In so many ways, the American Constitutional system has been shredded and this — whether we are to be an outlaw empire (and a failing one at that) — is what Americans were voting about this last Tuesday (though it was called “Iraq”).

The Wave

The history of recent American politics at the polls might be seen this way: Not so long after he declared the successful completion of his Iraqi dreams, George W. Bush found himself, to the surprise of his top advisors and supporters, hounded by Iraq’s Sunni insurgency. He essentially raced not John Kerry (who recently offered yet another example of his special lack of dexterity on the campaign trail) but that insurgency to the finish line in November 2004. With a little help from his friends in Ohio and the Rove smear-and-turnout operation, he managed to squeak by. Then, in another of those milestone moments on the way to disaster, he declared that he had “political capital” to spare and would spend it.

The next summer, two storms hit the endlessly vacationing President in Crawford, Texas — Hurricanes Cindy and Katrina. Cindy Sheehan tore away the bloodless look of casualty-lessness in Iraq (where body counts, body bags, and the return of the dead to these shores was being hidden away from both cameras and attention). She gave a mother’s face to a son’s death and to a nation’s increasing frustration. Katrina revealed to many Americans that the Bush administration had been creating Iraq-like conditions in the “homeland.” And that was more or less that. The President’s approval rating plunged under 40% and has (a few momentary blips aside) bounced around between there and the low 30s ever since. By election 2006, presidential “capital” was a concept long consigned to the dustbin of history.

Imagine where that “capital” will be by 2008. Our President has been wedded to his war of choice in a way unimaginable since Lyndon Baines Johnson quit the presidential race after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Based on what’s happened so far, there’s every reason to believe that, in 2008, he will still be wedded to it (as would potential Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain) and his approval ratings may be bouncing in the 20%-30% range by then.

So what part of the 2001 dream team and its “vision” of the world are we left with? To answer this, you first have to realize that yesterday’s electoral “wave” of repudiation is hardly an American phenomenon. It’s global and, if anything, we were way late into the water. All you have to do is look at the latest polling figures (which are but extensions of previous, similar polls) to see that wave in country after country. The most recent international survey of opinion — in Britain, Canada, Israel, and Mexico — found that Bush’s America is viewed as “a threat to world peace by its closest neighbors and allies.” In Britain, the land of the “special relationship,” only Osama bin Laden outranks our President as a global “danger to peace.” While he comes in a dozen points behind bin Laden, he does manage to best Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s grim leader, as well as those shining stars of the diplomatic firmament, the President of Iran and the leader of Hezbollah. And these are the countries most likely to have positive views of the U.S.

As hectorer-in-chief, George W. Bush has, hands down, used the word “must” more than any combination of presidents in our history. Only recently, he repeatedly told the North Koreans that they must not develop (and then test) nuclear weapons; he told the Iranians that they must halt their nuclear program; and his minions told the Nicaraguans that they must not vote for former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. The results: The North Koreans tested a weapon; the Iranians went right on enriching uranium; and the Nicaraguans, poverty-stricken and threatened with nothing short of economic ruin if their democratic vote went into the wrong column, simply ignored him.

All these decisions were based on assessments of the limits of power that had been revealed by the desperate acts of a failing empire stretched to its military and economic limits. If these are the “rogue” parts of the global wave, all you have to do is look at Russia’s reassertion of interest and power in its old energy-rich Central Asian bailiwick (much coveted by the Bush administration); or the expansion of Chinese economic power in Southeast Asia and energy power in Africa to see other aspects of the global wave of reassessment under way.

In fact, the global part of the election was long over by November 7, 2006. For vast majorities abroad, the vision of the U.S. as an Outlaw Empire is nothing new at all. The wave here has perhaps only begun to rise, but here too those presidential “musts” (along with the President’s designation of the Democrats as little short of “enemy noncombatants”) have begun to lose their effect. Hence the presidential plebiscite of yesterday. No matter what else flows from it, the fact that it happened is of real significance. A majority of the American people — those who voted anyway — did not ratify Bush’s Outlaw Empire. They took a modest step toward sanity. But what will follow?

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