Contenu du sommaire : L'Amérique de Georges W. Bush (spécial)

Since the beginning of George W. Bush's first term, administration officials, beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, have wanted to focus a maximum of energy on the restoration of presidential powers they believed had been eroded by the twin disasters of Vietnam and Watergate. The September 11 attacks provided them with an unparalleled occasion to reach that aim. The Administration got the Patriot Act from Congress as well as the authorization to wage two wars; it was granted extensive powers to pursue enemies, and in the treatment of prisoners, proceeded by decree to increase the CIA's powers, placed certain electronic mail and telephone under surveillance. Combined with not so scrupulous election campaigning and a focus on the vital nature of the “war against terrorism”, this concentration of powers allowed it to win the 2002 and then the 2004 elections. But it has since suffered from the worsening situation in Irak, its incompetence in face of Katrina and the revelation of many corruption scandals that led to its defeat in the last elections.

Although he was elected as a conservative in 2000, George W. Bush's record does not look very conservative. During his two mandates, the role of the Federal Government has increased, it has become more intrusive in people's lives in the name of the “war on terror”, and the Bush Administration has launched a military intervention in Iraq bearing the mark of a utopian Wilsonism. If the right did score some substantial points (repeated tax cuts, nomination of conservative judges to the Supreme Court), many activists have broken with George W. Bush, accusing him of betraying the conservative cause and of splitting up the movement. The President's defenders argue that, on the contrary, George W. Bush has adapted Ronald Reagan's conservatism to the new era. Still, the electoral future of the Republican Party seems clouded by the power of the religious right and of the South, two constituencies increasingly at odds with the rest of the country, where the mood is less favorable to conservatism than from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The late 1970s witnessed the massive return of Evangelicals to partisan politics. Along with this strong mobilization, a vast network of ultraconservative lobbies, dubbed “Christian Right”, was set up by Evangelical pastors such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Having gained considerable power and influence in recent years, the Christian Right constitutes nowadays a real political force not to be dismissed. After endorsing in 1980 the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, the Christian Right rallied in 2000 to born-again George W. Bush, viewed as the best defender of traditional values. Ever since he captured the White House, President Bush has taken many decisions favorable to his Evangelical voters. The aftermath of September 11th, 2001, led to the strengthening of the relationship between George W. Bush and his religious allies. Yet, their relations are more complex than what most people think.

Many false ideas are circulating on the political, economic and cultural influence of American Jews. They are not very numerous: barely 2% of the population. Well integrated into the society, they participate actively in political life. The main Jewish organizations form a lobby, which is legal, that benefits from the support of evangelical Protestants. Opposite the pro-Israeli lobby is the pro-Arab one. Public opinion, Congress, and the presidency express their sympathies with Israel without hesitation, and all the more freely as they are convinced that national interest and sympathies converge. Today, Iraq and even more so Iran are the subjects of serious concern. Thus, George W. Bush, at the end of his second term, is trying to push forward the Middle East peace process to gather the States that fear Shiite or Sunnite Islamism.

Courting the Latino minority to drive them away from the Democratic Party and to entice them to join the Republican camp is a family affair for the Bushes. Everything started with George Herbert Walker in the early 1970s. His two sons, George Walker, governor of Texas then forty-third President of the United States, and Jeb, governor of Florida, carried this political strategy much further and proved truly successful with this minority which came the largest one in the country, outnumbering African Americans in 2000. This paper will attempt to study the inner workings, as well as the limits, of the Bush strategy toward this increasingly powerful and influential group. If Jeb's and « W. »'s personal success – although never total – is not to be denied, it has not translated into significant gains for the Republican party among Latinos, largely because the party twice adopted (1994 and 2005-2007) anti-immigration policies that destroyed years of efforts from the Bush clan and alienated potential Latino recruits.

The American economy's results in this beginning of the 21st century have often been considered particularly brilliant. However, summer 2007 saw the reappearance of the specter of an acute financial crisis. The present article provides a panorama of the American economy at the end of two terms of President George W. Bush, focusing specifically on financial aspects. It begins by analyzing, from a macro economic point of view, the scope and significance of budgetary and foreign deficits, a situation that would have already led any other country to a major external financial crisis; it then deals with – and shows the workings of – the financial revolution going on for a decade that has favored a better distribution of risks but also encouraged an exponential indebtedness of households, finally ending up in the 2007 summer crisis; the article lastly explores the extent of the parallel with the crisis between the two world wars.

In its oil and energy security policy, the Bush Administration has shown a willingness to serve industrial and regional interests while relying on rhetoric of crisis – energy crisis and national security crisis. The “Bush energy plan” of stimulating internal energy production by weakening environmental and other regulations has failed politically. In climate change policy, the Bush Administration decided not to sign the Kyoto protocol as well as not to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. This policy has had far reaching adverse consequences for the Bush Administration, in both domestic and foreign politics. The Administration has failed at making its technology-only approach accepted as a credible alternative to regulating emissions.

This article attempts to assess the results of George W. Bush's Administration in the social field. Paradoxically, during its first term, this conservative Administration displays a strong will to reform the education and the Social Security systems. Then, in 2005, the failure of Bush's Social Security plan and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have led to a change of plan. During the second term, the non-intervention of the Federal Government was conceived as a form of intervention. Eventually, the “non-intervention” of Federal Emergency Management Agency encapsulates a new definition of the links between the State and the civil society. Far from the concept of “Associative State”, advocated by Herbert Hoover and his fellow Republicans, the Bush Administration has assigned a new mission and new goals for the Federal Government: in the field of domestic policy, non-intervention must become the rule.

Eleven months from the end of George W. Bush's second term, the US Supreme Court, which had stepped out of the public eye after its 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore, is back “in the eye of the storm”. Two transformative appointments in 2005 and 2006 ended eleven years of personnel stability. The Court is now confronted with an unprecedented expansion of the executive branch power, it is divided on ideological grounds but also on the principle of stare decisis and it decides an ever lower number of cases per year. In other words this is a Court in search of its institutional identity and of its role in the system of checks and balances, caught as it is between an imperial presidency and a dysfunctional Congress. The result is a self-protective deference towards the executive, a lax definition of the democratic framework in which the Court refuses to offer preferred freedoms or to give form and content to rights, but also a determined conservative shift on cultural questions with a revelation rather than a pedagogy of rights.

This article studies from a historical angle the close relationships between money and politics during the George W. Bush presidency, and how it has evolved since 1994 and more so since 2000. The role of money is central in the United States for several reasons: campaigns are mainly financed by private sources (firms, unions, Political Action Committees) and lobbying is powerful and omnipresent, partly because of the protection provided by the First amendment. In the last few years, the too close relationship between political circles and some groups has led to numerous political scandals involving mostly Republicans (“Abramoff Affair” for example) and to financial disasters (Enron).

The weight of the media in George W. Bush's America is characterized by several trends: the remodelling of media ownership, the self-questioning of the journalistic profession and the weakening of the protections of the freedom of expression. These trends have prepared the ground for the political manipulation of the 9/11 attacks by the New Right and the American executive. This article examines these various trends, estimating their impact on the editorial control of mainstream media and examining the reality of “the Fox effect” and the gag rule imposed by Patriot Act. It ends with an appreciation of the role of American public opinion, questioning the possibilities of its deception (by politicians) and of its divorce (from the press) while assessing the necessary conditions for a shift from the current sceptical conformity to a real criticism of the politics of George W. Bush's Administration.

The paper deals with the identity crisis plaguing the Democratic Party in the 2000s. Over the past forty years, the Democratic Party has been trying to recover from the loss of the South to the Republicans by establishing a national electoral coalition. This crisis was highly visible during the two terms of George W. Bush. The 09/11 attacks made it possible for Republicans to hijack patriotic values as well as the safety issue. Democrats are merely reacting to Republican moves. They are unsure about both their electoral tactics and their core values. If they ever come up with a solution to these leadership issues, however, they would be in a position to fully benefit from the middle class crisis, which is certainly the social evolution most clearly favorable to Democrats with the 2008 presidential election on the horizon.

This article examines the shift in public opinion on the war in Iraq since the spring of 2003, and focuses on divisions in the antiwar movement and the new challenges this movement faces in post-9/11 America. It argues that despite the recent turn against the war by a majority of Americans, the antiwar movement is still hampered by two issues. First, consisting of a diverse coalition of peace groups, antiglobalization organizations, religious groups, veterans, Democratic Party supporters, and relatives of soldiers, the movement is plagued by disagreements over goals and the means to achieve them. Secondly, in the context of increased executive powers and heightened patriotism since the 9/11 attacks, the antiwar movement has so far proven incapable of transforming the new opposition to the war into a powerful counterforce to the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq.

In the collective memory, George W. Bush?s America is likely to be identified with the response to the September 11 attacks and the ?war on terrorism?. Yet, the Administration?s initial project was above all an economic and social one: to get as much as possible rid of the governmental interference the New Deal had established and the Great Society both strengthened and modified. In that respect, it may have been the last stage of the lasting movement that, since the second half of the Seventies, progressively reversed the course the nation had followed from the Thirties on. Since in the spring 2001, the Administration had been on the move. Yet, in the summer, its project already seemed in trouble when the terrorist attacks created a favourable political climate which enabled the President to have many of its propositions prevaled. But after having first his agenda facilitated, it is progressively, starting in 2005, hampered by the domestic fall-out of the wars he had launched. Its project probably also suffered from its radical nature. His Administration seems to have been inaugurated at a time where the conservative vision was beginning to lose part of its appeal. The President may have overplayed his hand, provoking a pendulum swing.