American Bellyache

The US media has noted the offers of assistance from Iraq and Afghanistan. India is to send in aid to the US for the first time as well, but there8217;s less irony in that one. After all, as the new global common sense keeps informing us all, India is a rising Big Power.

But a more serious bellyaching may be underway in America. This is not just about the Bush presidency 8212; though it is a bit about what the Weekly Standard admiringly feted this week as the 8216;8216;War Presidency8217;8217; morphing into that which less enamoured sections of the media now dub as the 8216;8216;Stuff Happens Presidency8217;8217; a caustic take-off on Donald Rumsfeld8217;s punch line after the looting of Baghdad8217;s museums while American soldiers stood around. This moment is not strictly about Bush. He is in his second term and under America8217;s two-term rule, won8217;t face the voters again. This is really about the America and the American state Bush has presided over and reshaped, especially after 9/11.

From a distance, Jonathan Freedland, columnist in the Guardian, could see at least two possible changes that could outlast the storm. One, America has always swung between international engagement and isolationism, he wrote, and the hurricane may well have put Americans in the latter mood. As Adrian Wooldridge, co-author of a study of conservative America, 8216;The Right Nation8217;, writes, 8216;8216;The big losers among Republicans will be neocons. The hubris of thinking America could reshape the world, creating democracy in hostile territory, when it can8217;t even keep order in an American city 8212; that hubris has just been punctured in a big way8217;8217;.

Two, Katrina may have re-opened the debate on the limited state in the home of neoliberalism. 8216;8216;Suddenly progressive Americans detect an opening, a chance to speak up for active government, even for taxing and spending.8217;8217; Freedland, himself, was doubtful about whether the progressives would go very far, though. For one, they have no persuasive leadership to make the 8216;8216;post-Katrina case for an active caring government8217;8217;. For another, the Department of Homeland Security, the massive federal bureaucracy created in response to the calls for more government action after 9/11, failed on Katrina. The most likely result, suggested Freedland, is that America won8217;t rethink the size of government so much as its efficiency.

Conservative columnists are calling for federal governance, New York style. They are asking for someone like Rudy Giuliani in Washington.

Polls and outcomes

The people are going to polls across the world and, by all accounts, the outcomes will be democratic in different senses of the term.

In Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, showman and lone ranger, who cuts through his own party to appeal directly to voters in a parliamentary democracy, has called an early election. The issue is the reform of the national post system. But it is Koizumi8217;s stagecraft and his spectacle that is proving far more newsworthy. He has, reports Time this week, banned the anti-reformers or 8216;8216;rebels8217;8217;, and recruited a new set of candidates to run for the party. These new recruits are called the shikaku, or the 8216;8216;assassins8217;8217;. They are prominently female, young and telegenic.

In Pakistan8217;s local elections, the religious parties in the border areas of Balochistan and NWFP have lost ground. The two mainstream parties, led by the exiled former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, have lost even more ground. A vote of confidence for the General? The Economist warned foreign observers against optimism about the 8216;8216;consolidation of one-party rule behind a general8217;8217;, through means suspected to have been more foul than fair.

The people of Egypt voted this week in an election that some like the Washington Post hailed as the largest experiment in electoral democracy in the Middle East and which others like Britain8217;s Financial Times have pronounced to be a 8216;8216;flawed poll8217;8217;. Mubarak 8216;8216;doesn8217;t stand a chance of losing8217;8217; confirmed Newsweek. He has presided over the ruling party 8212; and its painstakingly crafted patronage system 8212; for 24 long years. Mubarak won.

But Egypt8217;s first multi-candidate race still had its 8216;8216;unscripted moments8217;8217;, agreed observers. It is this that makes Egypt8217;s Al Ahram Weekly hold out: 8216;8216;Whatever the shortcomings, the presidential campaign has raised the expectations of citizens, newspaper readers and television viewers8230; Those that fail to deliver will not be easily forgiven.8217;8217;

In Iraq, they8217;re heading towards a referendum next month on the draft Constitution. This week, Time reported that according to UN officials, most Iraqis will not be able to get a hard copy of the much revised 39-page document until October 16 at the earliest 8212; a day after the October 15 referendum.