As the 2010 U.S. midterm elections head toward their climax, Spanish columnist Lluis Bassets is concerned that while there remains a soft spot in the heart of many people around the world for the United States, its electoral divisions and infighting are looking ever-less appealing compared to China’s ‘well-ordered dictatorship,’ which ‘continues to make decisions that are momentous for us all.”
For Spain’s El Pais, Lluis Bassets writes in small part:
America is great not only for its geographic and demographic dimensions, but for its depth and wealth and its influence as a political model in the world.
U.S. citizens will punish Obama for decisions made by Bush, such as the financial aid offered to distressed banks during the crisis. Moreover, a large fraction of those who received such aid are now financing Obama’s electoral punishment. It’s a chaotic and irrational system of election financing, after the Supreme Court decided to allow unlimited private contributions, treating them as an element of free expression applicable not to individuals, but to corporations. Just as chaotic and irrational, if fearfully efficient, is the radical opposition of the Republican base organized in the Tea Party, a movement directed primarily against taxes and government intervention.
But what this great and chaotic democracy decides will also have huge repercussions around the world. This is due to the presidency, its range of influence and its capacity to act within the international arena. But also to the ideological attitudes and political initiatives for which the U.S. sets the trend: see how the entire world is watching the Tea Party movement?
Up to now, Obama has not been a strong president domestically, where it has cost an arm and a leg to get through health care and financial reform – his two clearest successes. Neither has he shown himself compelling in foreign affairs, where it has proven difficult to impose his vision on the world of emerging new powers like China; or on allies and friends that are too weak – like the Europeans; or on the excessively despotic – like Israel.
While this great and chaotic democracy exposes its weaknesses and infighting to the world, in silence and behind closed doors, China’s huge and well-ordered dictatorship continues to make decisions that are momentous for us all, as it did just 10 days ago at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. … Although the U.S. remains immensely appealing to many of the world’s citizens who would love to have a vote in the election of the American president – and why not? – of representatives and senators, the fact is that what former Prime Minister Felipe González has described as the global fascination with China’s mandarins is also on the rise.
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