Europe's Choice

Why the American election is seen as a referendum on the continent's future.

Victor Davis Hanson always brings us trenchant observations about the world around us and reminds us that history is an important guide to the future. And so in this essay we take a look at the manner in which Old Europe has invested itself in the notion of a Kerry victory and a Bush defeat. The Europeans, like our own Angry Leftist Elites, do not understand or much care for the view from fly over country. To them we are a bunch of hicks and rubes who are too dumb to know what's good for us. And because George Bush is from fly over country, that evaluation applies to him as well. So much better to have the Frenchurian candidate and his elitist wife in charge of the champagne and caviar at the White House.

But the Old Europeans, and the Angry Left in America, are going to find themselves on the outside looking in this November when George Bush is re-elected. Elitists have never gone down well here, a fact which the Angry Left continues to ignore. And the policies of the elites are growing more and more stale by the day. John F_ing Kerry can only win if he can convince us that it is September 10 and that we have nothing to worry about. I don't think he will be able to pull that one off. And neither will the Europeans, who will then have to figure out, like The Angry Left, whether they still want to be on the losing side of history.