US National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice's replacement of Colin Powell as secretary of state shows that the US' recent presidential election continues to produce powerful reverberations. But understanding what that election tells us about the US is important not only for Americans, but for the world.
This year's presidential vote proves that US democracy is healthy, but that some things could be better. Contrary to the election in 2000, when President George W. Bush lost the popular vote and barely won the vote in the Electoral College, Bush prevailed this time by 3.5 million votes. While some Democrats remain bitter, there is little serious questioning of the legitimacy of Bush's victory.
The US remains closely divided into red states (Republican) and blue states (Democrat). If 100,000 votes changed in the red state of Ohio, Senator John Kerry would be the president (albeit with a minority of the popular vote).
The Electoral College was included in the US Constitution to protect small states in a federal system, but it now means that the political campaign focuses largely on the dozen or so battleground states where public opinion is closely divided. More fundamentally, there is something unseemly about electing presidents without a popular majority. So it is time for a serious debate about amending the constitution to abolish the Electoral College.
Some observers also complain about the divisive negative rhetoric and advertising that characterized the campaign. But this should be seen in historical perspective.
In the era of the Founding Fathers, newspapers were extremely partisan, and George Washington was dismayed by the harshness of political language. For much of its early history -- to say nothing of the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction -- the country was as closely divided as it is today, and bitter campaign rhetoric reflected the closeness of the competition.
At the same time, despite negative advertising by both sides, the three nationally televised debates raised important issues in a serious format and were widely viewed. In general, an incumbent president with a growing economy is likely to be re-elected. In that sense, what was surprising about Bush's re-election was how thin his majority was.
In large part, this was because of the unpopularity of the Iraq War. Kerry tried to make the war, the low rate of job creation, inadequate healthcare, and Bush's tax cuts for upper income groups the central issues of the campaign, but some observers felt that this never added up to a clear message.
Bush countered with concerns about security against terrorism and cultural populism on issues such as gay marriage and abortion rights. In the end, security and cultural populism trumped economic populism.
Interpretation of the election has been influenced by exit polls in which voters were asked (after they voted) about which issues mattered most to them. The largest number (22 percent) answered "moral values," comparison to 20 percent who cited the economy and 19 percent who mentioned terrorism.
Social conservatives interpreted this to mean that they won the election for Bush, and that their agenda should dominate his next term. But a Pew poll taken a week after the election indicated that the category "moral values" encompassed a wide range of issues besides abortion rights and gay marriage. In fact, polls show that 25 percent of the public support gay marriage and 35 percent favor legal civil unions for gay couples (the position advocated by Kerry).