When George W. Bush won the state of Ohio, thus securing the Presidency for another term, my reaction was subdued. I didn't punch the air. I didn't scan the room for comrades to high-five. No, no, no. My support of America's bumbling incumbent was passive; it was "anyone but Kerry," steel tariffs and runaway budgets be damned. Bush won and I, an increasingly reluctant fellow-traveler of the Republican Party, was nonplussed. Bush won and I might be the only person in Scandinavia that was even moderately pleased.
Well, me and Per Ahlmark.
As unenthused as I was, Election Day in Sweden certainly was entertaining. Rewind to early morning, November 3, Stockholm time: Much to the chagrin of Europe's punditry, it was becoming increasingly clear that, regardless of the 10,000 lawyers waiting to file "they stole it again" injunctions, George Bush was going to win this one. To help dejected Swedes cope with the news, TV4 summoned bleary-eyed Ung VÀnster commissar Tove Fraurud to the studio at 5AM, where she would expound on Dubya the War Criminal and the gun-toting, bible-thumping rubes that voted for him. |