International politics

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Race, gay marriage and modern Conservatism. Lessons for David Cameron from America. – Spectator Blogs

So, we’ve had nearly a week to digest the results of the American election and contemplate what, if anything, it might all mean for politics there and, naturally, in this country too. Let’s begin with a necessary caveat: the “read-across” from American elections to the British political scene is something that must be handled deftly. If considered with a sensible measure of proportion, however, it can be instructive since some of the challenges facing political leaders in Britain are comparable in kind (though not always in degree) to those faced by their cousins in the United States. Demographics aren’t destiny and policy matters more than journalists sometimes liked to pretend.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The View from the Cocoon of Denial and Epistemic Closure – Spectator Blogs

William F Buckley has, alas, gone the way of all flesh but his National Review lives on and arguably remains the flagship journal of contemporary American conservatism. It certainly considers itself such. As the Republican inquest into last night’s election disaster begins, National Review offers a useful – and perhaps telling – glimpse into the contemporary conservative soul (American edition). Here’s what its contributors have been writing today: Mary Matalin: What happened? A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform. Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama

John Osullivan

Barack Obama’s new ethnic majority

‘I’ve come back to Iowa one more time to ask for your vote,’ said President Obama at an emotional ‘last ever’ campaign meeting. ‘Because this is where our movement for change began, right here. Right here.’ And his eyes briefly moistened. The nostalgia was doubtless sincere, and the address correct, but it was misleading to describe his 2012 election campaign as a continuation of his earlier ‘movement for change’. In reality, it has been a smoothly ruthless operation to distract attention from a record that has been disappointingly bereft of change. He triumphed over himself as much as over the hapless Mitt Romney. Until it produced a glossy economic leaflet

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Amidst Obama’s Triumph, America Enjoys A Libertarian Moment – Spectator Blogs

Amidst last night’s Democratic triumph and the confirmation that Obama is, in many respects, Ronald Reagan’s heir let’s not forget that this election was also a triumph for libertarians and libertarianism. True, Gary Johnson – shamefully treated by the GOP a year ago – “only” won a million votes and 1% of the vote but this was still the Libertarian Party’s best performance since 1980. In any case, this small but cheering libertarian moment did not depend upon and should not be measured in terms of the presidential race itself. The real action came at the state level and it was mostly encouraging news for those of us interested in

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

US election 2012: do Conservative values no longer matter on the American right?

What’s happened to America’s social conservatives? Eight years ago, traditional ‘values voters’ were said to have been key to Bush’s victory. Karl Rove was credited with a strategic master stroke — by persuading the President to talk about ‘life’, not ‘abortion’, he was said to have motivated the conservative base while reaching across the centre to sympathetic undecideds. But now, Karl Rove is a GOP monkey on Fox News, and the electoral landscape looks very different. Indeed, Obama might have just played the 2004 Republican trick in reverse — by targeting the Republican weakness among women in swing states, he mobilised the left and appealed to moderate American ladies disturbed

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Presidential Predictions: Barack Obama 294 Mitt Romney 244 – Spectator Blogs

Asked my prediction a few days ago, I looked at all the possibilities and plumped for Obama 294, Romney 244. This is tediously in the middle of the general range of possible outcomes and therefore not the kind of wild-assed, long-shot punt anyone can occasionally ride to more fame than they merit. Sometimes even lousy gamblers or poker players get lucky. Anyway: I think Barack Obama will lose Indiana , North Carolina, Colorado and Florida to Mitt Romney but hang on in New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Ohio. That would leave this map, drawn from the excellent 270 To Win. Like the rest of us, I’m guessing here. But

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Barack Obama Deserves A Second Term – Spectator Blogs

No matter the result of today’s Presidential election, it will not be Morning in America tomorrow. Of course the successful candidate will talk of America’s essential greatness. He will promise a fresh era of co-operation and respect in Washington (this time for real). Hope will be on the agenda and perhaps, if the final polls of this poll-driven election are mistaken, change will be too. But neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are well-positioned to deliver either hope or change. This has not been a happy campaign in a happy country and, regardless of the result, there will be no fresh political dawn tomorrow. The path ahead is tough and

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

US elections 2012: God Bless Negativity

Today, says American political journalist Michael Brendan Dougherty, ‘120 million Americans will choose who they don’t want to be president.’ Exactly — for all Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s upbeat noise over the last few days, the 2012 US presidential elections have been motivated, entirely, by fear and loathing. The key questions: Are you so fed up with Barack Obama that you can bring yourself to vote for Romney? Or do you hate the Republicans enough to vote for Obama? With all its attack ads and its mudslinging, this election has been negative populism from the start. It’s not liberalism vs conservatism; it’s anti-liberalism vs anti-conservatism. Let’s not be pious,

Monday

Douglas Murray

Why I would vote for Mitt Romney

What is the role of a commentator in an election in which he or she cannot vote? And how would I vote tomorrow if I could? The response of many British journalists to the American elections is to do one of several things. These include becoming either a mystical seer or a partisan hack. The former have been doing particularly well in this election. People with no notable back catalogue of work on the US keep popping up writing, ‘Why Romney cannot win unless he does X’ pieces, or ‘Why Obama has it in the bag if he does Y’, etc. Few of these seers know what they are talking

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Annals of Hurricane Deprivation: Wall Street Edition

Hats-off to Bloomberg’s Max Abelson for this delicious, bone-dry report on how Wall Street’s finest have coped with the impact of Hurricane Sandy. Wall Street turned to Bordeaux, sushi and faxes as Hurricane Sandy wreaked the most havoc in the history of the city’s transit system and closed stock markets on consecutive days for the first time for weather since 1888. “I had to go to the wine cellar and find a good bottle of wine and drink it before it goes bad,” Murry Stegelmann, 50, a founder of investment-management firm Kilimanjaro Advisors LLC, wrote in an e-mail after he lost power at 6 p.m. on Oct. 29 in Darien,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Continental Divide: Why are Red States So Red and Blue States So Blue? – Spectator Blogs

So, for the third time in the last four American elections it looks as though this contest is gonna be a close one. As in 2004, however, the narrow-but-significant advantage still lies with the incumbent President. Indeed it is possible that this is one of those rare occasions in which the electoral college actually hurts the Republican candidate. Be that as it may, the United States remains pretty evenly divided between its Blue and Red teams. Steven Pinker delves into history and anthropology in an attempt to explain why, as he puts it, “ideology and geography cluster so predictably?” As you might expect he cites David Hackett Fischer’s masterpiece, Albion’s

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Did America bring Hurricane Sandy upon itself? – Spectator Blogs

Apparently so. You can always count on the British left to sneer at the United States. (You can count on quite a bit of the British right to do so too.) According to Jon Snow, the veteran Channel 4 news presenter, the United States should probably recognise that it brought Hurricane Sandy on itself. If he stops just short of saying America had it coming that’s the pretty clear implication of his latest dispatch: This is the wrong season for hurricanes to hit so far north. What has brought this upon what is – at times, and in some places – the most sophisticated nation on earth? Has what is

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Republican party didn’t leave Michael Bloomberg. He was never really in it. – Spectator Blogs

If two things could have been predicted about Hurricane Sandy it was that, first, far too many people would waste time pondering the likely impact of the storm upon next week’s presidential elections and, second, that someone would look upon Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s steady leadership and ask why he’s not running for President. I had not, however, expected my old friend (and former boss) Iain Martin to be one of those bemoaning Bloomberg’s absence from the national fray. Far less had I expected him to suggest that Bloomberg should have been theRepublicannominee this year. Say what you will about Mitt Romney but he is at least a conservative. Michael Bloomberg

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Barack Obama wins the second presidential debate – Spectator Blogs

Barack Obama won the second of the three Presidential debates last night but he did not beat Mitt Romney as thoroughly as he had been beaten by the challenger in their first encounter. If you were compiling an aggregate score for the debates so far the President would still be behind. I doubt Republicans will react to this modest reverse for Romney’s fortunes with the kind of panic that liberals embraced two weeks ago. The Democratic meltdown helped turn a setback into a rout. Suddenly momentum – whatever that is – was with Romney and it was easy for Republican raiding parties to mop up Democratic stragglers and put them

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Julia Gillard: Rather More than Just a Man’s “Bitch” – Spectator Blogs

I have little to say on the subject of the, er, colourful scandal that has been entertaining Australians lately. The Speaker, one Peter Slipper, has been pushed to resignation following accusations of sexual harassment and, well, much else besides. However – and no matter what you think of her politics – there’s much to admire in the manner in which Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, sets about Tony Abbott, the leader of the opposition. Anyone who admires the cut and thrust of parliamentary theatre and debate will enjoy these 15 minutes. Mr Abbott does not look best amused. But then he’s just been carved to pieces so he wouldn’t would

Friday

Shiraz Maher

Will the protests in Iran continue to build or fade away?

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets this week to protest inflation and the collapse of Iranian currency on international markets. Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar closed for business with many of its merchants leading the demonstrations. This will worry the government because traders there are normally seen as bridging the gap between clerics and Iran’s influential mercantile classes. The atmosphere inside the Bazaar is a useful barometer of Iranian political discontent. During the abortive Green Revolution in 2009 which challenged Ahmadinejad’s re-election, merchants from the Grand Bazaar offered only muted support. In 1979 they swung decisively behind the Islamic Revolution and helped unseat the Shah, having previously secured concessions from

Thursday

Alex Massie

Mitt Romney hammers Barack Obama in the first presidential debate – Spectator Blogs

Everyone says that the debates don’t change the dynamics of a presidential race very often. President Barack Obama better hope that remains the case this year. Last night’s debate wasn’t even close. Mitt Romney thumped Obama in Denver. It was, as they say, an old-fashioned ass-kicking. Any Democrat who pretends otherwise is either deluding themselves or trying to kid you. Will it shift the dynamics of the election? Perhaps not. The best Obama’s supporters could say last night is that the President avoided the kind of blunder that might hand Romney an obvious advantage. Maybe so but that kind of defensive mindset seemed somehow to have seeped into Obama last

Wednesday

Rod Liddle

Geopolitics in the 21st Century

Some dog-munching old thug from Pyongyang has been addressing the United Nations, warning that his country is the ‘world’s hotspot’ and a spark could trigger a thermonuclear war. It’s quite possible I’m wrong about this, as I am wrong about a lot of things, but North Korea worries me far less than one supposes it should. Partly because it is so far away. And partly because the North Koreans are utterly useless and their fatuous ideology is shared by nobody else in the world (apart from one or two academics in British universities). Even a country as thoroughly grim as China finds Pyongyang ludicrous and insupportable; when push comes to

Tuesday

Alex Massie

A Sunny Day in Brooklyn and the American Dream – Spectator Blogs

From Peggy Noonan’s blog which, unusually for a political columnist, is almost always lovely and generous and warmly-acute: “Man needs less to be instructed than reminded,” Dr. Johnson said, but it wasn’t really a reminder I got yesterday, it was a sort of revivifier. I was at the big annual street fair in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Big turnout, beautiful day, many thousands of people clogging Third Avenue from the 60s through the 80s, what looked like more than a hundred booths. The people filling the avenue were an incredible mix—young and old, infants and grandmas, all colors and nationalities, families, kids in groups, all kinds of garb—young Arab women in

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Weakness of the Case for a Romney Comeback – Spectator Blogs

Bob Wright correctly observes that we should soon be treated to a barrage of Romney Combeack stories chiefly because the press needs a new story to tell and this is one of the few even semi-plausible tales remaining. It may even be necessary to concoct a Romney comeback even without there being any actual evidence for a Mitt Recovery. (Conservative fans of Scoop will recognise this as the Wendell Jakes Gambit*). Be that as it may, you need only read the most optimistic pieces of pro-Romney straw-clutching now appearing in newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic to appreciate how improbable Romney’s resurrection is. I mean, can’t they