This might be the result of a Scandinavian (possibly harmful?) naivité about such issues, possibly brought on by a very homogenous ethnic makeup.¹ It may also be the result of a society that has been able to advance beyond a harmful focus on race. I saw an example of the opposite up close when living in Malaysia, a thoroughly race-focused country where race and religion ar important for official categorization of people. It is the story of a massive affirmative action programme that has spiralled totally out of control and become the basis for widespread discrimination in society.

I may be wrong, but my impression as an outsider is still that focus on the concept of race appears to bring more harm than good. The problem in the US is as I understand it that large groups have low income, low social mobility, language problems, high unemployment et cetera, not that the members of these groups have a different skin tone. Language holds power, and official contributions to keeping racial divisions an active part of the language may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Am I just an naively idealistic Scandinavian with an unrealistic view of the world?

1. The CIA World Factbook lists the 2007 estimate as: Norwegian 94.4% (includes Sami, about 60,000), other European 3.6%, other 2%

I quote:

[...]the candidates are God awful.  Seriously, they stink.  Just to review our choices:  Democrat Martha Coakley has a prosecutor’s complex that would make Javert seeem like a bleeding-heart liberal.  She is a God-awful politician so out of touch with  reality that she accused Red Sox hero extraordinaire Curt Schilling of being a Yankee fan (Schilling’s blog response is here).  Based on the ads I’ve seen, her campaign has also been, by far, the nastier of the two.

This leaves Republican Scott Brown, who based on this vacuous Boston Globe op-ed, is an empty shirt with no actual policy content whatsoever.  He was in favor of health care reform before he was against it.  He can’t stand the run-up in government debt, and wants to cut taxes across the board to take care of the problem — cause that makes perfect economic sense.   The one thing he is unequivocally for is waterboarding suspected terrorists.

It would be true political irony if all Obama’s blood sweat and tears over health reform should go to waste because of a mess like this. But that’s politics for you. Part of the reason why it’s so interesting…

None of what goes on in the evening has anything to do with government. The president and the Congress are discussed as omnipresent villains in a fairytale that begins with a happy kingdom of worthies, introduces an ogre, a witch, and a curse, and then interviews champions to come forward to rescue the frightened children and save the USA. All the while, Ming the Merciless, aka Rupert Murdoch, rakes up the ratings and the bucks.

The worst mistake Axelrod and Emanuel are making by confusing Fox News with the Republican Party is that they are confusing campaigning with entertaining and then letting this mistake blind them to the fact that the White House is for governing, not just staging.

Fox News is not in the news business; it’s in show business. The Republican Party, like its blood kin the Democratic Party, is in the campaign business. The White House is in the government business, though, from the evidence so far, it doesn’t know how to break out of the campaign business.

It all sounds rather logical to me. I’ve never been thought “taking on the media” was a particularly good idea. The winner in this struggle is surely Rupert Murdoch, who gets richer by the hour.

These figures are rather amazing. There seems to be only one country where the people don’t think Obama is more likely to do the right thing in international affairs – Israel. And the relationship between Israel and the US can hardly be said to be much like the relationship with any other country…

[...]so I am not in favour of protectionism, as I just said, I am just in favour of European measures – measures decided at the European level – that would prove to our citizens that we are taking into account their fears and worries and that we are trying to protect our European economy, that we are trying to protect our industries. This is a very difficult balance we have to find, but this is not protectionism. Protectionism means today that the UK would take some very concrete measures just to protect one of its plants, in New Hampshire for example, or London. Or that France would take some very national measures just to protect one of its industries or one of its plants in Normandie or the south of France without taking into account the interest of the UK and Germany and Spain and Italy. That’s the difference between the two ways of protectin industries and protecting our economies[...]

I just give a concrete example. The concrete example that is to me the best example of what we need today, si the automotive industry. If we don’t take any kind of measure to support the automotive industry in France, the UK, and also in Italy with Fiat, the automotive industry in Europe will disappear in a few months, or let’s say in two years. Just because the US on their side, has decided to give more than twenty-five billion dollars to General Motors, in direct help to General Motors: Twenty-five billion dollars. If we just say that’s a problem with the US. They should not give twenty-five billion dollars to the GM, that’s unacceptable and I’m not happy with that measure. If we just say this, letting our automotive industry die in a few months, I can assure you we run the risk of having very big political troubles in a few months or a few weeks.

That is why we need to support our automotive industry, even if it is not allowed by the Commission to day, we have to find the right balance, but we have to support our automotive industry. That is really the line we need to draw between saving our industries, doing our best so that no industry disappears in the coming months and doing things that would only mean that we are attached, and that we are in favour of protectionism.

I know the difference is very hard to see and that the line is very hard to draw, but this is the difference between protectionism as such and defending our industry.

You are quite right, Mr. Le Mair. The difference is difficult to see. In fact, what you’re describing sounds like the definition of a trade war. Or was the difference that measures to protect EU industries from US competition is not protectionism since it allows intra-EU competition? A trade war over automobiles between the EU and the US is for some reason not the same as a trade war between the US and France?

Domestic political pressures seems to have politicians grasping at straws and scrambling towards protectionist measures. That doesn’t seem like a good way for the world economy to pull itself out of the pinch it’s in.

I’m of course talking about the amendment to the Californian constitution to ban gay marriage, which was voted for together with the presidential election. For those who might not be familiar with the American political system, this is quite common – to include propositions to be voted on by the public together with any election. The infamous Proposition 8, named after its number on the ballot, got 52.1 percent of the vote, more than the necessary simple majority for a new state constitution amendment. It reads as follows:

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

As a strong supporter of gay rights, this has ruined some of my new found belief in America. But aside from my personal feelings, this is the kind of thing that would make influential political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville turn in his grave.

A French aristocrat and scholar, he travelled the young USA studying their democracy with great admiration. In 1835 he published his most famous book, Democracy in America where he analyzed the political culture of this nation that according to him was the greatest example in his time of what government should be in the future.

Even as a liberal in 1835, I doubt Tocqueville was in favour of gay marriage. Why do I then claim that he would turn in his grave now? Because his greatest warning about democracy was what he called “the tyranny of the majority”, or the possibility of any small majority trampling the rights of a minority. For example a predominantly heterosexual majority of only 52.1 percent of voters removing a fundamental right for a homosexual minority. Not only refusing to allow new gay marriages, but even removing recognition of previously approved ones.

How could this happen? First of all, the American political systems allows new laws to be passed by plebiscite without approval of representative bodies. This is in itself rather uncommon in modern democracies. Secondly, the Californian constitution allows amendment by simple majority rather than the rather common 2/3 supermajority. Any faction of voters totalling more than 50% can decide almost anything they want.

An interesting fact is that Obama’s great success seems to have affected the result in favour of the proposition. As reported by LA Times, there was great support for it in the black population, and Obama’s campaign made black people vote like never before.

Before I get side tracked too far, I’ll rein myself back in by concluding that although Tocqueville might not be too much in favour of gay rights, I’m sure he would – like me – be greatly concerned about this blatant display of tyranny by a pretty slim majority.

UPDATE: Some more posts on the topic of California’s Proposition 8

• The beat in my head: “My thoughts on Prop 8” – some interesting thoughts on whether gay marriage really creates any victims, and a scary piece of propaganda
• Trust, but verify: “Will California uphold the will of the people” – about the legal struggle for overturning the decision in court
• The reformed pastor: “Californinans to vote on Gay Marriage” – a word from the other side, considering the measures to prevent the voting on Proposition 8 “antidemocratic”
• Good as you: “FRC: Why aren’t you being antidemocratic, court basher Arnold?” – a word from the proposition 8 supporters and a counterargument.
• The kitchen table: “Black folks and the passage of prop 8” – a comment by Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell of Princeton University.

Current numbers (September 30th 2008):
Obama: 106 articles, +29 balance
McCain: 73 articles, -3 balance

It does however seem clear as well that this enthusiasm doesn’t translate into a campaign against McCain. The coverage of McCain’s campaign seems well-balanced, with the number of negatively and positively angled articles roughly balancing each other out.

The Republican convention seemed to be a changing point. Before this the coverage of Obama’s campaign outweighed McCain’s by much more. A significant “Palin effect” seems to account for much of this. Palin has grabbed a major part of the media attention after her appointment. First impression, without having done actual counting is that she has contributed much to volume of articles, but that the positive and negative coverage balances out. After her appointment as VP candidate, it was largely positive, but as the novelty of her candidature has faded, she seems to attract more and more negative focus.

A complete exported table of the data can be found here in Microsoft Word format:080930_uselectiontable This is available in other formats on request.

The saved information is the date, title of the article in Norwegian, my translation into English, the URL, the name of the newspaper and an encoding of bias towards each candidate, where 0 means it’s roughly balanced, 1 means it’s mainly positive while -1 means it’s mainly negative. The “balance” statistic I use is merely the sum of these numbers for each candidate, while the count statistic is the number of non-empty fields for each candidate.

On article titles I might add that I started out not translating, but rather describing in one sentence in English, and changed to more or less literal translaitons later on. Also some articles have different headlines on the newspaper front page and main page. In such cases I’ve picked one more or less at random. In other words, too much shouldn’t be read into article titles.