I received a submission to our blog,
Documenting Democracy, this morning from a fellow Virginian who is studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. It's a passionate piece on her many frustrating experiences trying to answer tough questions about Bush and his support among her international friends. The PIPA report showing that so many Bush supporters think he has global support was the straw that broke the camel's back for her. She asked that I spread her submission far and wide and especially see that it gets to thinking Republicans who might not yet grasp the scope of what is at stake.
This is the specific link for the full piece:
http://www.documenting-democracy.org/archives/2004/10/voting_in_ameri.html
It's a long piece, so I'll just quote the first part of it below the fold:
I had only been in Britain a couple of weeks before I was confronted with the question that would become a recurrent theme for my first year here. "Why do Americans vote for him? I mean-I don't want to offend you. We know Americans aren't stupid. But why can't they see through him? Are they naive?" An Austrian woman voiced the question while several others-among them British, Norwegian, Belgian, Finnish, and Korean-gathered around to listen, nodding in agreement.
The "him," of course, was George W. Bush. My classmates, colleagues, and teachers had barely gotten beyond the pleasantries before they began pressing me to explain my country and its actions. They were eager to talk about it, seemingly gratified to have among them an American to whom they could put the question directly.
Significantly, what they looked for was not retrospective justifications for war or for other American policies. Instead they sought an explanation for the choice millions of individual Americans make when they go into the privacy of the balloting booth to cast their votes.
When first confronted with the question of why people would vote for Bush, I stammered and sputtered. "No, Americans certainly aren't stupid. Perhaps they are a bit trusting.... It's complicated."
Over the next few months I spent many hours explaining American domestic politics, describing what I saw as an unlikely potpourri of single-issue voters who tend vote Republican. To my foreign colleagues, these laundry lists of domestic issues created a caricature of the typical Republican voter as someone who walks around with an assault weapon in one hand and a Bible in the other, exhorting people to abide by God's (fundamentalist) laws and accept His tax cuts or suffer the death penalty.
I knew this caricature wasn't a fair one. I have friends at home who I know didn't benefit from Bush tax cuts, who are knowledgeable about the environment and want strong international allies, who do believe in gun rights but don't particularly want assault weapons on the streets, and who have religious faith but are not intolerant or narrow in their view of others, who nevertheless plan to vote for Bush. Trying to explain this seeming contradiction was vexing.
One night while sitting at a pub with some Swedish friends, Jan and Jenny, the conversation once again turned to Bush voters. Jan, who had proven to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Bush administration policies and actions around the world, was pressing me on what Americans thought of Bush's recent spurning of multiple international agreements-backing out of the Kyoto treaty, refusing to participate in an international biological weapons ban, repudiating a longstanding anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia.
"Do the people who vote for Bush approve of these actions?" he asked.
I threw up my hands in frustration, saying, "Most Americans don't choose presidents over stuff like that! A lot of people probably don't even know he did those things!"
My Swedish friends were stunned. "They don't know he did those things?" they asked in disbelief.
"Well, for many of them probably not," I explained. "Usually, American elections hinge on domestic issues. And anyway," I added, "a lot of people just vote out of habit or tradition. They think, 'I am Republican. Therefore I vote Republican. If I do otherwise then...well, what would people in my circle think? How could I still call myself Republican?'"
I could see the horror on Jan and Jenny's faces. They found this description of many Americans' voting habits alarming.
The rest is at the link above. It'd be nice to think we can still persuade some of the closed minds out there in the final days before next Tuesday...