Pankaj Mishra ponders on the world-weary eponymous hero of Bellow’s Herzog and his support for the failed Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, rejected by the great American public, as so many other Democrat candidates after, as an “egghead”, in favour of the utterly fraudulent ”average Joe” image of his Republican opponent (Ike and Stevenson, W Bush and Kerry ad nauseum). There’s always been a lot more authors in America who support the Democrat than the Republican, just as there’s always been a lot more actors - for all the good its generally done them.
This time round though, it really does look like the authors’ candidate will win. As always I’m getting my own disappointment in first, and have few illusions about the Obama Presidency heralding a new progressive age. That’s few mind you - not none. As Gary Younge reminds us, the hope Obama inspires is very real. And the prospect of another term of the vile Republicans, led this time by an irascible rather than a good-natured warmonger, with a swivel-eyed theocrat at his side - is too hideous to contemplate. Let’s hope Tuesday goes the right way.
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