Two things stand out about the 2012 Presidential race. Neither the President nor his opponent have yet developed obvious winning themes and America is polarised. Rather than a theme, there is instead a schism. It is about the American dream of individual freedom, self reliance and minimal government versus the one nationhood of the United States, in which all are equal, but none shall be forgotten, because those who have, are willing to share with those who have not.
Many Americans grow agitated and angry at the thought of the European social model and recall, whether consciously or not, the old issue which sundered the country in the first century of its existence and cost it two thirds of million young lives. The issue then was not, as history has been re-written to portray, whether there should be slavery or not, but who or what organ of government had the power to decide the issue. The Union triumphed and the United States are became the United States is.
The old schism was never resolved, though it became focussed on the running sore of segregation and the lack of opportunity for African Americans. Tackling that problem was put off for a hundred years and bringing real equality took another fifty. Yet the gap between rich and poor of all races within the American family is as bad as it has ever been and Barack Obama, the first Black President, has been thwarted at every step in his mission to close that gap. This ideological conflict is not now for the most part between States or regions, but between individual people spread everywhere right across the country.
The standard bearer for the political philosophy of the old Confederacy, for that is root of the the small government ideology (although most modern adherents would probably deny this) is in 2012, Mitt Romney. His gaffes at home and abroad and the release of secret recordings, portray a singularly ill prepared candidate whose victory in November, where it to happen, would alarm the entire world. It is, of course for Americans and Americans alone, to decide who they want to lead them. The trouble is that the division now runs so deep within the country that if the outcome is close, it may not make any difference.
The checks and balances so carefully installed into the nation’s institutions and systems of government by the founding fathers, make the United States, in a polarised stand off, very difficult to govern.