Armageddon pour les républicains ou/et pour l’Amérique ?

Martin Kettle, dans le Guardian du jour, nous fait une description effectivement apocalyptique de ce que pourrait être le sort des républicains aux élections de novembre prochain aux USA. Mais, surtout, il nous trace, en filigrane, le portrait d’une Amérique très pessimiste, dépressive, en plein désarroi. Une Amérique imprévisible, avec une administration corrompue et à la dérive, une opposition inexistante, des guerres catastrophiques, une crise financière et budgétaire à peine dissimulée… Cela fait beaucoup d’éléments troublants. Par conséquent, le vocabulaire pour apprécier tout cela est à la fois biblique et météorologique, type crise climatique.

« ...As the political analyst Charlie Cook puts it: “It's bad. It's very bad. All the diagnostic indicators suggest that 2006 will be Armageddon for the Republicans. The only good news for the party is that it is five months away.”

» It is important to be clear that what Cook calls the diagnostic indicators of Republican decline extend far beyond the president's own lamentable approval ratings, currently in the low 30s. This is normally the only polling yardstick to attract any notice in Europe. But American politics are more subtle, various and, above all, local than that. Yet here the rot goes much further.

» In four polls over the last month, for example, Americans have been asked whether they think the country is, overall, heading in the right or the wrong direction. Normally this is a good general guide to the political health of the incumbent president's party. Yet in each case less than a third of Americans have answered “the right direction”, while more than two-thirds have said “wrong track”. A volcanologist would say that this is eruption territory.

» When American voters are asked whether they approve or disapprove of the job that the Congress (currently Republican-controlled but not the president's puppet) is doing, the result backs this up. Congress approval rates ranged between 23% and 33% in seven recent national polls; disapproval ranged from 52% to 70%. American election lore has it that when Congress's approval rating hits 40%, the ruling party can expect to lose about five seats in the 435-seat House of Representatives. Well, the latest poll has Congressional approval at 27%. “We've got a category four or five hurricane shaping up for November,” predicts Thomas Mann at the Brookings Institution. “The question is whether the levees will hold.” »

Mis en ligne le 31 mai 2006 à 09H35