Daily Times

As the American electoral race heats up and fewer and fewer candidates are left in the Republican and Democratic primary races, a new face of American politics is slowly coming to the fore. For the first time since the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers, it seems like the pall that had been cast over American politics is about to lift and reveal a changed America — less obsessed with fear and more interested in change.
Evidence of this change can be found both in the candidates left in the primaries, as well as the issues that are dominating political discussion. This past week saw the withdrawal of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani from the roster of Republican candidates. His decision is important because of all the Republican hopefuls; Rudolph Giuliani was most invested in using the legacy of 9/11 to boost his candidacy. His campaign focused on his leadership during a time of unprecedented crisis in America’s largest city, as well as the need to protect America from terrorists around the world.
Yet for all its manipulative use of 9/11 as a road to winning the Republican nomination, a route used successfully by George W Bush during his re-election campaign a mere four years ago, Giuliani’s message fell flat on American ears. Beset by the pressing problems of an economy even Bush called “uncertain” and a war that is costing more and more in terms of dollars, lives and America’s reputation abroad, Republican voters seemed uninterested in Giuliani’s message and refused to nominate him.
Admittedly, the remaining Republican contenders have not completely abandoned the 9/11 bandwagon. Senator John McCain, the senior Republican senator from Arizona, is still being touted as the “national security” candidate given his record as a former POW in Vietnam who was captured and tortured by the Vietnamese before he began his political career in Washington.
Yet his rival Mitt Romney, former governor of the state of Massachusetts, who is running neck to neck with McCain in the polls, has built his campaign on his ability to rescue the economy. Romney’s success could well be an indication that Americans have moved on from worrying solely about their security to now worrying about their pocketbooks.
The Democratic side of the race for the White House lends even more substance to the assertion that 9/11 and the ensuing paranoia over future terrorist attacks has ceased to be the pivot of political decisions made by American voters. With the withdrawal of John Edwards, there is now a two-horse race between Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, both aiming to making history by potentially becoming the first female or the first African-American to lead the United States.
One major distinction between the two is their record over the Iraq war. Unlike Barack Obama, who was against the war from its very beginning and voted against it, Hillary Clinton, like many other Democrats, chose to support the war and buy the dubious connections between Iraq and 9/11 that the Bush Administration was trying to sell. This crucial difference between Obama and Clinton continues to haunt the latter, allowing Obama to paint himself as the true anti-war candidate.
Separating 9/11 and the war in Iraq has been a challenging endeavour in the United States. In his 2004 campaign, George W Bush repeatedly tried to blur the boundaries and continued to imply that there was some connection between the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. After five years of the war in Iraq, in a depressed economy and weary of casualties, Americans seem more amenable to separating the two and coming to terms with the reality that the war was not only a mistake but also horribly botched in its execution. This message appeals particularly to Democratic voters who are now almost united in their staunch stance against the war, and hence view Obama’s consistent opposition to it as a plus.
Regardless of who wins the Republican and Democratic nominations, a survey of the main contenders left in the field shows an American different from the one during the 2004 campaign. The incessant refrain then was that of a lingering fear that if America stopped being on the offensive then another terrorist attack would take place on its soil. So powerful was this refrain that it effectively drowned out problems like economic growth, healthcare and social security reform, all of which continued to exist but failed to influence the decision-making process of an electorate still reeling from the aftershocks of 9/11.
Four years later, Americans seem to have woken up to the everyday problems that a competent administration should have been tackling, and their reaction to the mess left behind can be seen in who they are choosing as their candidates. Indeed, the new refrain is no longer fear, but change from “politics as usual” and a promise that mundane everyday issues like jobs and healthcare will again take the bulk of government attention and spending. Gone indeed are the days when anti-terrorism bills allocated millions of dollars to small town water pumping stations and any talk of being against military expeditions immediately won you the label of “unpatriotic”. The America in which Clinton, Obama, McCain and Romney are campaigning has other things on its mind.
Given the tightly contested races being fought on both the Democratic and Republican sides, it is impossible to predict who the next President of the United States will be. Yet regardless of the actual winner, based on the dismal mood of the electorate, the next president is likely to be one that is more insular, less martial, focused more on correcting domestic problems rather than meddling in world affairs. How the rest of the world, now used to both American aid and intervention, will respond to this “new” America sought by the American voter remains to be seen.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com