The outcome was not in doubt at any stage. Reagan’s re-election was assured from the very start. Not only was he the incumbent of that great office, his record had been pretty impressive in the eyes of a vast majority of the American people. The economy had done well in four essential aspects. While the rates of inflation and taxes were down, production and employment were up. Mr. Reagan also represented the new mood among the youth who unlike in the past, now emphasize the importance of traditional values such as hard work and self-reliance. And he had managed to restore the American peoples’ self-respect and pride in their country. Under him they ceased thinking of the United States as a flabby giant who could be pushed around. The more discerning Americans entertained certain anxieties. They feared that the enormous trade and budget deficits and high interest rates would cumulatively lead to another recession and that the new nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union would aggravate the danger of a holocaust. But these dangers lay in the future and did not bother the white voter. The blacks and the ethnics, with the exception of the Irish and Polish Americans who have done well in recent times, were for the Democratic candidate, Mr. Mondale, but that could not possibly become a winning alliance.
Regardless of the outcome, however, the election once again focuses attention on certain basic issues. As always the process has been extremely costly, cumbersome and time-consuming; it has lasted almost a whole year and all but paralyzed the administration in that period. As often before, it has been more a test of the contestants’ physical stamina and manipulative skills than of their capacity to address themselves to the tasks which go (or more appropriately should go) with the most awesome office in the world. And, as in the last two and a half decades, television has seen to it that the image matters more than the substance. Not for nothing has there been so much talk of pre-packaging the President. Not for nothing do so many people regard and call the TV set the idiot box.
Not only the American electoral system but the administrative system as well has once again come in for a great deal of criticism both at home and abroad. Imagine a host of senior officials, not just cabinet members, coming in with a President, often with no experience of government or diplomacy or whatever task is assigned to them, and going out with him, often collecting official papers as if to wipe the slate clean. Also imagine novices who happened to get on to the right gravy train at the right time managing not only the affairs of the most powerful country ever in the world but also presiding over the destiny of humankind. No, the problem is not limited to the election of a playboy, or a megalomaniac, or a paranoid, or a self-righteous bungler, or a ham actor to the Presidency; it extends to the way the United States is governed. The system, most experts, Americans as well as Europeans, are convinced, is antiquated if it was ever appropriate to the requirements of a great nation.
The Americans are stuck with the system. They are welcome to be stuck with it. But America affects us all as no other country. Washington has not succeeded in establishing a Pax Americana in the imperial sense. But a Pax Americana of a different, perhaps subtler, kind does exist. The United States commands the most powerful military machine in the world. Perhaps even more significantly, on it depends the health or ill-health of other economies, including those of industrial giants such as Japan, West Germany and indeed the Soviet Union. The relationship is not of equality. The West German chancellor, the French president and the British prime minister resent that their countries are being beggared by the flight of capital into the United States on account of its high interest rates. But there is precious little they can do about it. They can either grin and bear or scowl and bear, but bear they have to.
No, the American Century has not turned out to be as brief as many of us thought in the seventies. It did not end in ignominy – in the jungles of Vietnam – in the late sixties. It continues. The United State has made a spectacular comeback and again it sees itself as the world’s gendarme. President Reagan represents that mood.