George W. Bush got re-elected despite lying to the world, throwing his country into massive debt and aligning himself with the religious right. Europeans are still reeling in a state of shock a day after the election, but should Europe be surprised? Hardly. They totally underestimated him.
He forced the world into a war that nobody wanted using specious arguments. He divided the West in a war against Islamic terrorists that can only be won together. He annulled laws where he saw fit. He deceived millions with a war launched for false reasons. And all of this despite the values of freedom and moral superiority the USA believed in. He wrote a check to his country's super rich through generous tax cuts and, at the same time, paid back the rest of Americans by transforming billions in budget surpluses into a deficit of unimagined proportions that will haunt the country for years. He aligned himself with the country's conservative religious leaders who think of abortion as a capital crime and homosexuality as a serious sin. He polarized Americans in a ways seldom seen before. So why, in God's name, would such a president get re-elected?
The polls more or less predicted the outcome. On the day before the election, most had the incumbent leading with a slight advantage over his challenger. But most observers, including SPIEGEL ONLINE, thought the unloved president would lose the election. He was supposed to lose because newly mobilized voters would prefer Kerry. He was supposed to lose because the Democrats had formed a previously non-existent grass roots movement with the help of the Internet, telephone chains and simple visits to potential voters' homes. Billionaires like finance magnate George Soros and other celebrities donated tens of millions of dollars, along with the small contributions of thousands of party loyalists -- filling an election war chest to levels never seen before. His success seemed inevitable. More than anything, Bush had to lose because a victory for such a man was unimaginable.
But the outcome was different. The first signs of it came when, instead of what many expected to be a chaotic election, a relatively orderly vote took place. There were no long, drawn out affairs or protracted quarrelling between lawyers and courts. Then came the first results -- and they were surprisingly clear. Never before had so many American people voted for their president (never before had so many voted for the challenger, either). Even with razor-thin margins in some states, Bush had collected the most votes -- by far. In doing so, he took the legitimacy out of any legal offensive the challenger could bring.
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http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,326405,00.html
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