The SUV Vote
Great think piece by Andrew Gumbel on why voting for Bush is like driving an SUV:

In his book High and Mighty, denouncing the insanity and corporate glad-handing behind the rise of the SUV, Keith Bradsher tells the story of a North Carolina woman involved in a side-on collision between her Chevrolet Blazer and a Toyota Tercel.

The Tercel driver was rushed to hospital and died three days later, but the woman suffered no more than a minor shoulder injury thanks to the sturdiness of her vehicle. She might have felt a twinge of guilt at the other driverís death, or reflected on the unintentional havoc that SUVs like hers wreak by causing smaller vehicles to crumple like tin foil on impact. But she did neither of these things. Instead, she went out and bought an even larger SUV, a Chevrolet Tahoe, so she would feel better protected next time.

Is it such a stretch to see this story as a microcosm of what just happened in the presidential election? Weíve heard a lot about the importance of moral values and religion to the rural and small-town voters who swung the race for President Bush. But really these were manifestations of the insecurity and fear that have run rampant through this country since September 11. People voted for Bush not because he has made them safer, but because he makes them feel safer. In this regard he truly is the SUV President: steadfast and sure in outward appearance and marketing strategy, even as he proves in reality to be unreliable, wasteful, over-dependent on Middle East oil, a creature of corporate influence, downright dangerous to those who cross his path and prone to catastrophic failure.

The predatory, reptilian streak that the Detroit marketing consultant Clotaire Rapaille has long sensed in American SUV consumers can also be detected in the countryís voters. As Rapaille told Bradsher, people do not tell themselves they want to live in a safer world. What they say is: ìIf thereís a crash, I want the other guy to die.î Bushís doctrine of pre-emptive warfare is merely a more forthright, and more public, expression of the same sentiment.

There is a name for this impulse, especially in the context of a country whose soaring self-confidence has been shaken by a devastating and wholly unexpected attack on its soil. That name is nationalism -- the tendency not only to stand by oneís flag and oneís country in times of trouble, but also to rally around a chauvinistic, narrowly defined sense of national identity and lash out against anyone who appears to dilute it, deviate from it or threaten it head-on.