Election Fever

The wait at last is over. The roller-coaster has come to a stop. And yes, George W. Bush has been re-elected president of the United States. For us, political junkies that we are and Bush supporters as well, it has been a very suspenseful couple of years. In Washington D.C. in winter of 2003 we flitted about on the edge of the political whirlpool before the campaigns had even taken shape attending briefings on everything from Social Security to North Korea. In February, we watched with disbelief as France used its veto in the U.N. Security Council to try and foil the U.S. effort in Iraq. In March, we were in Flordia with our friends the Rosenzweigs when in spite of French efforts the war in Iraq began. As we traversed the southern U.S. we watched the war intensify and Iraqi resistance crumble. For the rest of the year we followed on tenterhooks as the post-war problems took hold and as the casualties began to mount. We were in Texas in November as the set of primary candidates started to emerge. In late December, we had just arrived in Patzcuaro, Mexico, when we spotted a news report on "CNN en Espanol" saying that Saddam Hussein had been captured. We wondered how all of these events would play in the election campaign of 2004.

For the next six months our ability to follow the Democratic primary campaign was often limited to sketchy reports in local Spanish-language newspapers, leavened now and again by the English-language Miami Herald, and the odd hotel with cable TV channels like BBC World, CNN, CNN en Espanol, German DW-TV, French TV-5, and Spanish tve. We saw at least one of the Democratic primary debates and wondered if the rising star of Howard Dean would reach its zenith with a nomination. The war by now was a big issue, of course, with U.S. casualties growing and the number of car-bombs increasing. The economy was starting to show signs of responding to the Bush tax cuts, but it wasn't clear if the benefits had come soon enough to make a dent in the unemployment figures and remove it as an issue in the upcoming campaign.

By the end of March 2004, it was clear that Kerry would be the Democratic candidate. Dean had fizzled, Edwards had popped, and only Kerry was left. And then the campaign began in earnest and by now we were closely watching the polls reported every morning in local newspapers. We watched horrified as the Democratic candidate accused the President of lying. We hoped that Bush would be vindicated just as Blair had been when the BBC accused him of "spicing-up" intelligence reports in the run up to the Iraq war. Somehow we had managed to be in the right place at the right time to hear Lord Hutton live on the BBC deliver his report into the allegations and conclude that they were baseless, and later to watch as Greg Dyke, BBC chairman, finally apologized to the Prime Minister and resigned.

We saw only outtakes of the Democratic party convention in July, but were nervous to see the bump in the polls that Kerry got. By this time, we were firmly convinced in our own minds that it was important for Bush to win. We thought his economic policies would be more likely to sustain economic growth and that his defeat would only energize the terrorists of the world, and in particular those barbarians who lop off the heads of innocent people. Gerry spent many hours reacting to anti-Bush articles sent to us by friends and family. You probably each think you are the only one of our correspondents to disagree with us politically. Believe me, the majority of our friends are also our political opponents!

Then came the Republican convention and again we got only glimpses of it through the Spanish-language press but were euphoric at the bounce in the polls for Bush that resulted. The campaign probably did much for our Spanish-reading ability as we scoured the international pages of the newspaper day after day for news of the campaign, the war, and the economy, and masochistically read the opinion pages, a majority of which were against Bush and for Kerry. We also watched lots of local TV news shows, battling mightily against the multitude of regional Spanish accents trying to pick up the subtleties in their reports that might give us insight into how the campaign was actually going.

Our other important source of news was from the web. We have found that of all the world's newspapers, Le Monde offers the best free coverage of world news on the web. All through the campaign, therefore, we have been reading Le Monde editorials about Bush and his policies and how his unilateralism (and nary a mention of Chirac's) has caused the world so many problems and finally how Kerry would be a much better president.

Then it was debate season. We postponed our departure from Bogota, Colombia so that we could watch the first debate and then agonized when the Cable-TV system in our hotel went off the air an hour before the debate began! We decided we had perhaps been fortunate when we read the reports of Bush's poor performance in the debate the next day and flew off to Quito our hearts in our mouths. In Quito we watched the second debate and were heartened by a Bush that was at least strong in his own defence if not necessarily as strong as Kerry. Then it was the Cheney-Edwards debate and a sense that our side was at least holding its own. In between times, of course, we had seen the mark of a thousand dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the report on WMD from the UN, the 9/11 report, and mixed reports on the economy. We were in a small town north of Quito when the third debate was held. Our hotel room did not have any foreign channels, but the restaurant downstairs did and so we asked permission to watch the debate while we ate dinner there and got to watch the first hour only as the restaurant closed and threw us out before the debate was over.

For the next week or so, we were mostly out of touch as we travelled up in the high Andes to take in some spectacular mountain scenery. The week before the election itself we were in a lovely resort town called Banos, famous for its hot springs, and in a very nice hotel room that, sadly, did not have television, never mind cable. Luckily, however, the lobby did have a TV that was attached to cable, and so we managed to keep an eye on the polls via Spanish-language CNN and German DW-TV. At the beginning of the week Bush was five points ahead in one poll, by the end of the week he was only one or two points ahead, below the margin of error, and it was looking less and less hopeful.

We left Banos for Riobamba, spent two days there and then on the Sunday before the election went off on a two-day jaunt to Guaranda, a small town reached through a pass just below Ecuador's highest peak, Chimborazo. Our Guaranda hotel had cable but no foreign channels so although we liked our courtyard room we upped stakes on the day of the election and headed back to Riobamba where we had already picked out a hotel that offered CNN in English on its cable TV system.

After settling into the hotel, we set off to the local cemetery to watch the locals as they paid their respects to dead relatives by painting graves and decorating them with flowers. As we watched we wondered if we would soon see the death of all of our hopes. And so with great trepidation, we made our way back to the hotel and settled down for the night to watch CNN's election coverage.

Early reports showed great enthusiasm and confidence in the Kerry ranks and some uncertainty on the Republican side because of exit polls that CNN did not report in detail. We wished we had been able to switch channels to PBS or FOX but didn't have that option. [Not as far-fetched as it might seem, since in Quito we watched the New York channel WNBC and the Nashville, TN CBS channel!] By midnight, the map of states was beginning to fill in and as the smaller midwest and southern states came in earlier, the electoral vote count for Bush edged ahead of Kerry. Then came California, solidly for Kerry and the gap narrowed, then, mirabile dictu, came Florida and Bush was within 21 votes of the magic 270.

Ohio was the key, but there was some unexplained problem of provisional ballots. What on earth were provisional ballots? We knew about advance ballots and absentee ballots, but had never heard of provisional ballots. The Bush lead was over a hundred thousand votes. How could provisional ballots make a difference to that big a lead? We didn't know and that was how things were left when we went to sleep.

Early the next morning, having been woken up by guests leaving for the early morning train (7 a.m.) we turned on the TV to find things almost exactly as we had left them. The Ohio Secretary of State was still promising a slow, careful, and reliable count of provisional ballots over the next eleven days! How could we bear to wait another eleven days? When in doubt, eat breakfast, which is what we did and came back to our room to learn that Kerry had conceded. Ooof!

All polls and predictions to the contrary, Bush won not only the popular vote as well as the electoral vote, but also an absolute majority of the popular vote. And this in spite of (or because of?) Michael Moore and George Soros and of course MoveOn.org. Turnout had been high, close to 60% as far as we know, but the Democrats had been hoist by their own petard. So much had they insisted on the fact that they would register and turn out lots of new voters that they forgot to ask whether the Republicans might not do the same. Of course the media failed to ask that same question.

Since that day, we have been interested to see the post-election analysis. One should not be surprised to note that just as Kerry's invectives against Bush energized Kerry supporters, they also energized Bush supporters too. And with what glee did we read Le Monde's reports of Bush's victory.

And in Jan and Gerry's political world, all is well that ends well.