I’ve been pondering this question as I sift through the exit polling data and other data from the election. After all, Obama won by only 6.8% amidst the greatest financial crisis in 80 years and after 8 years of serious misrule by an incompetent and corrupt Administration. Let’s not forget that George W. Bush is the first President since James Madison in 1814 to lose an American city. Madison saw Washington burnt to the ground by the British. Bush oversaw the drowning of New Orleans. In light of the failures of the Bush Administration, why wasn’t this election a landslide?

To that question, I can only think that of two possibilities. One, Barack Obama was a flawed candidate comparatively to other possibilities and perhaps Hillary Clinton would have won by wider popular vote margin though I don’t think she could have carried North Carolina and perhaps Indiana but she would have likely carried West Virginia, Arkansas and Missouri. Even so, I tend to think that Senator Clinton wouldn’t have fared that much better at the top of the Democratic ticket. The second possibility and I think the better thesis is that the country is emerging from forty years of Republican rule deeply polarized. So just how polarized are we? Is the polarization cultural, economic or ideological? And how do we heal these divisions?

I don’t quite have an answer to my questions but it is a relief that others are also pondering the question. Over on Real Clear Politics Stuart Rothenberg offers this assessment:

The country’s deepest and most-explosive division revolves around culture.

Four in 10 voters attend religious services at least weekly, and they went for John McCain, 55 percent to 43 percent. Almost an equal number of voters, 42 percent, said they attend religious services only occasionally, and they went for Obama, 57 percent to 42 percent. And among those voters who never attend religious services, Obama won by 37 points, 67 percent to 30 percent.

On guns, another longtime indicator of cultural values, divisions remain deep. A substantial 42 percent of Americans own guns, and they voted for McCain, 62 percent to 37 percent. Those voters who don’t own a gun, 58 percent of all respondents in the exit poll, went for Obama by 32 points, 65 percent to 33 percent.

It’s true, of course, that if Americans no longer care about cultural issues, as some suggest, these differences are unimportant. But with gay marriage clearly remaining a major issue on the national radar and with Supreme Court vacancies and appointments nearly certain in the next few years, it’s unlikely that cultural issues will evaporate.

Further, the size of Obama’s victory and the nature of the problems that he will confront don’t suggest the end of division.

Obama’s 53 percent victory was a solid win, far more decisive than the last two presidential elections. But it was hardly a blowout.

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In understanding immigration issues, it is important to recognize that there are push and pull factors. Push factors are those that force individuals to migrate. These often include war, famine and economic dislocation. In Mexico, the liberalization of the agricultural regime has been a major push factor in emigration. And of course, pull factors exist given the disparity between the US and Mexican economies. But as the US enters recession, the pull factors are declining. Simply put, the jobs are fewer. The segment above from Al Jazeera looks at the plight of Mexicans returning to Mexico as the US economy contracts.

The segment below, also from Al Jazeera, talks to my Colombian compatriot the now famous Tito Muñoz aka Tito the Builder, the erstwhile McCain-Palin supporter. But Tito the Builder has not built anything lately. Tough times in the economy is hitting immigrant workers hard, Tito included. Ay pobre Tito, pronto vas a conocer la delicia de un buen gobierno.

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The parks of urban Japan have become the home of its increasing homeless population. In this segment, Al Jazeera’s People & Power looks at the plight of the homeless in Osaka, Japan. Numbers are hard to come by and tiny by American standards. In 2003, approximately 25,200 people were believed to be homeless up from about 12,000 a decade prior. But advocates for the homeless say the government is undercounting and not addressing the problem. They argue that in 2002, Osaka alone had 20,000 homeless. Here’s a report from one of Japan’s tent cities Dignity Village.

A Homeless Structure in Fukuoka

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“For a bunch of small-government Republicans,” one former denizen of the White House who has now stepped back inside for the first time in eight years, “these guys built a hell of an empire.”

The political archaeologists in this case being former Clinton staffers returning to survey their once and future home only to discover an infrastructure of government several magnitude greater even as if the Republic which it governed lays in waste. The former Clinton staffers soon to be Obama staffers are dumbstruck by size of the enterprise but I say wait until they uncover the not yet fully visible damage wrought. I am sure as the we (the proverbial we in this case) regain the levers of power and bring to the full light of day all that has transpired since January 20, 2001, we will find ourselves in shock and disbelief if not outraged, perplexed and angered. Who knows the full extent of damage that the Bush Administration has wrought? How could they have gotten away with this for so long? I can’t even hazard a guess to these questions.

I am still dumbstruck by our national debt. The national debt stands now over at ten trillion dollars. When Reagan took office in 1981, the national debt stood at $995 billion. Twelve years later, by the end of George H.W. Bush’s Presidency, it had exploded to $4 trillion. It stood at under six trillion dollars when Clinton left office. Grover Norquist and his ilk didn’t drown government in a bathtub, they drowned it in debt.

And it has been a four decade long systematic assault to destroy government by spending it in oblivion. It may surprise you to learn that under President Eisenhower the highest marginal tax in the US was 91% on incomes of over $400,000. LBJ lowered it in 1964 but was forced to raise taxes again in 1968 to pay for the war and the Great Society. Still, the highest marginal tax rate was 77% on incomes greater than $200,000. But the great assault on a progressive tax structure began under economic stewardship of Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest of Americans from 70% to 38%. He promised it would spur an orgy of investment and rocket the economy to new levels of production and prosperity. Instead, his “supply side economics” did the exact opposite, we got an orgy of greed and excess. It produced the deepest recession since the Great Depression. It’s hard to for me to pick the single biggest mistake of the Republican era but I’d start by looking at their tax policies.

The full story of some rather shocked folks in today’s New York Times. I wonder what shocks of discovery are yet to come from our ‘hell of an empire’?

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