Sunday, October 05, 2008
Opinion

Neither Obama nor McCain will save America’s image

No matter who the next president is, we most assuredly will not be reclaiming any of that

By Stephanie Ramage

Thanks to the recent financial debacle, voters might have forgotten about one campaign promise that couldn’t be kept anyway: the restoration of America’s standing in the world.

Prior to Sept. 15, presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama both made copious references to cleaning up our international image, showing once again what an exemplary nation we are in our humanity, equality, intelligence and work ethic.

My fellow Americans, it won't happen. No matter who the next president is, we most assuredly will not be reclaiming any of that.

Some might think that with Guantanamo’s likely closing and the Patriot Act’s likely overhaul or outright repeal, Uncle Sam might once more appear as the decent old man he once was. If, in fact, our international standing truly relied on our positions on civil rights, that might well be the case, but it doesn’t. What has sullied us in the eyes of the rest of the world lies only partly in foreign policy, and even in those instances, only among the more politically attuned. The vast majority of the world’s inhabitants couldn’t tell you the first thing about Gitmo and the Patriot Act. But they can tell you plenty about American television and online culture.

After World War II, America stood on a pedestal built by a grateful Europe. We had gone halfway around the world to save people we didn’t even know because we read the newspapers and stood in our kitchens and said, “This tyranny must not stand.” Even today, among older Europeans and in the small towns of France, Italy and the rest, much of that admiration for us survives. But among the younger generations and in the more urban areas, it is gone, not because of Gitmo or the Patriot Act but simply because of advances in technology.

Today, in ways that were impossible just 10 years ago, when people in Finland, Venezuela, Ukraine, China, and Saudi Arabia want to see “real” Americans, they watch YouTube clips and visit personal Web sites and blogs, where they see egomaniacs touting their sexual prowess, posing with guns or rapping out ridiculous odes to “bitches,” drugs and money.

When they watch bits of our most popular TV shows via the Web (or pirated DVDs), they see a culture obsessed with violent crime, shopping, screwing around and how to perfectly sautée shrimp. When they want to see how Americans relate to their own countrymen and they Google, for example, “Bush” or “Obama” or “McCain,” they find a treasure trove of nonsense ranging from conspiracy theories to racist diatribes to Photoshopped lies.

Some citizens of other nations, whose parents were raised to emulate Americans, are either disillusioned by what they see, or they emulate it. In Paris last year, the American trash culture—much of it clearly scavenged from the Internet’s gutters—was ubiquitous, and I felt sickened by this shameful export. No wonder there are so many people who think us a despicable nation. They used to admire us. We were a people who believed in courage and decency. The fact that hundreds of thousands of us have died on foreign shores for the sake of our lofty ideals is ample proof of that.

Sure, President Sarkozy left his wife for a supermodel, and well before him the French had a string of leaders who openly kept mistresses. Yes, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi would be considered a player in any era, and his country’s parliament boasts a few porn stars. But they expected better of us. Now, they have a window into our world as never before, and there is absolutely no shutting it. While the inarticulate and truth-starved American egomaniacs in the blogosphere are only a small minority of our country’s citizenry, they are what the rest of the world sees—and that isn’t likely to change with any election. SP

Stephanie Ramage is news editor of The Sunday Paper.