TV is star in US polls

During elections, television is probably the single most important point of reference for most Americans, writes Binay Kumar.

The history of presidential debates, since the first Kennedy - Nixon encounter, down to the current incumbent's father and his meeting with Governor Clinton, suggests that they have little influence upon election results. But in today's world where personality is often more important than mundane representations of policy and the like, televised encounters in a fast-food nation are still pivotal for the opportunity they afford each candidate to reinforce his own image in the eyes of the voting public. Television is probably the single most important point of reference for most Americans: the idiot box has become a sage of sorts. And so this week it told us that Bush is very much the bumbling novice his caricature suggests and that Kerry is actually more convincing on 'securing the homeland', despite the campaign to paint him as a vacillating pacifist. The polls, that on average had Kerry trailing by four points before the broadcast, gave him a two-point lead by the morning after.

But what have we really learnt? Appearances aside, Kerry's representations on foreign policy were more in harmony with Bush's idea of post-modern imperialism than either camp would like to admit. The lazy theatre revealed that the democratic party's promise of new world view is not quite as new as most people tend to think. Indeed, after looking more closely at Kerry's agenda, it seems as if the Americans are essentially being asked to choose between two personalities with more or less the same policy on the important issues of Iraq and the military.

The synchrony can be traced back to the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic think-tank. A year after the neo-conservatives came out their manifesto, put forth by the Project for the New American Century shortly before the 2000 elections, the PPI released its own primer for the 'New Democrats'. Much like the Republican ideology of American dominance over international affairs, this Democratic testament called for the 'bold exercise of American power'. Of course, no New Democrat would ever agree to Bush's brash unilateralism. They have a better euphemism; 'Progressive Internationalism' is the way forward, they will claim.

And what does this entail? A good place to look might be Kerry's campaign book, A Call to Service. As John Pilger has noted elsewhere, his book is, in parts, almost identical to the New Democrat's document. Pilger compares an important quote from Kerry's book with the original document from the PPI.