The Fun of Watching Bush Get Elected in a Foreign Country

By Shadi Hamid

I walked into the taxi, consumed by a sense of both excitement and anxiety. “Do you know what today is,” I asked the driver. He looked at me with a confused look. So, I repeated the question, annunciating my words more carefully. “It’s Tuesday,” he said. This is pathetic, I thought. My freakin’ world is on the brink of falling apart, and the best he can do is tell me it’s Tuesday. Maybe a hint would help, so I decided to give it away. “This is the day that will change the course of history as we know it,” I said with dramatic flourish. He looked at me as if I was slightly crazy. If only he knew.

He couldn’t figure it out. So, I told him, “The American elections between Bush and Kerry are today.” I can’t remember exactly how he responded, but he exuded a disconcerting sense of indifference – the kind of indifference that seems to be a tired, but terribly predominant, fixture in the Arab world today.

But I guess I couldn’t blame him. After all, he was just a taxi driver, probably toiling 18 hours a day just to make ends meet. He had a family, after all. His family depended on him, and it was that pressure that drove him.

The pressure that drove me was different.

A conversation ensued. He asked me who I was voting for. “Kerry,” I said. He didn’t seem to think that there was much difference between the two candidates, complaining that, in the end, things weren’t going to change. Palestine would still be the tragic basket case it had become and, so on, and so forth.

If only he knew. But he didn't. He didn’t realize how a Kerry victory would mean a different future not only for America, but for the rest of the world. Perhaps he didn’t understand that if the Democrats had been in power in the first place, the Iraq war wouldn’t have ever happened. Or perhaps he had forgotten about Bill Clinton.

I mentioned the former President, and he smiled wistfully, as if remembering a tasty fling of his youth. Clinton was a democrat, I explained. We could count on Kerry to return to the Clinton era policies of reasoned engagement in the Middle East. I reminded him of an age long gone, when all of us still had the audacity to think that peace was indeed possible between Palestinians and Israelis.

Clinton represented a different America – an America that, despite its various foreign policy missteps, was still admired. I can say now that there is little admiration left. Whatever admiration there once was has turned to something resembling hate, and I suspect, with the American people’s endorsement of Bush, this will only get worse.

But I suppose this is the way things have always been in the Arab world. Things rarely ever get better. Usually, things just stagnate to the point where it becomes rather challenging to envision how life could ever be different.

Still, it bothered me how oblivious the taxi driver was. If there was one external event that would have a pronounced, if indirect, effect on his life and his country, this was it. This election. There was something particularly depressing about the whole thing. I loved the Arab world, but hated what had become of it and its people. And we all seemed to be powerless, whether we were American or Jordanian, in the face of geopolitical events well beyond our control.

11 PM Jordanian Time, 4 PM US Time (EST)
He dropped me at the Amman Hyatt, where the US Embassy’s big election bash was taking place. At that point, I was still in good spirits, since I was surprisingly confident about John Kerry’s chances. In fact, I had never actually come to terms with the fact that Bush might be our president for four more years. It seemed, in retrospect, that I had so successfully banished such thoughts from my mind.

I went down the stairs and quickly got distracted by some very well dressed, attractive women, who seemed like they are on their way to a fashion show. I entered the main ballroom and was immediately struck by the festive, carnival-like atmosphere. Quiz shows, mock debates, trivia games. I saw smiles all around. I wondered if they would be smiling at 7 am in the morning, after the results in Ohio and Florida were announced. This, it seemed to me, was not a time for celebration. Intense self-reflection seemed more appropriate considering all that had happened over the last four years, and all that would happen the next four. But I joined in on the fun, despite my nagging worries.

I talked to a bunch of friends and met some new people as well. Looking back, it is rather curious that the one thing that was never discussed was the election itself. After some deliciously free food, I decided it was time to move on to election party # 2 at La Royale Hotel. Party # 2, suffice it to say, was of a different kind. I knocked on room 2405, and some drunk guy opened the door. I looked inside and smiled to myself…this was getting interesting.

1:30 AM Jordanian Time, 6:30 PM US Time
For some reason, as I glanced around, I was immediately consumed by memories of undergrad. There was a whole assortment of vodka, gin, beer and all the rest, along with the requisite cheap Jordanian cocktail juice. Everyone seemed at least a bit tipsy, and many seemed outright smashed. A friend of mine – a usually serious doctoral candidate at Oxford no less – came up to me. “Hey Shad…what’s up bitch?” She said, trying to sound gangster or something. I, not surprisingly, burst out laughing. Clearly, she was not here to discuss the intricacies of the electoral college system.

I mingled some more, and stumbled upon a serious political discussion. I only caught the tail end of it, though. It was a somewhat heated debate between two liberal students and two marines. The marines were fervent Bush supporters, something of a novelty among American expats living in the Middle East. The two marines seemed well-meaning although their understanding of Middle Eastern politics was...ummm...a bit lacking.

Most, needless to say, of the party attendees were not talking politics. The pseudo-DJ was playing garbage top 40 hip-hop, with a bunch of people dancing with the kind of carelessness usually reserved for the first post-final exam Friday night. I carved through the crowd, wondering where the TV was. I needed my CNN election coverage fix. The TV room – or the “serious” room, as my friend called it – was empty. And there was Judy Woodruff pontificating, and I felt a sudden sting of homesickness.

I watched intently for about 10 minutes, then noticed a gorgeous Jordanian girl I had never seen before enter the room. Screw the election, I thought. Priorities are priorities. Of course, she was followed into the room by her male suitor/friend. I tried to focus on Judy, but I was now officially distracted.

3:00 AM Jordanian Time
I was talking to some Iraqi guy. The subject moved to, of all things, salsa dancing and how guys who know how to salsa "get all the hot Jordanian girls." He told me he knew an instructor who offered relatively cheap lessons. I expressed approval. “Count me in,” I said.

3:30 AM
The guy who organized the whole party came into the room with a huge, oversize electoral map, and proudly put it against the wall. Where the hell did he get that from? I thought. I doubt many stores in Amman sell massive US maps at 3 in the morning. A half-hour later, we heard some knocks on the door. A regiment of US embassy officials and hotel staff came in. There seemed to be a problem of some sort, but I just kept on watching CNN in the “serious” room.

“Shadi, we have to leave,” someone said. Huh? The hotel officials were whisking us out the suite, telling us that we were to be questioned by Jordanian internal security (a privilege usually reserved for Islamist opponents of the regime). And then it hit me. The massive electoral board had been “borrowed” from the embassy.

4:30 AM
A couple friends and I escaped from the hotel without incident and went home to continue watching the election results. It wasn’t looking promising. Ohio was tilting to Bush. Not only that, but Bush was maintaining his 3 million lead in the popular vote. I felt a surge of despair. I didn’t want to watch anymore. I fell asleep.

9 AM
With 93% of precincts reporting in Ohio, it seemed Bush had an insurmountable lead. I hung onto the hope of the 250,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted. But I knew deep down it was over. I entered into a temporary state of depression, locking myself in my room, and wondering what went wrong.

In heated political debates with Jordanian friends, I had always defended America saying that the majority of Americans disagreed with Bush and were passionately opposing his reelection. I assured them that Kerry would win, and an at least slightly more promising future for the Middle East would be in the cards. As of November 3rd, I can no longer make that argument. A majority of my fellow Americans have endorsed Bush’s Manichean vision of American hegemony in the Middle East. I have always marveled at the uncanny ability of Arabs to distinguish between the American government (which they hate) and the American people (who they, for the most part, like). But the people have spoken and they have elected George W. Bush. The Bushies are in power now, because of the people, not in spite of them, and now, we can expect – with heavy hearts – that Arabs will realize this.

1 PM Wednesday (The Dust Settles)
Just before election, a crazy lefty friend of mine had erroneously predicted on a listserv that Kerry would blow Bush out of the water and that “it wouldn’t even be close.” Being the principled crazy lefty he is, he expressed the moral dilemma of voting for those sellouts Kerry and Edwards.

As I sifted through my email the day after, I wondered how he was going to save face after his lousy prediction. In an email titled appropriately “Well, that was a surprise,” he waxed reflective on the implications of a Bush victory. He “confessed” that he “sort of wanted” Bush to win anyway, for the reason that at least “as more and more people around the world and in the US see for themselves how f*cked up our policies are, in the mainstream press even, it will build to such pressure that it can only lead to real, lasting positive changes." If only it was that simple. Sometimes I marvel at how base political passions can make otherwise intelligent people say absurd things. I don’t know about him, but I can’t afford four more years. More importantly, I don’t know if the Middle East can afford it either.

Shadi Hamid is on a Fulbright Fellowship, conducting research on political Islam and democratization in Amman, Jordan.