Jos? Manuel Barroso is now ready to announce the changes he and the concerned member states made to his Commission line up. According to Spiegel Online, he stated during the ongoing European summit in Brussels that
“We now have a good solution.”
Author Archives: Tobias Schwarz
Another Tale of Two Americas.
Certainly, I would have preferred John Kerry as President, but, quite frankly, I believe his concession is better than a lenghty recount and a mud fight in the courts. I’m sure there were irrgularities. But not to the extent that they would make a difference given the results we now know. I suppose the Democrats are, above all, perplexed by Bush winning the popular vote with a margin of almost 4 million. Sure it’s close. But it’s hardly as close as many wanted to believe it would be.
We will hear a lot of technical post-game analysis in the coming days. But I think Eric Alterman comes pretty close to the gist of it all with his initial thoughts…
Tough Call in Ohio.
James Carville just called the election for the President because of pessimistic Democrats on the ground in Ohio. This may be a little premature. But even though, I think it is fair to say that President Bush did fare better – certainly in the popular vote – than expected by many who bet on a higher – Kerry voting – turnout among younger voters. Now it appears that the queues were a little too long for them, as Josh Marshall opines.
I think it is not unreasonable to call Florida for Bush even pending the lawsuits, provisional and absentee ballots. But I’m much less sure about Ohio, particularly given the legal challenges, and about 200,000 provisional ballots. Either way, it looks like the next president will be crowned in Ohio – and that may take some time.
In other news, Tom Daschle is not having a good time in South Dakota tonight, and the Republicans will retain the majority in both Congressional chambers. Should President Bush actually be reelected, this would be a decisive Conservative victory that would significantly boost their political and social agenda.
It’s difficult to predict to which extent the ideological cleavages within the Republican party would begin to show in such a situation. But Hillary 2008 would probably become even more of a clash of civilisations than the Kerry campaign has been.
Warten aufs Christkind.
While we are waiting, why not have a look at some quotes from the WorldPressReview about the world’s fears regarding an American election disaster. Robert Leicht said in Die Zeit –
“Let there be no misunderstanding: America is truly a free country and, for Germany in particular, a role model of democracy. … For that very reason, it is all the more grotesque that the ground rules of democracy in the ‘mother of all democracies’ can not be convincingly enforced but, rather, are sinking beneath an embarrassing debacle.”
Bad Manners, Bad Grammar
The margin of litigation grows by the hour. It is leaflets like the one below from Ohio that make me rather certain that the US elections will not be over when the polls close tonight.
Living in Viewropa.
Living in Europe is getting competition. “Viewropa” is a community blog started by members of MetaFilter who are “attempting an experiment in multi-lingual, collaborative and Euro-focused blogging”. And it’s a good looking experiment, too.
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Bowling for Cubberley (Free Music Inside!)
Usually, it’s impossible to argue with people who make comparisons between the incumbent US administration and various past totalitarian systems, particularly when the argument turns to a comparison between George W Bush and the Austrian guy with the Charlie Chaplin moustache. Whatever you think of George W Bush and his administration – still a mystery to many people in the US as well as abroad – he’s no Hitler, and the US are still a largely liberal democracy – albeit a deeply divided and angst-ridden one with a progressively eroding system of common values.
A regular guy from Texas.Though I hope to the contrary, I believe the weeks following the US Presidential election will become a much bigger electoral and legal debacle than most commentators are willing to admit now. In the end, this election might well become a testament of the principal current American weakness – deep social and partisan divisions, if not outright hatred between the camps. American politics now appears to consist predominantly of conceptually empty labels – very soon even rituals of Patriotism may be exposed as nothing more than a band aid for a mentally and spiritually ailing nation.
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After The Ceremony.
On Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell has already emptied his glass of constitutional champagne and makes several quite reasonable predictions about the future of the formal and informal relations between the EP, the Commission, and the Council with respect to Commission appointments.
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Anti-Americanism?
2000 British readers of the Radio Times voted Homer Simpson for President. The cartoon character tops a list of several fictional TV characters, which UK tellly viewers would prefer as US president. According to the BBC, “The West Wing’s” “real” fictional US President, Josiah Bartlet, polled second, only slightly ahead of radio therapist Frasier (link via Pulpmovies blog).
While it is true that executing such a poll is utterly bizarre in itself, I must applaud those interviewed for assembling such a supreme cast for a fictional replay of the 2004 Presidential race. British humour at its best.
Naturally, the German ZDF television is not quite as subtle: The title of tonight’s feature about the President and the Senator was only slightly biased: “Cowboy vs. Gentleman.” Just another example of what Christoph Amend wrote about in last week’s “Die Zeit” (in German) – Fernsehweh (impossible to translate, the word means something like “it hurts to watch what is actually broadcast given our desire to watch something better” – true, German can be very concise at times).
Hitchcock in Rome.
“It is better to take time to get it right.”
When Jos? Manuel Barroso asked the European Parliament with these words not to vote on his current commission line-up, European Parlamentarians welcomed his decision, downplaying that he was rather late for the party, emphasizing that he showed up at all. But of course, the EP is having a party Mr Barroso had no intent to attend at all. His decision is a concession of defeat.
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