You won’t escape it! Neither will the most detached observer of the vast turpitudes of the modern world! As the time for the results approaches—and this phenomenon will certainly amplify after the announcement—the American presidential elections overwhelmingly dominate the press over all other current topics. Wars in Africa, natural disasters, and deadly terrorist attacks, whether set aside or punctuating more “modestly” with their unexpected and dramatic emergence the rhythm of the long race to the White House, are ultimately just nuances in a broader melody being played primarily across the Atlantic. The “elections” in China, despite it being a future competitor in many fields of the North American continent, or those organized in Russia, India, or Brazil, do not ignite such excitement. And yet, the future occupant of the Oval Office will not even be elected by direct universal suffrage.
It is as if, even before knowing his name, an immense hope, whether rightly or wrongly, rests on the shoulders of the next president. As if, after an interminable two-year electoral campaign of holding its breath, the world was drawing from this deadline a new breath capable of restarting a cardiac machine suffering from arrhythmia. And not only because of the financial crisis. For it would be a grave misunderstanding to attribute this systematic and widespread attention solely to the economic rescue of the planet. While being its most apparent argument, the American stakes go far beyond the current financial system crisis. Israeli-Palestinian roadmap, Syrian-Israeli negotiations, Iranian nuclear, Russia’s entry into the WTO, a new approach to the Cuban dossier, the Kyoto Protocol… the world awaits the new president of the United States.
A pressing call for some to return to fundamentals or a clearly expressed desire for others of a profound transformation of the policies followed in Washington, this expectation, this “desire for America,” might it not ultimately be our own projection of impotence in the face of the painful uncertainties of international life, the famous “reversal into its opposite” of psychoanalysis? A phantasmic illusion of power, a complacently paternalistic imago, firmly anchored in the collective psyche, both in adherence and in… opposition to the United States?
Certainly, this superpower that has occupied the top rank of produced wealth on the planet since 1896 and whose military-diplomatic tool, for better or worse, remains the only one capable of grasping the earth and space, this America which is still the largest energy consumer and continues to sweep up the majority of Nobel Prizes, that definitely means something. Is it the “American religious exception” mentioned by sociologist Raymond Boudon regarding a country that, despite considerable advances in technology and industrialization, nonetheless takes the opposite path to the disenchantment of the world? Should this energy be explained by the fact that the best international business schools, of American inspiration, select their students largely based on responses to a central question in their application where they must describe, analyze, and take responsibility for an experience of failure? Is it for all these reasons that the world wants to “believe,” again and always, in the resilience and survival capability of the United States?
The very hypothetical end of American hyperpower, dreaded by some, ardently wished for by others, ultimately just confirms the primary place accorded to the successors of the Pilgrim Fathers. Whatever the outcome of the American election may be, does all this not already signify a global leadership by tacit renewal?
