A vote on the future of the US - and so the world

[babylonsister]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/04/uselections2008-barackobama1

A vote on the future of the US - and so the world

* Jonathan Freedland


Sometimes it felt as if this day would never come. But today, the 21 long months of the 2008 presidential campaign, a saga packed with higher drama than any contest in living memory, finally comes down to a straight choice. By tonight, perhaps as many as 140 million Americans will have stepped inside a polling both, pulled back the curtain and made a quiet, private decision that will determine the course of the United States - and so the world - for the next four years.

The two candidates have tried to frame that choice in their own terms. For Barack Obama, it has been the same, perennial pitch that challengers have made since the dawn of democratic politics: the future versus the past, change versus more of the same.

snip//

Finally, Americans can see in today's vote a choice between two different ways of doing politics - and not only between the sleek efficiency of the Obama machine and the often chaotic performance of the McCain team. For it is, in part, a referendum on a style of electioneering that has dominated ever since Richard Nixon ran for Congress in 1946 suggesting his opponent was not "one of us". McCain, who once disdained this brand of cultural warfare, in which any Democrat is cast as unpatriotic, elitist and less than a true American, has embraced it in 2008.

Whether it's his allies stressing Obama's middle name of Hussein, or Palin praising "pro-America" parts of the country, or McCain himself closing his speeches by declaring "I'm an American", as if his opponent is not, this year's Republican effort has been every bit as dirty as those of the past.

If voters reject McCain today they will also be rejecting that McCarthyite brand of politics, embracing Obama's insistence that, at a time when the problems facing America are so big, it makes no sense that its politics are so small.

This is what stands before Americans today. They can decide to see the world in a new light, full of potential partners as well as enemies, or remain in the Bush crouch of permanent warfare. They can decide it's time to address the gravest questions, or run from them, retreating into the same cultural spats that have dominated for at least 40 years. After 21 months of candidates debating and pundits yammering, it's time for the American people to speak.