A new documentary film, “The Chicago Ten,” which recounts the stormy days of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, brings to mind the chant of the anti-(Vietnam) war protesters who clashed with police near the convention hall: “The Whole World is Watching.” Many of my generation watched the gavel-to-gavel coverage of that divisive gathering, certain that the whole world must have been closely following this unflattering disturbance in our own backyard.
Not exactly so. As the film makes clear, most of the protest was not recorded contemporaneously and had to be reconstructed from various partial accounts. Nonetheless, “The Whole World is Watching” became the shout heard ’round the world, with or without pictures.
This year, minus street protests but against the background of another unpopular war, “The Whole World is Watching” is a simple statement of fact. Our most international of news media, CNN, today put it this way in one of their on-line reports:
With less than a year remaining of the Bush presidency, the new president will take office in January with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global campaign against terrorism and the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea already on the agenda.
Add to that the image of the United States around the world — now at an all-time low — and the rise of India and China as world powers, and the next president's plate is already full before the nominees have been officially decided.
To say “the world is watching” the election would be an understatement. In fact, it has attracted an unprecedented level of interest overseas. Arab satellite networks are shelling out big bucks to send reporters to trail the candidates around the country.
Foreign diplomats have traveled to primaries such as Iowa and New Hampshire and confess their governments are far more interested in discussing the latest from the campaign trail than they are talking about the dry diplomatic issues of today.
So far, the transparency and the drama of the process (particularly on the Democratic side) have made for a rather hopeful lesson in democracy. But given some of the tactics of recent days, such as the Tennessee Republican Party's Web press release, we might do well to keep in mind that the world is indeed watching and has every right to expect that we will uphold the standards that we call on other nations to observe.
