Posted on 09/29/2003 7:14:32 PM PDT by Pokey78
In his last dispatch as Washington Bureau Chief, Toby Harnden examines the state of the union
Driving across America last month, an exhilarating and enthralling three-week trip covering 26 states and 7,896 miles to California and back, I was struck by how a country can be so misunderstood when so much about it is known.
Before setting off, I re-read the diary of my last coast-to-coast trip, on Greyhound buses, as a student in 1989. Another president called Bush had just taken office, though my attitudes had been shaped by endless chatter in Britain about an ignorant, cowboy president - sound familiar? - called Ronald Reagan.
A tour of the Statue of Liberty, I sniffed, was spoiled by "a lot of typical US rhetoric about protecting freedom and democracy".
Universal Studios in Hollywood epitomised "all that was bad about the States - packaged, contrived, corny, expensive and mindless".
Even the World Trade Centre was irritating. "The preoccupation in the States with having the tallest building in the world seems to say so much. Everything must be the biggest and the best."
It was essentially a mild version of the usual stereotype - morbidly obese half-wits waddling through shopping malls, gun nuts and death penalty zealots rubbing shoulders with crackpot Christian fundamentalists. You know the rest.
A dozen years later I was in Washington watching television with tears streaming down my face, as office workers leapt to their deaths from those tall buildings on September 11.
By then, my view of the United States had altered. I viewed patriotism and the conviction that anything is possible as signs of strength and self-reliance rather than arrogance and shallowness. I had little doubt Americans would cope, principally because they loved their country.
Despite their many differences, and the divisions over the 2000 election that still linger, they believe in the idea, the ideal, almost the emotion, that is the United States.
This patriotism is based not on blind nationalism but on the embrace of universal values - freedom and democracy - that bind together a disparate people.
Motoring this summer from Ground Zero, through the Amish country of Pennsylvania, by Graceland in Tennessee, where Elvis lookalikes had gathered to commemorate the 27th anniversary of his death, and into the majestic landscape of Arizona, the remarkable variety of the United States was clear.
During my latest stint in America, I have reported from 47 states and visited two others - my apologies to Rhode Island. Along the way, I picked up speeding tickets in Kentucky, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota and Texas. Until recently, there was a warrant for my arrest in the Lone Star state, which has never been easy on lawbreakers.
I have interviewed steel workers in West Virginia, chased cactus rustlers in Arizona, attended black church services in Alabama, eaten whale in Alaska and smuggled a lavatory into North Dakota. How can all this be compressed so neatly into a one-dimensional stereotype?
The roadside ubiquity of McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Cracker Barrel and Best Western notwithstanding, this is a place not of homogeneity but a mosaic of extraordinary intricacy.
It is a country where variety is embraced - and newcomers welcomed - because it is young enough for all to relate to being an immigrant. A country where the idea of class never took hold and where there is no "correct" accent.
Despite the conventional wisdom in Britain that political discussion in the US has been suppressed, the national debate has seldom been more vibrant.
In the heartlands, Right-wing talk radio and Fox News compete with the liberal-hued networks and big-city newspapers for the minds of citizens. Yet the arguments take place within boundaries.
Two years on from September 11, there is an electronic sign above the Pennsylvania turnpike near which Flight 93, intended to hit the Capitol in Washington, was brought down by heroic passengers. It reads "United We Stand" - a statement of fact rather than an exhortation.
Americans had little choice but to rise to the challenge September 11 presented. But acting decisively has stirred the embers of anti-Americanism - among other governments and elites at least. Even more dangerous is the rise of "counter-Americanism", the doctrine that the United States has to be stopped, its goals frustrated and a counter-balance created.
Yet it is worth recognising the self-evident truth that America is a force for tremendous good in the world. Opposing it means opposing the universal values that Europeans first exported. Certainly, the United States has its faults. After all, it is an experiment still in progress. Mr Bush has many qualities as a president but he has needlessly antagonised allies, often as much by his dismissive manner as by the substance of policy.
None of this, however, justifies the tendency of so much of the world to define itself by the ways it is against America. Mr Bush once said that he didn't "do nuance". His fondness for the black and white encourages those who want to feel superior to see a caricature of the world's sole superpower rather than seek to fathom it.
But nuance should work both ways.
Good analogy.
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