events is somehow better dealt with by folksy pseudo-wisdom than by actual mental acuity and expertise; that God is personally telling them what to do (he isn’t); that shouting loudly and surrendering to prejudice is a better idea than thinking hard about what needs to be done.

You are scaring us.

When, as I experienced recently, an apparently otherwise sane man takes days out of his life to try to convince me that publicly-funded healthcare involves reinstituting slavery and may be usefully compared to the Holocaust, I am no longer intrigued at the pathology – I am terrified. To be unable to look past the partisan in such dangerous days is shameful. Please do the right thing.