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Labour should follow Bush, not sneer at him

By Stephen Pollard

IT is an unwritten rule of the liberal-Left intelligentsia that one must sneer at America and Americans. Since the rule is subtly altered when a Democrat is in the White House - one's scorn must be directed only at American culture and tourists - my fellow Left-wingers have suffered an unnatural deprivation for the past eight years. They have been in the grip of splenetic constipation. Now, like the prisoners in Fidelio, the sun shines on them once again and they are free. George W Bush's election as President has brought them blessed relief. Their reaction to his 100th day in office tomorrow confirms that all is well in Islington: the sneer has returned.

There are few more unappealing traits of the Left than its smugness. In its reaction to President Bush, however, it shows that it has allied smugness to crass stupidity. For if Leftwingers' condescension towards America was not so deep-seated they would realise that, far from sneering, they should be learning from President Bush's first 100 days. Here they would find the seeds of a truly reforming second term for Tony Blair.

The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland is one of the few exceptions to this anti-Americanism. His book Bring Home The Revolution was a paean to the United States. Yet even Freedland has been unable to free himself from the Left's Pavlovian reaction to the presence of a Republican in the White House. President Bush, he wrote on Wednesday, is "a know-nothing, fundamentalist fitness freak".

The Independent's Washington correspondent, Mary Dejevsky, was also at it: on Thursday she spat out "100 Things We've Learnt About Dubya". "He's not as bright as he thinks he is - or he would have made it to the White House sooner." Now that's really inventive scorn - Dubya is thick because he only became President at 54. But even worse than merely being American, Dubya is also - horror - Texan: "George W can't sweet-talk Washington Democrats like he could Texas Democrats: the Washington kind are real." Forget the fact that Texas is the second largest and, with 20 million inhabitants, second most populous state. They speak with a funny drawl, so they must be hicks. And stupid.

The US State Department runs a wonderful scheme in which, over nearly two months, it shows foreigners the enormous variety of America. Seven years ago, when I was working for the Labour-supporting Fabian Society, I was lucky enough to take part. The trip was focused on economic growth, so I was shown all sorts of American enterprise. I also saw the downside - the squalor, the ghettos, and the poverty. On my return, the reaction of most of my friends on the Left was striking. They were understandably envious of a two-month free holiday, but they did not think I could have learnt anything. America, they assumed, was a vile place. If I had wanted to learn about labour relations or acceptable capitalism, I should have gone to Germany or Sweden.

The Centre-Left reaction to President Bush's first 100 days is much the same. Otherwise-sensible people become suffused with contempt when his name is mentioned. After his inaugural speech in January, I suggested to one Cabinet minister, whom I know from long acquaintance to be level-headed and open-minded, that its promises would sit well in a Labour manifesto. He looked at me mockingly. Not because I was merely wrong, but because it was beyond his comprehension that I could consider taking the man seriously.

According to Jonathan Freedland, expressing received liberal-Left wisdom, "in little over three months they (the Republicans) have notched up a roll-call of policy atrocities". Yet President Bush's first 100 days put Labour's first four years to shame. In education, health and pensions - just for starters - he has already begun the sort of radical reforms which will redistribute wealth and power from rich to poor, and will give ordinary Americans more control, more security and more prosperity than they have ever had before. That, surely, is what a Labour programme should do. In education, he has come up with a version of school vouchers which draws heavily on the ideas of Joe Lieberman, the former Democrat vice-presidential candidate, and which is such a Republican atrocity that it has been blessed by Senator Ted Kennedy. Bush is above all a politician. Since opponents of vouchers remain strong, rather than risk everything on an all-singing, all-dancing scheme that he was unlikely to get through Congress, he shifted his ground. The Bill which is now to be considered by the Senate uses vouchers solely for out of school programmes, but none the less introduces for the first time into federal law the principle that when publicly funded schools aren't working, all parents should be able to turn to outside forces to help their children succeed - exactly the sort of bold idea which a truly reforming Labour Government should be looking at.

In his first address to Congress in February, President Bush confirmed his campaign pledge to introduce tax credits to help the uninsured gain access to quality health care. As he put it: "Many working Americans do not have health care coverage, so we will help them buy their own insurance with refundable tax credits." US health care is, of course, very different from our own but instead of waiting four years and wasting ever larger amounts of public spending on an intellectually bankrupt NHS Plan, a genuinely reforming Labour Government would, like President Bush, be examining alternative models for health care delivery which would put the patient in control.The story is the same with pension reform. President Bush's plan, based on allowing contributions to be privately invested, will be in effect the largest redistribution of wealth ever effected anywhere.

Life is much simpler when you can simply sneer at everything. Learning from those for whom you have little instinctive sympathy is a far more difficult - but ultimately more rewarding - activity. Instead of sneering, a more sensible response would be to put President Bush's ideas at the top of Labour's manifesto - before the Tories get there first.

The author is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for New Europe, a Brussels-based think-tank

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2001