Left or Right – Does it Matter anymore?

During what is now known as the Golden Decade of the 1990’s (And didn’t life appear tough, even then?), we all had fun spending money that we didn’t have. As life appeared to be something that was too good to ever end – something that certain bankers took way too seriously – I always thought it strange that the U.S. voted in a right-wing government, when the rest of the World were falling over themselves to vote into power a more Social Democrat administration. Looking around the same World now, President Obama must feel very lonely. As everyone else in the G8 and beyond have entrusted fiscal Conservatives to hold on to what is left of their country’s Purse Strings, only the States have installed a Left wing government. Why this mismatch? Is America ahead of, or behind, the curve?

While the rest of the World appeared to ‘get it’ about having so much loose money slopping about in the global economy, and preferred governments to give some of it away to worthy causes like the elderly and the poor, the US went another way. Of course the Clinton’s second term in power was nothing about policy, and more to do with a heavily reported smear campaign based on morals. This four-year witch-hunt was enough to make Americans look at themselves a little more closely, and make the 2000 election almost too close to call. As this was closely followed by the soap opera of Florida’s hanging chads, and other misdirection tactics, a change in fiscal policy wasn’t really the main voting urge. But are voters really that prescient, and can we look at a planetary herd mentality, or is something else at play, here?

Over the decade 1995-2005, the Conservatives in any Western country were looking at their second Parliament in opposition, if not more. They tried to shift their own values to the left in order to capture the centre of the vote, and steal a march on the governing Socialists. In reply, Governments all over the World moved their rhetoric to their oppositions more usual ground to show that they understood disaffected voters that couldn’t stand to see their party’s shifting ground. By the time the global economic meltdown added another 8 years to our working lives, we all saw an Opposition Party that had been talking to our needs for years, and were also fiscally responsible enough to tell us how we were going to face the next decade of deprivation. We do, after all, need to be told what we have to do.

Of course, the States voting block have come through so much more. Their last 2 administrations possible began with a possible Coup D’etat, an engineered terrorist attack that led to an unwanted war, and finished with the failure of an economic experiment that the rest of the World is paying for, while those responsible for it have actually been rewarded with voter money. No wonder they were in the mood for a drastic change. The question is, will they remain with their new bold choice, or will the Democrats (like the rest of the World’s Left wing parties), change their tune, and try to capture ‘the middle’. If the latter is true, there is no more Left and Right. Just vote the buggers out that are in power, and try the other guys – even if they are saying the same things.