The White Peril 白禍

Most of you have probably seen this already, but Jane Galt has posted her presidential endorsement. It's very well worked-out, but of course I'm going to say that because I agree with her. It did remind me of something a friend asked me the other day, though--namely, what do foreigners think about the election, anyway? Megan framed the question sensibly:

Then there's the question of what message electing Kerry would send. Does it make the world love us, because we got rid of the president they hate, or does it make them despise us, because we've just held a referendum on the Iraq war, and Bush lost?

Obviously, I don't know a representative sample of the 5 billion-odd people who live outside America. My Japanese and foreign acquaintances here in Tokyo are a mixture of international business types and bumming-around-teaching-English types, mostly. And I get to see foreign publications and broadcasts more than a lot of Americans, though I don't know how I'd rate next to the newshounds of the blogosphere.

Be that as it may, I think the foreign media will use a victory for either side to do exactly what they've been doing for all of recent memory: pissing on American policy and business interests while making moist-eyed proclamations of love for the American people. For anyone who missed it, Bruce Bawer had a long but beautifully done piece on foreign views of America a while back that expands on that point quite a bit. The way foreign journalists talk about the Clinton administration as the halcyon days of yore now, you'd never know that, while it was going on, they were carping and caviling and mewling and bleating about everything America did just as much as they do now. Sure, they liked Clinton more than they liked his right-leaning opponents, and 9/11 and the WOT have provided things to fixate on that didn't exist then. But the essential song remains the same, in my view.

So the answer to "Does it make the world love us?" when the "it" refers to anything but letting ourselves be annexed by Canada, is no. The foreign press would warm to Kerry more than it has to Bush; it would like his wife, who with her high-strung multilingual social-democratic persona is similar to most foreign women journalists. If he continued the WOT essentially the way Bush has promised to, he would probably get a little more sympathy for the first few months, because they could spin it as cleaning up his predecessor's mess. If he deviated radically from the Bush doctrine, he might be ritually praised at first as more peacable. But we'd be back where we started in no time: America has arrogantly designated itself the world's police force! And why isn't it doing more to help other countries? And so on.

As to whether voting Bush out would provide an opportunity to cast Americans as wishy-washy and unable to commit to long-term projects instead of staying just long enough to secure our short-term interests--please! That goes without saying. No matter how the people and the electoral college vote, America will be depicted as full of well-meaning but self-centered folks who don't understand the realities of the world.

However, I think those who hope that a landslide for Bush will show our willingness to stick by the difficult decisions he's made as commander-in-chief are also naive. That's surely the line non-US reporters will take when they want to make America out to be full of dangerous, gun-brandishing nutcases. The rest of the time, they'll point to the offices that Democratic candidates actually won, declare that those wins show that Bush doesn't have a mandate because the American people are bitterly divided over the WOT and domestic policy, and go right back to saying what they always say.

Now that I've dug myself in several paragraphs deep, let me emphasize two points: I'm a pretty observant guy who happens to live abroad. I'm not a media expert, and I'm not a political scientist. What I've said here is based on my observation, and I'm aware how subjective it is. Normally when I post about things I'm not well versed in, I try to provide as many links as possible. In this case, I haven't because I'm referring to BBC and NHK and CNN international broadcasts as much as to print media here, and you can't really cite the tone someone took while tut-tutting over the invasion of Iraq. But I really do think that fair-minded people who immersed themselves in non-American news sources for a while would come up with pretty much the same impressions as I have.

The second point is, I'm talking about foreign media--as opposed to people I talk to--because they are where ordinary citizens get their information about America. People aren't too dumb to realize that journalists bring their own biases to the stories they cover, of course; but inevitably, when reporting about the US is colored the same way over and over by everyone you're likely to read or watch, it has its effect. As Bawer notes, despite the general liberal bent of the US media, we Americans have access to a multiplicity of news sources and ideological slants that you really don't have even in other democracies, where the filtering is done for you by others who get to decide what's worthy and what's junk.

All of which is to say, we can't really do much about the way the election results will be interpreted for the world. We also can't do much about the way either man, if elected President, presents himself to the media. Faced with a choice between Bush, who has the demeanor of a lightweight but takes discernible policy positions, and Kerry, who has gravitas in his bearing but can't string two sentences together without contradicting himself, I still think Bush is the better option.

Sometimes I think I should learn to spaz more. I seem to miss out on so much fulminating, which I'm given to understand is very cleansing and restorative. Evil Queen Rosemary, along with everyone else and his decorator, posted about Bush's apparent change of stance on gay unions:

You can call if a flip-flop if you wish but I prefer to think of it as evolution.

Now, he and Cheney are simpatico and I am much pleased. It's a baby step but it's an important baby step.

Well, okay, she's not fulminating--just take a look at those comments, though! Now, what I don't get is this. The FOXnews article quotes him as saying:

"I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so," Bush said in an interview aired Tuesday on ABC. Bush acknowledged that his position put him at odds with the Republican platform, which opposes civil unions.

"I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights," said Bush, who has pressed for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage (search). "States ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others."

Great! Fine by me. But is this new? If I recall correctly, he said something similar on Larry King in August (how long ago in the life cycle of campaign-related unpleasantness that seems now!):

"That's up to states," Bush told CNN's Larry King Thursday night. "If they want to provide legal protections for gays, that's great. That's fine. But I do not want to change the definition of marriage. I don't think our country should."

When asked about federal benefits for same-sex couples Bush pointed to inheritance taxes which are lower for people who are married Bush said gays should support Republican moves to get of inheritance taxes altogether.

The president told King that gay couples should work with Congress not depend on 'activist judges'.

See? We already spazzed about this. It's true that this ABC interview is just before the election and less likely to be forgotten, and that Bush's phrasing makes him sound a bit more personally supportive of civil unions, but the idea that it's something he's hauled out without warning...unless there's a significant dimension I'm missing here, it's not.

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BTW, what does it mean when someone tells you you "dress like a Republican"? Not a compliment, I don't think from context; but don't all those DNC-loyalist trial lawyers shop at Brooks Brothers, too?

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Atsushi's flying in for the three-day weekend tomorrow. No typhoon at either end this time. One hopes.

Added at 20:30: I wasn't the only one to remember--one of GayPatriot's readers did, too. This is very odd.

Added at 00:31, 30 October: As Atsushi reminded me when we spoke on the phone, this is not, actually, a three-day weekend. :( On the bright side, he is, in fact, coming, having dispatched his end-of-the-month crunch work.

Another Japanese citizen has been taken hostage in Iraq. The last pair were months ago; they were freed. But there's been quite a bit of beheading since then, and the threat, naturally, is that he will be murdered if Japan doesn't withdraw its non-combat SDF personnel within 48 hours. Koizumi, being Koizumi, says no.

Andrew Sullivan has endorsed John Kerry, which may surprise you if you've just emerged from your cave to buy provisions for the first time in a few months. I think the questions he raises about Bush are good ones; they were going through my mind when I voted, believe me. The points he brings up in favor of Kerry, however, make me wonder which of us is living in an alternate universe. One of us must be:

Besides, Kerry has endorsed democracy as a goal in Iraq and Afghanistan; he has a better grasp of the dangers of nuclear proliferation than Bush; he is tougher on the Saudis; his very election would transform the international atmosphere. What Bush isn't good at is magnanimity. But a little magnanimity and even humility in global affairs right now wouldn't do the United States a huge amount of harm.

Uh, of course, Kerry has endorsed democracy as a goal in Iraq and Afghanistan. Was anyone expecting him to call for a Saudi-style blend of monarchy and thugocracy? The last two sentences ring true to me, though they'd need to be qualified. Bush has been great at getting some key heads of state on his side in the WOT, but his all-American, unassuming charm does not translate well abroad. And like it or not, that matters. It doesn't necessarily make him unfit for the presidency, but it needs to be considered.

What is just as important, though, is what we Americans think of our own president. Sullivan recognizes this, but I am at a loss to explain where this conclusion comes from:

He has exuded a calm and a steadiness that reassures. He is right about our need for more allies, more prudence, and more tactical discrimination in the war we are waging. I cannot say I have perfect confidence in him, or that I support him without reservations. But not to support anyone in this dangerous time is a cop-out. So give him a chance. In picking the lesser of two risks, we can also do something less dispiriting. We can decide to pick the greater of two hopes. And even in these dour days, it is only American to hope.

Kerry is the candidate of hope? Yeah, okay. There's just no response to that--you see what you want to see.

I'll gladly talk about my reservations about the Bush administration and the trajectory of the Republican Party. But the kind of hope that Kerry and the DNC represent seems to me to be more accurately characterized as wishful thinking. I hated having to vote for Bush the way I'd pick up a Swanson's TV dinner (iffy quality, but you know exactly what you're getting), but better that than voting for someone because he might not suck as much as he's likely to.

Colin Powell is coming to Japan tomorrow to talk about the restructuring of US troop deployments in Japan. It looks as if the plan will be engineered through a three-step process of negotiating: First the US and Japan need to arrive at a level of "strategic mutual agreement*" to serve as a basis for furthering their shared security interests, then the concrete plan for reorganization needs to be hammered out between them. (Apparently, the order of these two steps was originally supposed to be reversed--that is, it would be decided how many soldiers would be retained in Japan, and then the two governments would talk about how best to allocate them to various needs.) And then...well, they'll actually implement it.

Of course, if it were that easy, diplomats and negotiators would not have a reputation for liking a drink or six, and in this case, probably the biggest potential sticking point is this:

The objective is to finalize a restructuring proposal, predicated on the willingness of local authorities in Japan, by the end of May 2005.

The US military is not popular in many base towns, especially those in Okinawa. This article covers the most recent arrest for sexual assault (this time by a civilian base worker who allegedly broke into the victim's house). There was a 12-year-old girl assaulted and murdered by three servicemen in 1995. These incidents have outraged Okinawans, who tend to feel--not without foundation--that mainland Japan has been only too happy to shove as much US miltary presence as possible off on its poor southern cousins. Unmentioned, oddly, was the relatively recent notorious 2002 conviction of a USAF staff sergeant for the rape of an Okinawan woman outside a nightclub in 2001. (The Time article was written before the conviction, but I linked it because its discussion of the tension between servicemen and locals was relatively well worked-out and even-handed.)

I'm not trying to slam the armed forces here. How to handle thousands of guys living pent up lives away from their wives and girlfriends was a problem for military leaders long before the US was a superpower. And there's probably no way to maintain the security of, say, a crashed military helicopter without miffing the local police who come to the scene.

At the same time, making an effort not to give locals the impression that they're being treated with curt, secretive occupying-army superiority is not just the nice and ethical thing to do, it becomes important when negotiations of the sort that are to surround the planned restructuring take place. It's unclear how much movement there will be of personnel to other parts of Japan from Okinawa--there's been talk for a while of closing certain intallations there, anyway--but it's likely that it will relieve many Okinawans and rattle many Japanese in the new location.
* I know "mutual agreement" is redundant. "Agreement" alone wouldn't have had the connotation of back-and-forth negotiation that's implied by the Nikkei article, so I decided to compromise. Translation, like mutual defense agreements, is full of compromises.

For anyone who's been sleeping too soundly, here are two reports from the Asahi that I didn't get around to mentioning. One relates that, while Japan is pouring money into its spy satellite network, it is still overwhelmingly dependent on information actually picked up by US satellites:

It was only after North Korea lobbed a Taepodong missile over the Japanese archipelago in August 1998 that the government decided to step up monitoring of the reclusive state via satellite.

Almost five years and billions of yen later, Japan launched its own reconnaissance satellites--one optical and one radar--in March 2003.

Two more were planned to go up last November but remain grounded after the H2A rocket No. 6, which was to carry the satellites, failed to launch.

In the past 18 months, a whopping 250 billion yen has been spent on the project. To top that off, annual running costs are in the range of 20 billion yen. In August, the government announced that another optical satellite will be launched next fiscal year. A second radar satellite is slated for fiscal 2006.

As always, my point is not that Japan's image as technologically advanced is a lie. It's that Japan, like every other country, is better at some things than at others. And at the moment, rockets are not its strong suit. (Last November is not the first time one has failed to launch or had to be shot down.) As someone who loves both America and Japan, I'm glad as always that we're helping each other out.

Of course, America is not the only country Japan trades with, and investigators are now trying figure out exactly how measuring instruments (which can be used to make aluminum tubes--we all remember from Colin Powell why those matter, right?) shipped to Malaysia ended up in a Libyan nuclear facility:

Seemingly innocuous but high-tech precision instruments that found their way to a nuclear facility in Libya were rerouted after being shipped directly from a manufacturer in Japan to a company in Malaysia, sources said.

The devices included precision instruments for three-dimensional measurements, which can be used to develop nuclear weapons.

...

Asked for comment, a senior official with the Kanagawa company said it ``was beyond imagination'' that the equipment ended up in Libya.

A spokesman for the Scomi group, parent company of SCOPE, said it had no idea how the instruments were resold for onward export. It strenuously denied having links to the nuclear black market.

There doesn't seem to be any indication that the Japanese company knew its instruments were going to be routed illegally to Libya, which is good, of course.

Just mailed in my absentee ballot. Nobody here but us chickens.

Added on 18 October: Per Janis Gore's instructions, I decided to celebrate my ballot-casting by being an unpredictably shameless vodka martini-drinking homosexual Democrat.

Well, okay. Those weren't her instructions, exactly. I improvised. But I'm happy (if not entirely a Democrat). About the vote and the martinis.

And BTW, I'm not the first gay guy named Sean Ki--- to vote by absentee ballot. The "secret ballot" thing worries me a bit, though. I mean, the instructions from the Lehigh County Board of Elections did say you couldn't talk to anyone about the process, but people don't get in trouble for participating in exit polls, do they? I haven't been particularly secretive about whom I was likely to vote for, at least in the presidential and senate races. I'm willing to start cultivating an air of teasing mystery around the whole thing if necessary, though.

I'm kind of finding it easier to enjoy the Kerry family's quirks now that I've made up my mind about how I'm going to vote. Ann Althouse and Chris G (both Midwesterners in law at big-guns state universities, randomly enough) posted interestingly about John and Teresa Heinz Kerry, respectively. I remain unconvinced that they should be living in the White House, but I'm starting to believe they might liven up, say, the talk show industry. (I'm a pop-culture baby, so that's not to be taken as a slur.)

Was it Andrew Sullivan who said that he'd like to have dinner with Teresa Heinz Kerry? That strikes me as about right. The interview Law Dork cites is full of fawning questions. (To be fair, I suspect an interview of President Bush on the subject of his religious faith by a Christian writer would be, too, but that's not the topic here.) I don't agree with everything she says about sexuality, but her appreciation of the variety of people there are in the world feels genuine and unforced.

(Q) I notice you told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette earlier this year of your critics: "They've got to kill something that's strong. What can I do? Nothing. I know who I am. My friends know who I am." That's an attitude that really resonates with the LGBT community, which has had to face down scurrilous attacks for years.

(THK) I used the word "kill?"

Yes.

Wow. What I mean is that if you are not part of their way, they don't want you to be strong. If you are strong, it will weather. And they don't want you to weather.

Amazing. She really, seriously doesn't pay attention to what she says to reporters, apparently. Which I find irresistibly charming--what fun would our media-saturated culture be without mouthy, solipsistic rich people to entertain us with mouthy, solipsistic pronouncements?--but is not a quality I want in the woman who helps represent America to foreign heads of state.

And it's unfortunate, because I think she probably loves America as sincerely as any of us do. This interview seems to indicate what she's been trying, in her own non-linear way, to get across through some of her more famous head-scratchers, like addressing the DNC in multiple languages. She likes variety in people, she appreciates the ability to live in ways others don't like, and being censured just makes her assert herself more. Those are all fabulous things to think.

But like a lot of other Democrats, she doesn't seem so clear on when they need to be tempered. It's understandable why someone with her personality would balk at helping her husband campaign for the Presidency. But since she decided to do it anyway, it would be nice if she recognized that she's no longer just speaking for herself.

Her husband has the opposite problem, as Althouse notes:

But I don't care that he's really got an upper class accent. I've heard it in full force in the old tapes of his appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show" back in the early 70s, and I find it quite charming. It's who he authentically is, but he's got to mask that noblesse oblige stuff to run for President. But then he lets it slip and says "EYE-ther." If he would just be his authentic self, an upper class guy, trying to serve, being thoughtful and adult, I would probably love him. But he's been twisted and wrung out by the process. If he does win in the end, I hope he recovers that authentic self and governs well. But he shows us every day that he doesn't believe we want that man. It's really quite sad!

I agree. Kerry seems to believe that if he's going to beat George Bush, he has to do the common-man thing the way Bush does. It's astounding that he's never looked at a tape of himself and realized that it doesn't work (and it rings even more false since, with his dramatic height, he looks like Count Dracula when he puts on a dark suit and burgundy tie). Madonna and Kylie Minogue can get away with this stuff because they're pop stars. Madonna's self-reinvention as an eccentric Englishwoman into Near Eastern mysticism may be implausible, but its worst effect is that her music gets lame. The stakes are different for someone who wants to set policy.

I am SERIOUSLY GOING TO LOSE MY MIND.

I was just thinking, if I have to read another word about the mentions of Mary Cheney's lesbianism in the Cheney-Edwards and Bush-Kerry debates, I will go bananas. Then I spun through the channels to CNN. What's American Morning talking about? You guessed it.

The hilarious part was the letter (it was one of Jack Whosis's Viewer Responses to Thought-Provoking Questions segments, in this case, Do you think the mention of Mary Cheney's sexuality during the debates was justified?) from some idiot who seems to need irony supplements. He wrote something on the order of, well, Dick Cheney thanked John Edwards for his kind remarks about his family, so obivously, you know, it was no real problem, and the Republicans are just blowing a gasket to make the Democrats look bad.

This is one of the valuable things that the Japanese remember but many Americans have unfortunately forgotten, despite our genuine goodwill in most instances. People here still understand the concept of saying, "So very kind of you to say so," when they mean, "Mind your own [bleep]ing business, you crass little twit!" but want to keep the atmosphere of goodwill intact for everyone else's benefit.

Isn't it November yet?

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And then there are people who make up their own language to express indignation. Well, okay, these ninnies are British Commonwealth, not American, but they make the point:

In the morning, the flight crew woke up everyone to prepare for landing at Heathrow Airport. Potgieter said that he and his partner kissed each other good morning and hugged each other as any couple would do when they wake up.

Two flight attendants approached the pair and requested that they do "not to kiss each other as doing so was offensive to the other passengers on the flight."

A little later a senior flight attendant came up to their seats and told them not to kiss again.

Potgieter said he was shocked. In his court documents he says that he experienced extreme humiliation by the conduct of the flight attendants and that he became traumatized and angry.

As the flight touched down the men were so angry they refused to follow the flight crew's instructions to fasten their seat belts. The crew alerted authorities that they had two unruly passengers on board.

On landing, both men were arrested and Potgieter was held for three days awaiting an appearance before a judge. He was fined for not wearing the seatbelt, but says he suffered economic losses as a result of the detention.

I think I understand the concept of the cause-effect relationship, but I don't get that "the men were so angry they refused to follow the flight crew's instructions to fasten their seat belts" construction. I mean, way to make those killjoy flight attendants wither with remorse, huh?

And what is that "he and his partner kissed each other good morning and hugged each other as any couple would do when they wake up" supposed to mean? It is perfectly possible that the BA attendants were acting on excessive preemptive squeamishness based on seeing a locking of molten eyes, a squeezing of shoulders, and a quick peck. But it also wouldn't surprise me if these characters looked as if they were going to start seriously making out and needed to be reminded that they were on a passenger jet and not at a play party. After all, one of the reasons people feel free to hug and kiss when they wake up in the morning is that they're, like, alone in their bedroom.

And can we please stop using the word traumatizing to refer to what even-tempered people are still content to call upsetting or (in pompous moods) distressing? A car accident that kills your parents and leaves you needing physical therapy before you can walk again is traumatizing. Finding out that the love of your life is slowly poisoning you and conspiring to run off with your best friend and your life insurance money is traumatizing. Being gay in a country in which homosexuality is punishable by death or torture (or maybe even just frequent police raids) is traumatizing. Being asked in rapid succession to stop kissing and put on your seatbelt is not traumatizing, even if you think it was discriminatory. Flibbertigibbets.

Oh, no. Looks like I won't be able to vote for Bush after all. The cool kids don't want me to:

If global opinion polls counted, U.S. President George W. Bush would be voted out of office.

Democratic contender John Kerry was the preferred winner in the U.S. presidential election Nov. 2 by the majority of people in eight of 10 nations, according to a survey sponsored by influential newspapers in each of those countries. The poll was taken in September and earlier this month.

Most people polled in Japan, Britain, South Korea, Spain, Mexico, Australia, France and Canada would like to see Republican incumbent Bush get the boot.

Only in Israel and Russia did a majority welcome another four years of Bush.

...

In Canada, Spain and Mexico, 55 to 60 percent were pro-Kerry, while in Australia, Japan and Britain, a little over 50 percent were pro-Kerry.

Among nations where more pollees wanted Kerry to win than Bush, 30 percent in Japan still said they wanted Bush.

In Japan, about 900 randomly chosen people gave valid responses on Oct. 2 and 3.

In Japan the proportion was 50 for Kerry to 30 for Bush--less of a difference than I might have thought, actually. It seems reasonable to figure that in the other countries in which Kerry got around 50% support, Bush also got around 30%. I say it seems reasonable because that's my sense from talking to people. My methods are admittedly not scientific, but I meet quite a few people from other countries who, while skeptical of many things about the way the WOT is actually being carried out, believe that America needs to defend itself and its interests and would be pretty wussy if it failed to do so. Some even acknowledge the part the American military does in general to make their own countries or shipping lanes safer. There aren't as many of them as there are of lockstep leftists, but they're there, all right.

It's also interesting that the two countries in which Bush got more support were those in which the populace has daily experience with trying to protect itself from murderous thugs, many of the Islamofascist persuasion.* You think...?

No, no, of course not. Why pull for the guy who promises the crush the bad guys that want to off you right after the Americans, when you can pull for the guy who'll make nice with your own head of state?

One last thing:

The poll also showed that 60 to 80 percent in most nations have a favorable opinion of Americans.

Thanks, everyone. But I'm still voting for Bush. Just as Koizumi would.
* I haven't forgotten that Spain has the Basques and that trains were blown up in Madrid a few months ago. But it seems that, like the IRA in Britain, terrorist groups in Spain have only been very sporadically active for the last few years; I'll welcome correction if I'm wrong.

CNN has an interview with John Howard posted. It's pretty much a quickie, but if you follow Asia-Pacific diplomatic jockeying, it's worth a skim. Howard doesn't think his close ties to the Bush administration have made it more difficult for Australia to do business with China, Indonesia, and other hotspots in these parts. The article said something else that I'd pretty much expected, but something about it caught my eye nonetheless:

The Howard government received domestic and international criticism for its steadfast support of the Bush administration's foreign policy, including sending troops and equipment to the invasion of Iraq.

But the issue did not play a major role in national elections held last Saturday, with Australians convincingly renewing Howard's mandate for a fourth consecutive term of government. (Full story)

The linked article is from Monday, when I was busy with non-news life, so I hadn't read it when it was posted. But given the context of the link, something jumps out very clearly when you read it:

That caution clearly outweighed some of Howard's less popular decisions, such as committing Australian troops to the invasion of Iraq.

...

The Howard triumph may give some comfort to fellow "coalition of the willing" allies, George W. Bush and Britain's Tony Blair, both facing imminent election -- Bush on November 2 and Blair possibly in May next year.

In Australia, Iraq has by no means been a key election issue -- despite a major clash of policies on the issue.

Howard has been a steadfast supporter of the U.S. action Iraq and committed 2,000 troops to the invasion.

Latham had been opposed to Australia's involvement in Iraq and had vowed to bring the remaining 900 troops base in Iraq home by the end of the year if he won government.

But this election has not been fought on the Iraq issue, mainly because Australia's commitment has been largely symbolic and no casualties have been recorded.

I follow what's going on in Australia pretty loosely, but I'd have no trouble believing that analysis--that is, that most voters were thinking about the economy and about the comparative experience of the two candidates rather than the WOT when voting. I'm moved to wonder, though, just how many times in an 800-word article it's necessary to mention that Howard's reelection MUST NOT be viewed as signaling approval for his WOT policies before we're supposed to have gotten the point. Odd that the reporters don't cite any polls about the Australian electorate's position on Iraq, since I'm pretty sure I've seen some.

I watched the debate with Atsushi yesterday (our time) while making lasagnes for today's dinner party. That means I was able to stay calm because (1) the presence of my beloved has a mellowing effect and (2) I had a ready excuse to keep opening the sherry bottle. As I expected, I'm not persuaded that I should change my mind about voting for Bush.

May I just say, though, to everyone who talks as if any of the debates so far has had a "clear winner": Give it a rest. Unless one of the candidates actually freaks out and starts waving a switchblade on-stage, that sort of conclusion is absolute nonsense. If you need the psychological boost of thinking your man is on a tear, okay. If you need the different psychological boost of feeling secure in your convictions but acknowledging that the opposition is capable of scoring points, that's also okay.

But jeez. The same arch of eyebrow and rasp of voice can be interpreted as signaling "defensiveness" or "battle weariness overridden by rock-solid conviction," depending on who you are and whether your stomach's acting up. And the "coherence" of someone's content, while it sounds like a more objective yardstick, really isn't when the audience represents so many levels of familiarity with the party platforms. What does matter mightily is which clips the media will choose to play over and over on the news and yak shows between now and the election, and whether commentators will pre-label them examples of "defensiveness," "combativeness," or "coherence" for the viewers, but you can't tell that from the original broadcasts themselves.

People keep complaining that the debates are superficial--and they are--but to my mind, that's only approaching the problem from one end. The candidates have truckloads of opportunities to deliver long, detailed explications of their policy proposals and to pick over those of the opposition. The debates involve narrating them, with posturing and gesturing and a Phil Donahue audience.

One hesitates to say anything that might be construed, in the current cultural climate, as calling for more public vulgarity, but the problem with the existing debate format is that it's too genteel. As Camille Paglia said about Bill Clinton's first campaign, there are two television tests a US President has to pass to be effective: prepared ceremonial speeches, and off-the-cuff remarks to left-field questions from reporters. The debates are nearly useless because they're carefully pitched to land in the prim nowheresville between the two.

We've had plenty of chances to see and read planned statements of position. But I think the television media could have done a real service by showing viewers a compilation of each candidate's responses to spontaneous questions, as they've developed over the last few months. After all, you can love or hate what television has done to politics, but you can't deny it. Being the President means being on the world stage, on which it's often necessary to be implacable and consistent and flexible and sympathetic, at turns or at the same time. Presenting oneself well for television is not more important than having effective measures for national security, or not overspending, or appealing to the best in the citizenry in the course of uniting it. But it matters a great deal, in a way that the debates are travestying just as surely as they're travestying deep discussions of the issues. It affects whether Americans feel they can rally behind their leader, and it affects whether other countries we expect to be on our side in the WOT believe they're not being cynically used.

And before anyone brings this up: No, I wouldn't trust the media to do an unbiased job of culling representative clips and soundbites to give the most accurate possible portrait of each candidate. If television journalists were only able to recognize that they're as firmly a part of pop culture as Survivor, Madonna videos, and the Discovery Channel, they might learn to use the strengths of their own medium in ways that are genuinely illuminating, instead of pretending it is what it isn't. But imagining it actually happening makes me giggle uncontrollably, and I haven't had a sip of sherry for almost 24 hours.

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Whether John Howard's successful bid for a fourth term as the Australian Prime Minister was a referendum on the economy or the war is sure to be nattered about over the next week (though if the American media could give short shrift to the Bali bombing a few years ago, it's hard to imagine that this won't be overshadowed as well, what with the debates and the elections in Afghanistan). One thing that can be said, though: Australians may not be enthusiastic about the WOT, but they're clearly not against it sufficiently to put Howard out of office. Good on them.

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Also not likely to get much play in America: The fifth Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) was just held in Hanoi. As you might imagine when the states of the EU, China, and Singapore (among others) are involved, the meeting seemed to involve a lot of pledging to "take proactive steps" and "promote dialogue" about such issues as terrorism, WMDs, and the role of the UN in international disputes. Anyway, I only mention it because the Asian leaders seem to have been pleasantly surprised at the turnout from the Europeans. Interesting that America's not the only power seen as not understanding the significance of Asia.

I am heartily, utterly, most sensationally, inspirationally, celebrationally, muppetationally sick of the election. Yeah, I know, there's a line forming for that one, but you see, I could do something about it. My absentee ballot came in the mail this week, and while I was watching the debate this morning, it was driven home to me that I could fill it out right now, send it, and be done with the whole thing. I don't, after all, expect to change my mind between now and the third week of October, either about the President or about the PA senate seat.

Regarding the latter, I've managed to register, after weeks of responsible-citizen searching, nothing about Joseph Hoeffel except that he's not a Republican. (Don't bother crying, "Neither is Arlen Specter!" That line's been around since I was in junior high. My preference is for strong principled-ness, too; but there's a reason Pennsylvania is considered a swing state. Specter and Santorum represent 12 million-odd people among whom arch-liberals, arch-conservatives, and all shades on the spectrum in between are found in significant numbers. That Specter sees himself in the role of compromise-striking operator does not seem to me to be out of line with representing his constituency. Hoeffel might fill the same role, but he'd have two decades' less worth of Rolodex-building to do it with.)

The debate left me with the reassuring feeling--for the first time in months--that there actually were two serious candidates for President. Kerry sounded thoughtful and grounded. But I still don't see how voting him in is supposed to improve things. As I say, I don't expect to change my mind about a single tick-box in the next three weeks.

I think I'll just suffer to the bitter end (or as close to the bitter end as I can get while still having my ballot in by the Friday before Election Day) with everyone else, even so. Living on the opposite side of the Pacific, I cherish every opportunity to feel that I'm experiencing something with my fellow American voters in real time, for one thing.

For another, I haven't even begun to look into the fascinating candidates for Auditor General.