Gore quits and Bush is set to be 43rd president. So, it’s all over. At last. I have to say that I think history will show that Al Gore probably should have been the president. But I wonder if he’ll be in a position to be a candidate in the next campaign.
Either way, we have four years of firmly right-wing policies ahead in America, with Republicans in control in both the lower and upper chambers and in the White House. Whether this is good for the UK and Europe remains to be seen. I personally do not think it will be good – Mr Bush represents a more isolationist idealogy.
Of course, some will say that this is the beginning of a new move to the right in global politics (the mirror of a move to the left that started around the time of Clinton’s election). I think that is already happening, but will not be very extreme – more a move to just-right-of-centre. But I think it will be overshadowed by a more worrying trend – a general disillusionment with politics and politicians in general, with UK and US politics dominated by spin more than substance, and the debacle and disarray of the Nice EU summit as prime motivators of that opinion.
As “they” say, time will tell.
separating the wanted from the unwanted