America is Back to Normal - 29 December 2000

A letter from an old friend in England, who spends part of his year in France, and is well acquainted with what the politicians like to call "the heartland of America" - namely the Middle West.

The tone of my friend's letter is disbelief heightened by the shock of admiration.

"The thing," he wrote, "that seems not to have been commented on here is the astonishing patience and calm of the American people throughout that ghastly five weeks when the presidency - could be the government - was up in the air.

"Can you imagine this happening in Eastern Europe, in Spain, in - my god - France, where the streets would have been lucky to be running with riots instead of blood?"

Well he has a point. I certainly have read no pieces of self-congratulation about the general unflappability of the populace, especially considering how much venom was expressed by both parties and how bitter and smarting were the feelings of the Democrats high and low about the decision of the supreme court - as one famous black leader put it: "The court's decision to select a president rather than let the people elect one."

There was a time during those five weeks when I, personally, was afraid that the angry jabs and sallies might be the surface echoes of an ominous bass rumble coming from the whole population. Famous revolutions have started from smaller noises.

But - in spite of a few scary rumours that a few electors here and there would defy tradition and not follow the popular vote of their state - nobody defected from their historic role. Governor Bush wound up with 271 electoral votes - one over the necessary majority.

Vice-President Gore made, by everybody's judgements, a natural, graceful, even generous concession - a surprise appearance of an almost unrecognisable Al Gore.

Governor Bush was modestly grateful and humble - a word he's going to have to fight.

But he did get off one resounding and memorable line: "I was not elected to lead one party but one nation."

Well no boast could have been more apt to the time - only the second time in modern history that the Senate of the United States has 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, a perfect prescription for stalemate in government.

So we have to say that so far the nation has survived with remarkable self control a constitutional shudder, the hint of an earthquake, that will be debated and analysed and perhaps never resolved in years and years to come.

So the morning after Governor Bush was officially President-elect Bush I doubt there was a household in America that didn't turn to the usual game of assessing the man's character and guessing what sort of a president we might expect.

Normally the air is bright with gladsome cheers from the winner's side and heavy sighs and head shakings from the loser. This time, well, I don't remember in 70 years a time like it.

Sceptical nods, few cheers from the Bush fans, yawning groans from the Gore fans.

In fact I believe that throughout the voting population there were vastly many more sceptics than fans for either man.

The most recognisable loud sound once Governor Bush was declared the positive, irrevocable, winner was the long, low, groan of the liberal democrats who regarded Mr Bush as a dull, dumb, incredibly ill-qualified candidate from the start.

This view was widespread, it went at least beyond the liberals, and it's mildly shocking now to look back to the midsummer, after the conventions, and recall a distinguished English magazine writing that the choice was between an able robot and a likeable dimwit.

That definition of the choice stayed with enough people till the end and perhaps the incredible stalemate reflects the failure of the mass of voters to make up their minds about either man.

Anyway here we are watching with slightly wary curiosity and wondering what sort of man it is we're stuck with.

For myself I couldn't possibly predict whether he's going to be a poor president, a good one or a great one because - because I have been here before.

And remember, either from the record, two or three times in the flesh the simple howling error it's possible to make especially when you're cocksure enough to think you know the character of the incoming president and are consequently filled with fear or gloom.

Consider, for instance, the Democrats' convention in Chicago in 1932, a time when the Democrats were a party of two opposing factions that loathed each other.

The 1932 convention had put at least a dozen men into nomination and after a week's laborious battle and two days and nights of balloting they wound up, reported a famous journalist, with "the weakest candidate before it - a man of relatively small experience... also one whose competence is plainly in doubt."

In the following days the pick of the political pundits shared the general depression.

The famous critic Edmund Wilson called the choice "decent, diplomatic, cheerful but he's essentially a boy scout."

The most eminent political essayist of the day - Walter Lipman - who helped President Wilson compose the 14 points of the Treaty of Versailles. Wrote Lipman: "He is an amiable man with many philanthropic impulses who would very much like to be president but has so far shown no qualifications for the office."

He and all the others were writing about the man who, against all the expert opinion, won the presidency in 1932 and again in 1936, not to mention 1940 and, heaven help us, 1944.

His name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt and once he was in his grave the Republicans got busy proposing an amendment to the Constitution to see that this should never happen again. An amendment that from that time forth would limit any president to two terms.

And they were not happy till four years later when the States ratified the amendment and it became a permanent part of the Constitution.

Closer to home is an experience many listeners will recall on hearing that a California B-film actor named Ronald Reagan had gone into the White House in a landslide.

The groans and the rueful claps were almost as hesitant as the ones we heard for George W Bush.

But it was always true that the B-film label was a scandalously maligning one.

What Europeans and most eastern Americans didn't know was what Californians had had good reason to know well, that he'd spent five years fighting for decent working conditions for the run of actors, that for two terms as governor of California he had encountered and met every social political and economic problem he would face in the White House.

Everybody, even his fans, thought him amiable, good-natured and the possessor, at best, of a second-rate intellect.

The general vague feeling about him was indeed very like the general vague feeling about George W Bush.

But Reagan lived and governed by a few immense simplicities: He thought the more you taxed people the less money they'd have to run their own lives. He swore from the beginning that the Soviet Union was an evil empire run not by an economic social theory but by a monster paranoiac in charge of a monstrous secret police.

He was remembered for simple, inconsequential lines.

Only when the Soviet Union was in ruins did we read from the memoirs of Mr Gorbachev that however rhetorical Reagan's line in Berlin might sound to the West, his "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall" shook the false foundations of East European communism, was a rallying cry for action that happened.

That line, together with Mr Reagan's Reykjavik proposal, which the Soviets didn't dare to accept, to start destroying all nuclear weapons.

And now, today, two former Soviet leaders and the Kremlin files sulkily admit that these two episodes brought down the system as much as any other single cause.

So we ought, for a while, to be a little hesitant in bemoaning Mr Bush's vaguely stated principles, his poor record as an oil man, his way of approaching the English language like a man about to cross an ice rink on crutches.

From experience of the past and from how wrong we've been from James Madison to Grover Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt, Truman - a failed haberdasher for president, really! - to George W, the watch words are - don't groan, don't predict, just wait and see.

I was about to end with the usual jovial but well meant Christian greeting when a glance at the television screen reminds just in time that I could be speaking here for the minority of minorities.

The television networks have decided that from now on and for New York audiences they had better not offend the two million Jews and the swelling population of Muslims and so they're wishing this year "Happy holidays".

Still, I'd like to pipe up quietly for those 6% of us Wasps and say, very gently, Merry Christmas and slip in the CD and let us hear from the mighty George Frideric Handel and his Hallelujah - sorry, Holiday - Chorus.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.