WE ARE well launched into a process of turmoil quite unlike anything humanity has ever experienced – globally across our planet and directly in our everyday lives. This turmoil is driven more by the failure of what we only recently viewed as being reliable, than by any embrace of systems of belief, new, old or recycled. While the need for change is clear, decisions about what changes are far from being so.
The opposition Democratic Party have defeated the outgoing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan’s general election.
The LDP has governed Japan continuously since 1955, with one 11-month break in 1994. A poll by the national broadcaster NHK predicted a turnout approaching 90 per cent rather than the more usual 70 per cent. In broad terms, the LDP is seen to be slightly right of centre, with the Democrats slightly to the left.
Poll after poll, and declarations from local organisations such as the Aomori branch of Japan’s national agricultural co-operative in northern Honshu endorsing the Democratic Party candidate after more than half a century of supporting the LDP, shows voters craving change rather than mobilising behind specific policies.
Democratic Party secretary general Katsuya Okada has caught the mood, saying: “More than the policies, we want to change the very dynamism of Japanese politics, just having a transition of power will by itself make a huge difference.”
Half a world away voters were also voting in the German states of Saarland, Thuringia and Saxony. While none of these elections are themselves determinant, the final results may shed some light on the outcome of next month’s German general election.
Angela Merkel is almost certain to be re-elected as chancellor. Polls credit her centre-right CDU-CSU with 36 per cent of the votes. Her centre-left SPD coalition partners trail with 23 per cent. The pro-business FDP has 14 per cent, the Greens 13 per cent and the Left party brings up the rear with 9 per cent.
Polls predict a classic down to the wire contest in the Saarland between a right CDU-FDP alliance and an SPD-Green-Left one. The sharp contest in Thuringia is between the SPD and the Left for the main opposition slot. The CDU is likely to remain the largest party in both Saxony and Thuringia, where the real interest will focus on its level of support.
This complex mix and match would seem to indicate that German voters are in no mood to contemplate radical change, preferring to nudge governmental actions in one direction or another.
Predicting the outcomes when roughly equal numbers of voters support opposing nudges is nigh impossible.
The “yes we can” passion for change that enthused so many in last year’s US presidential election campaign now faces the challenge of metamorphosing into more mundane political campaigning.
President Obama despite, or perhaps because of, his intellectual prowess and dynamic energy, has been forced back to earth. His appeals to build a broad consensual coalition on healthcare reform have not only fallen on deaf ears, but seem to have incited an all but inexplicable degree of bile amongst the zanier of his opponents.
On August 11th last, he participated in a public meeting on healthcare in New Hampshire. A local resident, William Kostric, chose to protest by carrying a placard declaring “It is time to water the tree of liberty” and having a handgun visibly strapped to his leg.
The slogan, derived from the Thomas Jefferson quote “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”, is an ominous one, popular with the US far right. Timothy McVeigh had it emblazoned on his T-shirt when he murdered 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing.
Tom Coburn, the Republican senator from Oklahoma, dismissed concerns about armed demonstrators saying: “I’m troubled anytime when we stop having confidence in our government . . . You know, this debate isn’t about healthcare. Healthcare’s the symptom. The debate is an uncontrolled federal government . . .”
In this Alice in Wonderlandview of "change", the problem ceases to be the 60 million uninsured, or underinsured, Americans, but the federal government's attempt to assist them.
Wendell Potter, a former head of corporate communications with two big US health insurers, Humana and Cigna, now campaigns for reform. He is alarmingly eloquent about how insurance executives boost profits, their companies’ share price and thus their own bonuses.
One method is to turn down requests for expensive medical procedures. Another involves “rescission”, where the company uses any technicality to cancel the policy of a client, however long-standing they may be, should they develop cancer or some other expensive disease. A congressional investigation found that three insurers had used this technique to cancel more than 20,000 policies over five years, saving themselves a tidy $300 million (€209 million).
A third method is to hike the premiums significantly for small companies where a staff member develops an expensive illness. Companies then find themselves obliged to negotiate new policies where “existing conditions” are excluded.
If Barack Obama’s supporters want to realise some of the changes his election campaign promised, they will have to mobilise themselves for the long haul. Some of the lessons from our current economic and political flux are old ones: the need for engagement and campaigning, the exposure of the incompetent, and the realisation that individual leaders, however brilliant, always have their limitations.
These were lessons Ted Kennedy learned the hard way. As the fourth remarkable Kennedy brother is laid to rest in Arlington cemetery, many have come to realise that his political achievements possibly outweigh those of his more famous siblings.
Change, though not invariably positive, is always possible.
Ensuring that it becomes positive involves reflection, selection and action in association with others. That, as senator Kennedy advocated, is what politics is all about.