The view from 'Old Europe'
Dumb as an American voter

Commentary

By Deirdre Helfferich
Green Party of Alaska

ESSEN, GERMANY -- Observing the American elections from this side of the Atlantic made for an instructive contrast in viewpoints on democracy in the United States. The country I left on Oct. 21 was in the throes of campaign fever, and praised from left, right, and center as "the greatest country on earth," "the beacon of democracy to the world," and "the freest nation in the world." Our president was touted as "the leader of the free world," (although he was and is insulted mightily by his detractors, the status of his office is unquestioned in the U.S.), and Kerry and Bush each strove to show that he was the moral leader who could demonstrate to the world the value of American democracy.

The lack of hyperbole in the German news media was refreshing. Coverage of the 2004 U.S. presidential election in this western German city of 600,000 was extensive, detailed, and, appropriately enough, removed from the emotional posturing rampant in American media. The TV stations showed Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a biographical series on the Bush family with extensive interviews with George Herbert Walker Bush, and overviews of America and Americans' views of their country. Major newspapers such as Die Welt and Die Westdeutsche Allegemeine Zeitung (WAZ) published regular articles on the progress of the campaigns, with detailed explanations of the voting and electoral process of the United States, with special attention to the electoral college. There were discussions of voting trends in the U.S. over the last several presidential elections and the events of the 2000 election, and why it was controversial. There were comparisons of the 2000 election with other U.S. elections where the winner did so by virtue of the electoral college.

What was most interesting to me was that not one person I spoke with seemed to believe that John Kerry would win. Why? Because the election, they said, was already fixed in favor of George W. Bush. How? Voting machines with unverifiable records. The Florida voter purges. The inequality between poor America and rich America, and the corresponding differences in voting equipment and election oversight. The people I met seemed very well informed on our voting system and equipment, and its limitations, and none of them seemed to regard the U.S. as an inspiring example of the democratic process. Nor did I see any attitude of reverence toward our democracy evinced by the media. Rather, German political opinion seemed to trend more toward pity, or irritation, as for example in a WAZ opinion piece by election correspondent Markus Günther about the imbecility of American campaigns: "Are American campaigns really as stupid as they always say, so unfactual, so Hollywood-like, emotional and mean? Yes, they are. And whose fault is it? That's easy: always the other guys.... America remains a cutely, frighteningly, unpolitical land."

On election night, several German TV networks worked together to produce full coverage of the American elections. The broadcast began at 11 p.m., but the first results were not in until 1:30 a.m., so viewers were treated to background information on American voters and the presidential campaigns, satires of the presidential candidates, and interviews with German expatriates living in the U.S. and with American citizens (a woman who worked in the Pentagon and survived 9/11; a man whose son had died in Iraq; a woman supporting Kerry and whose husband is in the military; and a woman supporting the Bush campaign). The German expatriates were, with one exception, all appalled at the Bush administration's policies, but even this person was supporting Kerry. The networks predicted Kerry would win. However, when Kerry lost, none of the media expressed surprise, nor did any person I spoke with.

Contrast this with the British media's stunned reaction to the election results, expressed best by the U.K. Daily Mirror's headline: "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" Germans didn't worry about how we could be so dumb; they just recognized it as great fodder for political satire. Hans, a barkeeper in Essen, said to me, "So you voted for Bush, right?" and laughed.

Perhaps he knows something I don't.