The father, the son and the ghost of times to come

Walter Lippmann was as perceptive and persuasive a political commentator, as any, in the annals of US journalism. In a commemorative publication after the passing of Adlai Stevenson, he ruefully observed that there were two Americas, the America of Theodore Roosevelt and the super-patriots, and the America of Abraham Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson. Decades on Lippmann's observation would still seem to apply. This divide possibly manifests itself most unabashedly and crudely at election times in particular, and naturally enough so, as elections are, in Pandit Nehru's words, "extraordinary phenomena" that "have a curious way of upsetting tempers and ordinary standards."

It is to be sure easier -- given the wisdom of hindsight -- to analyse the results of an election than to anticipate its outcome before the event. President Bush's election has been analysed and explained at length too. An election that involves re-election is, above all else, a judgement or appraisal of an incumbent's performance, character, and credibility. President Bush would seem to be vindicated on all counts by the American people, who have collectively concluded that he has measured up to the demands of his high office. And yet some questions persist and certain aspects continue to perplex.

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Decades back, Bush was supportive of the Vietnam War. Fortuitously or otherwise, he was not called-up for combat duty; neither did he volunteer to serve in Vietnam. Understandably, perhaps, he preferred the safety of a less rigorous and relatively nominal assignment in a home unit. Kerry served in Vietnam and received both wounds and decorations. He had his reservations about the war but put his duty to country and President first. Was all this irrelevant in judging commitment, courage, steadfastness of character?

Kerry won every face-to-face television debate with Bush; TV debates have figured prominently in every presidential election since 1960. Have these diminished in importance or relevance? The two most prestigious dailies of the US, the Washington Post and the NY Times, among others, endorsed Kerry for President, as did the premier weekly news magazine, The Economist, which has a larger circulation in the US than in the country of its publication. Is informed opinion at a discount at election times? The economy has always been a major determinant in an election, certainly of greater import than moral issues. In this election did issues like gay rights, abortion and stem cell research weigh more with voters than lost jobs, liberal tax benefits for the affluent and

better health care? Were not voters concerned that a sizeable fiscal surplus had transformed into a huge deficit? It would be futile to speculate about the possible impact of the Bin Laden video tape that surfaced ahead of the election. Indeed one may as well ponder what would have been the effect, if any, on the outcome of the 1980 election, if the US hostages in Tehran had been released in September or October of that year. The Christian conservative groups -- more on this later -- have perhaps never played as crucial a role in an election before. The Economist described Bush as being "in hock to the Christian right." Some of the President's comments would suggest that he communes directly with the Almighty before arriving at decisions of great moment. There have been reports of payments by Bush, through federal faith-based initiatives, to religious organisations. Does this suggest a trend of the future?

9/11 was unconscionable and abhorrent, as traumatic for Americans as Pearl Harbor. The perpetrators perished and those believed to have orchestrated it from afar have been relentlessly pursued. It is surely also true that but for monstrous failures of intelligence and of stringent safeguards that are routinely in place, 9/11 would not have happened. After Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel, the C-in-C of the US Pacific Fleet, was removed from command and later reduced in rank and retired. No such action to fix responsibility for failures seems to have been taken after 9/11.

Hundreds of prisoners from Afghanistan continue to languish in legal limbo in Guantanamo Bay, reportedly in sub-human conditions. Are they not entitled to a right not denied to the worst war criminals of WW II, an open and fair trial? Bush went to war in Iraq without much by way of international support, on the basis of dubious and sexed-up intelligence which turned out to be false. Kofi Annan, a circumspect, almost timid, international civil servant, has described it as an illegal war. The medical journal Lancet reported "excess deaths" of 100,000 Iraqi civilians, or more, since March 2003, due to reckless US air strikes in civilian areas. Can any policy based on false premises, that leads to a ghastly and avoidable war be animated by the true Christian spirit and compassion, whether or not of the conservative variety? But then matters of the spirit can all too often be inscrutable. Popes Innocent III, Gregory IX and their successors, who sanctioned persecution of "heretics" and the Holy Inquisition, and Dominicans and Franciscans responsible for unspeakable atrocities under this dispensation, are said to have acted for the love of God.

Elections are a no holds barred and no punches pulled political event. Since the War, Truman and Johnson apart, Republicans have probably had an edge over Democrats in the rough-and-tumble aspects of elections. Two examples would explain. Richard Nixon never received the recognition and respect that he so desperately craved from the intellectual elite, perhaps for valid enough reasons.

Adlai Stevenson had observed of him in 1952: "Nixonland is a land of slander and scare, of lay innuendo, of a poison pen and the anonymous telephone call, and hustling, pushing, and shoving -- the land of smash and grab and anything to win." Sonorous, mellifluous and elegant, but not exactly brimming with the passion and heat of an election.

Truman, by way of comparison, spoke thus in 1961: "Nixon is a shifty-eyed goddamn liar, and people know it. He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides." No room for ambiguity, almost a visceral outpouring to which voters can instantly relate.

The conservative movement is a significant development of 20th century Christianity, growing faster than mainstream denominations. It comprises three branches, Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. The word fundamentalism today is used indiscriminately, even cavalierly, in the context of radical or extremist Muslim groups. It was not always so. Time was -- late 19th century -- when it applied almost exclusively to a distinct group of Christians. Fundamentalism began as a reaction to Darwinism, in the tradition of premillennialism, the conviction that the Second Coming of Christ will take place before the millennium. To fundamentalists, the Bible is the literal truth, the word of God. Evangelicals are "more conciliatory in style and ecumenical in approach" but "hold the same basic tenets."

Politically, fundamentalism came to the fore in 1928 during the Scopes trial in the state of Tennessee. John Scopes, a school teacher, was tried under the Butler Act, an obscure new state law that prohibited the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution, as it conflicted with the Biblical teaching of Special Creation. William Jennings Bryan, three times Democratic candidate for president, former Secretary of State, populist and pacifist and also fundamentalist led the team of prosecutors. In 1923, Bryan had attributed America's every ill to the teaching of evolution. It would be better, he felt, to destroy "every other book ever written and save just the first three

verses of Genesis." Defending Scopes was Clarence Darrow, auto-didact and agnostic, the foremost criminal lawyer of the time. Another protagonist was HL Mencken, part journalist, part philosopher, an icon and iconoclast, libertarian but no radical, in his own words "quite devoid" of religion, who reportedly persuaded Darrow to defend Scopes. Those supporting Scopes, including the American Civil Liberties Union, hoped that the case would go eventually to the US Supreme Court for a definitive ruling on the constitutionality of the Butler Act. It took a jury all of 9 minutes to find Scopes guilty, a verdict later reversed on a legal technicality by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Incredibly, the Butler Act, though never again invoked or enforced, remained in the statute book of Tennessee, till 1967.

There are people who believe that in all US presidential elections, the more deserving candidate, the one more attuned to the needs of the time, have won; a sort of doctrine of "popular infallibility." Not everyone would concur. This is not a question that can be resolved empirically; rather it relates to instinct and extrapolation, and rightfully belongs to the never-never land of "might have been." Biographical novelist Irving Stone once drew up a list of those who lost presidential elections, who, he was convinced, would have made better presidents than those who won. His list included Humphrey over Nixon, 1968, Al Smith over Hoover, 1928, Davis over Coolidge, 1924, Cox over Harding, 1920, Hancock over Garfield, 1880, Tilden over Hayes, 1876, Seymour over Grant, 1868, Fremont over Buchanan, 1856, Scott over Pierce, 1852, and Lewis Cass over Taylor, 1848.

President Bush has his share of critics and more. It may be simplistic though to see the political, moral and ethical issues, raised by so many of his decisions, in shades of black and white. Abraham Lincoln, today considered the greatest of US presidents, was, in his time, almost as reviled and vilified as he was admired. A very apposite observation by him should apply also to Bush, his successor in office several times removed. Lincoln had said, "If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference." Future scholars, animated and informed by the ethos and spirit of times to come, will surely judge whether or not Bush belongs in the category of Presidents Nixon, Hoover, Grant and others, and Kerry in the company of Humphrey, Al Smith and Seymour and the rest. The Bush presidency will be rated on the basis of what was done, not done, and, even more importantly, the consequences thereof.

An awesome concentration of power that can be wielded with near impunity, compounded by absolute moral certitude, corporate greed, ultra-nationalism and an almost antinomian philosophy, can make for a heady and deadly brew. At the present time thus, in the context of the election result, innumerable people -- and not just in the US either -- may well ponder with a sense of unease, one of HL Mencken's more acerbic pronouncements in the Chicago Tribune in 1926. Mencken had written apropos of something or other: "No one....has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of great masses of the plain people."