[T]his campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.She offers some analysis to support this proposition, and considers the shape of the American presidential contest.
What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time...
You can [given the new economic reality] decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy. Both of these possible solutions are currently being tried in the European Union, whose leaders are reduced to talking sinister gibberish in order to evade the obvious conclusion: the myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished.
She has another point at the end that may be worth considering as much as anything else: many Americans voted for then-Senator Obama in 2008 to prove that America could elect a black president. Yet it will be when we can evaluate one on the same terms as any other President that we will have proven that we are truly post-racial.
UPDATE: Speaking of the latter, 54% say that the President does not deserve re-election if we consider his record alone.
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