Obama seems certain winner.

After the American Century

After spending a week in the United States, I am convinced that Obama will win the election unless there is fraud on an unheard of scale. Unhappily, this is a possibility, as the many new voting machines may not prove reliable, though I am reasonably hopeful on that score.

The sense I got while visiting for a week was that the American media are doing all they can to make the result look close, but in fact few now really think McCain has a chance. The Republicans are making a big effort to win Pennsylvania, although Obama is ahead there by c. 7%. Supposing McCain is able to win there, however, he has been losing ground in many other places, so that even Georgia is now considered a swing state. Obama has been focusing efforts on securing the West, notably Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, with so much success that even McCain's home state of Arizona has slipped into the category of a swing state.

Overall, the displeasure with Palin has intensified, while the sense of comfort with Obama has increased. While the final result may hold some surprises, it seems likely that Obama will win a comfortable victory, large enough to be called a mandate for change.

To my Danish readers, I would warn that the quality of the coverage in the Danish media is mediocre or worse, and it is best to watch the BBC or CNN on election night. All sorts of people now claim to be experts on the US who have never lived there or published a single scholarly article. They are dragged out by the networks as experts, and they repeat what they have read somewhere.

It is a circus of incompetence that is painful to watch. In just one day since returning I have seen botched attempts to explain the electoral college, claims that Obama and McCain have the same foreign policy, and errors of fact or emphasis in every program I have seen.

The Forgotten Issues

After the American Century

The endless Obama-Clinton duel has now devolved into a contest of errors. Hillary made a huge one recently, by talking about the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 as an example of how campaigns may be decided in June. Was she saying, stay in the race, because your opponent might get whacked? Surely not, everyone agreed, after she apologized, saying she "misspoke." Perhaps the worst part of such episodes is that they take attention away from the issues. Why talk about the people dying in Iraq or the soaring price of gasoline or the thousands of foreclosures, when you can discuss pratfalls and stupid remarks?

There are real issues in this campaign, however, even if the media often reduce it to a popularity contest that focuses on who is the best bowler or who said something idiotic last week.

Will the US stay in Iraq until at least 2013 (McCain's plan) or for as short a time as possible (Obama's plan)?

Will the Bush tax cuts for the rich become permanent (McCain's plan), or will the US return to something like the tax arrangements of the 1990s? To put this another way, will the US again start to pay off its national debt, or will it assume it can keep borrowing money from foreign creditors forever? Also indirectly involved in this issue is whether the dollar will be backed by a government that lives within its means and that can protect the dollar from falling further?

Huge balance of payment problems are not a good long-term economic policy, either. Will the US continue its massive oil imports, or will government force automakers to produce more fuel efficient cars? Students have built experimental cars that can run an astonishing 300 kilometers to a single liter, roughly 600 miles to a gallon! But neither the American SUV mad consumer nor Detroit is going to get there without some leadership. The Republicans have had eight years to provide it and failed.

Will the next appointments to the Supreme Court further tip the balance in a conservative direction? McCain is now on record as being a firm opponent of all forms of abortion, and if elected would likely be able to tip the balance on this issue.

Will the US really embrace efforts to curb global warming? McCain is better on this issue that Bush, rhetorically, but the Republican Party is not. The only real chance for the US to take a responsible role on this issue is if there is a Democratic Congress and President.

Will the next president be beholden to lobbyists who have donated to his campaign (McCain) or will he only have received support from ordinary voters (Obama)? This has implications on a host of issues.

Will the next president try to solve world problems by using the military (McCain) or by "soft-power" and diplomacy (Obama)? McCain evidently agrees with Bush that negotiating with an enemy is a bad thing, a sign of weakness. Obama does not want to be another cowboy president.

Finally, McCain now backs the use of some forms of torture, which is quite astonishing in his case, because he was tortured himself while held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Obama unequivocably rejects the use of torture. This is a serious issue, because recent news reports indicate that the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture have been more widespread that previously disclosed. The American military appears to be infected with this undemocratic practice, which is appropriate for sixtenth century witchhunts but not for any civilized nation today. McCain's treason to his own earlier convictions on this issue makes him a deeply problematic candidate. If he can reverse himself on torture, one can only ask, does he believe in anything?

Of course, none of this is as much fun as hearing about a tactical mistake or silly remark made by a candidate. But these and other issues are what the campaign should be about. Looking at these contrasts between McCain and Obama, I find no reason to support the Senator from Arizona. I am not aware of a single issue where his positions appear to be the wise choice. On the contrary, McCain's election could easily be a disaster even greater than the Bush Presidency. It may be hard to believe that something worse is possible. But it is.

American Sonics

After the American Century

Public space in United States does not sound like Scandinavian public space. Take Logan Airport as an example. The passenger waiting in its international terminal is subjected to a soundscape that is quite unlike that one finds in the airports of Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam. I name these because I travel frequently enough through them to feel certain that I can generalize. Boston's Logan is all about commerce and cacophony. There are frequent loudspeaker announcements about flights, delays, and the like. There are TV stations hanging from the ceiling that all broadcast CNN the last few times I was there. And there is a third sound, a airport radio station bombarding the trapped passengers with music and advertisements.

They have arrived hours early, as required for security, and for several hours they must negotiate waves of sound. In certain locations they can hear CNN fairly well, but move a few steps and the airport "radio" sets up an interference pattern. The three layers of sound – announcements, radio, and television – further compete with the hundreds of cell phone conversations (often annoying loud), plus there is the tintinnabulation of tiny headsets chipping away at the brain cells of younger travelers. Conversation can then only take place at a higher decibel level, producing a roaring cacophony in the departure zone. After several hours in the maelstrom of sound, the already weary passenger climbs into a plane. By then one may have decided to buy one of those special headphones that cancels out background noise.

The comparison between these American soundscapes and those in Scandinavia and Holland could not be more striking. In Copenhagen or Oslo, where I sit as I write this, all three of the sounds amplified in Logan are absent. I hear only human voices, of people who are nearby. If I close my eyes, I can hear the sound of luggage being wheeled past or the laughter of a woman behind me. I can hear myself think because most people speak softly and apparently think that others have what might be called sonic rights.

Is Logan airport an exception or a typical case? Compare it to an American sports stadium, and it seems rather typical. In the stands one hears continual announcements, organ music, the radios of fans who want to hear the sportscaster tell them more about what they are seeing, and most important of all, there is a giant scoreboard, showing instant replays and producing pyrotechnic displays as needed in response to the game. If a fan goes to buy a hotdog down behind the seats, small televisions are positioned so that the game is still visible.

The American public soundscape is multivocal and competitive. It is commercialized, and the sales pitch is seldom far away. It is loud. It demands concentration. And it forces my fellow Americans to speak loudly. Many develop a vocal range from forte to fortissimo. Meanwhile, Scandinavians are sotto voce. They can spot an American without looking, from their sonic voice print. Yesterday I heard every boring word of a conversation between two American men, who were seated at least 20 meters (yards) away in an Oslo restaurant. They were not boors. But they were loud, having been conditioned by tens of thousands of hours in the American soundscape.

In Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman declared he would sound his "barbaric yawp" over the rooftops of the world. That was in 1855. He knew then that Americans as a tribe did not go quietly about. That was before the loudspeaker or the radio, back when a singer or a speaker needed a room with good acoustics, and just as importantly, the audience had to know how to restrain itself or no one would hear. Whitman's audience also could communicate back to the stage far more easily than one canm today in the electrified soundscape. For as sound was electrified and broadcast, the communication changed. But I begin to digress. If the historical background for American sonics might sound like it needs to be researched more fully, the book is already out. Get hold of a copy of Emily Thompson's The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (MIT Press, 2002). Please do not try to read it in Logan Airport.

The American today is not only a multitasker, but adept at hearing many things simultaneously and filtering out all of it except a single conversational thread. It is also a kind of skill to block out everything entirely, in order to concentrate on a laptop while sitting in a coffee shop. Or, in my case, sitting on a train, as I am now in Denmark. But train has a "quiet car" where talking and cell phone conversations are banned. American concentration, Scandinavian sonics.

The Strange ABC Debate

After the American Century

Remarkably, the recent debate between Senators Clinton and Obama focused a good deal on trivial matters. The US economy is slipping into recession, the imbalance of trade with China is now more than $250 billion, the war in Iraq costs millions of dollars every hour, prisoners held without basic human rights continue to rot on Guantanamo, and the dollar has fallen to its weakest level in 25 years - the phrase "in the toilet" comes to mind - and in the midst of such real problems, the questions ABC  presented to the candidates were pathetic. 

Back in the sixties, at media events students used to chant, "The whole world is watching." This is even more true now than it was then, but American journalists seem to be unaware of it. How idiotic ABC looks from outside the US!