O, Kerry
BETHLEHEM, Penn.—If the world could cast a vote in today’s election, George W. Bush would be ousted as president of the United States. For months, polls from countries around the globe have shown overwhelming support for John Kerry, and although Republicans may not have been concerned with results from foreign surveys, perhaps they should have been.
According to a recent poll commissioned by newspapers in 10 countries, France favors Kerry to win the election over Bush 72 percent to 16 percent. While Israeli and Russian voters preferred Bush to Kerry, voters in Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Spain and South Korea all said by wide margins that they wanted the Massachusetts senator to beat out the Texan leader. (On average, Kerry was favored 54 percent to 27 percent over Bush.)
Perhaps too busy erecting “free speech zones,” Republicans missed barring visiting international students from ditching school and journeying into battleground states as Democratic vote-pushers. I should know. At 8 a.m. this morning I wrapped my bright red Canadian scarf around my neck and boarded what I like to call the “Kerry fun bus”—one of dozens of 40-passenger seat buses brimming with Democratic New Yorkers (and international students) who woke up early so they could encourage swing state voters to get to the polls.
Before I’m brushed off as a tree-hugging liberal Canuck (which I kind of am), it’s important to note that other “internationals” joined my bus trip as well, including a Russian student currently studying at New York University, an Italian graduate from Columbia University and an English woman who recently left London for New York City. Each of us was illegible to vote. Yet, by knocking door-to-door and encouraging others to vote (in targeted Democratic precincts throughout Bethlehem), our efforts to “Get-Out-The-Vote” offset the fact that we couldn’t.
For internationals living in New York City, it’s hard to say whether our fellow citizens of the world really know what Kerry stands for politically. Yet one thing is for certain: like us, they want Bush out. A British poll conducted in September for The Times of London surveyed more than 1,000 adults and found that 52 percent backed Kerry for president, while only 29 percent supported Bush (19 percent were undecided). In Germany, Kerry racked up 81 percent of the votes in a Stern magazine poll. Bush, meanwhile, grabbed a mere 8 percent.
Canadians, too, have grown weary of Bush. Forget that his administration slammed Canada’s lumber industry with a crushing 27 percent duty on all softwood exports to the U.S. in 2001 (a move that cost our industry billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs). Or that the State Department’s report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism concluded that Canada doesn’t spend enough on policing and that “some U.S. law-enforcement officers have expressed concern [over] Canadian privacy laws.” And don’t even give a second-thought to the suggestion that we should adopt laws akin to the Patriot Act.
No, what really irks Canadians—especially the Québécois—boils down to the French-free meal plan served at the House of Representatives’ cafeteria: “freedom toast” with a side of “freedom fries.” Seriously? No wonder the communications director for (former) Prime Minister Jean Chrétien once barked that Bush was a “moron.”
Name-calling aside, we internationals are living in the U.S. for a reason. And we’d like to stay. But when election results affect us, and our families who live back at home, almost as much as they do you, we’d like to at least voice our opinion. So thank you for letting us do that today, whatever the outcome may be…
