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White House race: there are policy differences between the candidates

— PHOTO: AFP

An American woman fills in her ballot paper on Tuesday at a polling station of the Democratic Party in Munich, Germany opened by Democrats Abroad Germany.

Funny, is it not, how we have come this far in the American presidential election campaign, reaching the milestone of results from 24 States in the early hours of Wednesday, and still a mystery remains — one that has vexed more than a few readers of this newspaper.

Despite all the ink spilled, the pages filled and the airwaves crammed with coverage, they complain, there is something large they still don’t know. What, exactly, do these warring candidates stand for?

Partly this is a media mea culpa, to go alongside the, er, misreading of the New Hampshire primary. For what have been the dominant themes so far? Barack Obama’s rhetoric in Iowa, Hillary Clinton’s tears in New Hampshire, the role — asset or liability? — of Bill Clinton, the cost or benefit of Mr. Obama’s race and of Ms Clinton’s gender. On the Republican side, we have had Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, John McCain’s age, and Mike Huckabee’s wit. That is a bit of a caricature, but not so far off. Policy differences have not exactly been centre stage.

And yet, it would be a grave mistake to conclude that somehow this election is nothing more than a personality contest, albeit a gripping one. We could repeat the old cliché — that, under the surface, all these politicians are the same — but too many made that mistake before. In 2000 it was fashionable to say that Al Gore and George W Bush were ideological twins, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of bland centrism. Now we know, to our cost, how wrong that was. So perhaps today, as the presidential campaign enters a new phase, we should take a hard look at what these candidates are about.

Start with Mr. Obama, the candidate who, more than any other, is accused of being light on detail. It is true that he offers nothing like the programmatic minutiae of Ms Clinton, but it is still clear where he stands. During the last month, Mr. Obama’s standard stump speech opened with a declaration that “The nation is at war and the planet is in peril.” In that single sentence, he signalled two radical breaks with the last eight years, on Iraq and on climate change.

On Iraq, he cites his own early opposition to the war to draw one of his sharpest dividing lines with Ms Clinton. Back in October 2002, when he was a mere member of the Illinois State Senate, he addressed an anti-war rally. At that same moment, Ms Clinton voted in the U.S. Senate to authorise the use of force in Iraq, a decision she has never renounced. Mr. Obama does not quote his own speech but it would be powerful if he did. He condemned “a dumb war, a rash war” in terms that look remarkably prescient now.

More than five years on, Mr. Obama promises a United States withdrawal and “no permanent bases” in Iraq, besides a garrison to protect the American embassy in Baghdad. He would send more troops to Afghanistan. He would then open talks with Iraq’s neighbours, including Iran and Syria, because strong countries “talk to their enemies as well as their friends.”

He would not only end the war in Iraq, he says, but end the “mindset that led to the war in Iraq.” That means an effort to restore America’s standing in the world. Accordingly, he would close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and restore habeas corpus rights so that no suspect could be detained without charge. He speaks about the assault on civil liberties entailed by what he does not call the “war on terror.”

Related will be his effort to wean the U.S. off Middle Eastern oil, required anyway to make the move towards “green energy.” (Both he and Ms Clinton avoid the language of climate change and global warming, as if preferring to focus on the solution rather than naming the problem.) He suggests setting a new fuel efficiency standard for motor cars.

Domestically, he wants to pay teachers more, to offer help with college bills to young people who do voluntary work and to do the same for returning military veterans. He speaks about financial excesses, citing “the CEOs who earn more in 10 minutes than ordinary people earn all year.”

He wants to raise the cap on social security contributions which at present sees Microsoft chairman Bill Gates pay as much as a worker who brings in $97,000 a year. “Millionaires should pay their fair share,” he says.

Ms Clinton touches some of the very same points, even in the same language, though she has wavered on the social security payment question. She, too, is for help with student grants, and keen on forgiving the debts of those who become teachers, nurses or police officers. She, too, wants greener energy, favouring micro-generating solutions that would feed electricity back into the grid or that would see solar panels on household roofs.

She also wants to “end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home,” promising to start withdrawing personnel within 60 days of taking office. Her husband says “we’re going to use diplomacy with friend and foe alike,” a slight shift from her earlier condemnation of Mr. Obama as “naive and irresponsible” for suggesting he would talk to the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Her signature difference with Mr. Obama is in the provision of universal health care. Both agree it is a calamity that tens of millions of Americans have no cover. She would impose mandates, obliging everyone to be insured; he proposes no such compulsion, assuming that people will buy insurance once it becomes affordable.

Crudely, then, she is to the left of him on healthcare and he is to the left of her on Iraq. Otherwise there is huge overlap between their programmes — and, what is more, both would be recognisable to European eyes as pitched firmly on the centre-left.

That has not always been the case with America’s Democratic party. (Much credit for that goes to the former Democratic aspirant, John Edwards, whose message of economic populism dragged both Mr. Obama and Ms Clinton leftwards and obliged them to replace platitudes with gritty policies.)

Given this closeness between them on so much of the substance, it is hardly surprising their contest has turned into a duel over their personal merits as candidates. But that should not obscure a larger truth, also made clear this primary season — that the gulf between them and the Republicans remains wide and real.

On the large themes that unite Mr. Obama and Ms Clinton, the leading Republicans are squarely opposed. During the last month, they have competed to declare their support for the Iraq war: Mr. Huckabee, the Baptist preacher, said that just because no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been found it did not mean they were not there: “Just because you didn’t find every Easter egg didn’t mean that it wasn’t planted.” Mr. Romney promised to double the size of Guantanamo.

On climate change, Mr. McCain concedes the problem, but would have little support in his party for taking any action: his arch-rival Mr. Romney would only say that man “probably” plays a role in global warming.

As for the rest, the social programmes favoured by the Democrats are condemned as wasteful spending, and the need for universal health coverage barely registers.

The battle so far may seem to have been about identity politics, resumes and political style. But do not be misled: the ultimate battle will be about two entirely different conceptions of the U.S. and its place in the world.

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