Every time I come down the creaking, Victorian staircase of Spitzer House,
John McCain makes me jump. When I arrived here, a cheery 5ft Father
Christmas stood in the hallway, but then my landlady, Janet Rogers, went
shopping for Hallowe'en masks and now smiley Santa is concealed beneath the
latex likeness of McCain swathed in a vampire cape. In his left hand is the
American flag, under his right arm is the head of Barack Obama.
Beneath the stairwell, in a grotto of plastic pumpkins, sits Hillary Clinton
dressed as a witch, alone and plotting perhaps, amid her old campaign
material. Janet had plenty left from when Spitzer House B&B was the
county HQ of the Hillary for President primary campaign and contributed to
her victory over Obama here in Ohio. But now, as her triumphalist Hallowe'en
tableaux suggests, Janet, born of a long line of Democrats, is voting
Republican.
Her anger with Obama is palpable: “He shunned Hillary as vice-president,” she
says. “So I will shun him as president. I didn't like him anyway, but when
he didn't even consider Hillary, he made it real easy for me.” Stuffing
envelopes for Hillary was the first time Janet, 55, had been politically
active. She loved Hillary, a woman from her own generation, for her
experience, her dignity through all the sex nonsense with Bill. She takes
Mrs Clinton's rejection as a deeply personal affront and has just donated to
McCain.
Women such as Janet are Barack Obama's biggest challenge. He must win Ohio: in
2004, a change in just 60,000 votes here would have made John Kerry
president. But the female vote has so far been remarkably fickle. The latest
Ohio polls put Obama in a statistical tie with McCain among women voters,
but nationally among white women his support has fluctuated from +7 before
the party conventions, to -11 after Sarah Palin was announced as
vice-presidential candidate, to a tie last week, and now back to -11. In an
election that will be decided by swing voters, no other group is more
significant. Moreover, Obama's task is even harder in small towns such as
Medina (population 25,000) since Palin, even before economic turmoil
highlighted the divide between wealthy urbanites and ordinary rural
dwellers, set herself up as the champion of sincere and honest folks against
the big city's cynical elitism.
Medina (we say “Medeena”, but they say “Mediner”) is the mythical small-town
America I have never seen before outside wholesome Hollywood movies, as
exotic to me in its own way as an Indian village. Laura Russell, a friend I
made just eating at the local bar, says: “Ohio is seen as a blah state. You
wouldn't come on vacation but it's a fantastic place to live.”
Imagine family life with all hassle and discomfort sucked out: your pretty
clapperboard house is roomy, all kids attend excellent local schools and
ride their bikes home through quiet streets. You never struggle for a
parking space and the council doesn't bug you to recycle. Your town throbs
with active citzenship: book groups, church congregations, historical
societies, endless sports teams and neighbourhood committees. There is
almost zero crime, even teenagers aren't surly, people say “hi” to strangers
in the street, don't lock up their valuables at the swimming pool, drive
with almost comical courtesy, rarely swear or throw litter and invite
foreigners (such as me) back home for dinner. Joe Klein, an American
political analyst, wrote recently “the patina of cultural homogeneity that
camouflaged 1950s suburbia has vanished”. He can't have visited Medina. I
doubt Britain has a town so utterly confident in its shared values. Nor one
so friendly. Sarah Palin's convention words “we make good people in our
small towns” played pitch perfect here. Every time the Democrats - who need
so badly to extend their appeal beyond urban centres - brand her an
ill-educated, backwoods hick, the ladies of Medina just draw her closer.
But for all its idyllic attributes, economic problems are hitting Medina, a
commuter town for Cleveland, like everywhere else. Before arriving I
discover the town even has a street called Wisteria Lane - the name of the
now famous setting for the hit TV series Desperate Housewives - and I
resolve to interview every decisive housewife living there. Yet driving
around I find it truly desperate. Only three houses are occupied, the other
is a deserted showhouse. The rest of the street is a trail of unsold lots.
“Not long ago these were shooting up,” a builder tells me. “Now they just
can't shift ‘em.”
Janet's husband, who manages a firm making building materials, has had his
salary cut by 30 per cent after a recent takeover, but even if she blames
Bush, she won't take it out on McCain. My new friend Laura, 40, a former
high school teacher and now full-time mother, has elderly parents who are
contemplating divorce. It is the only way her mother, who has a severe heart
condition, could qualify for state medical assistance. Obama's health
policies would benefit her own family and yet Laura won't give him her vote.
Laura drives me to a knitting circle held in a restaurant on the edge of town.
Making slow progress on a blanket called the Great American Aran Afghan are
six ladies of middle years and incomes. All were Democrats, but as Jorja
Allen puts it: “The candidates were slim pickings until Sarah Palin came
along.”
Libby Russo, 54, a book-keeper for her husband's business,is most vocal: “I
like that she's not from Washington. I don't like politicians, but she's
fresh. I hate that they're nit-picking about her family, because don't we
all have trouble with our kids?”
“Except me,” jokes her friend Nancy Slisko, 49, a mother of three. “My kids
are perfect.” Nancy thinks that Obama has no experience and worries that
he's the most liberal of all senators, although cannot say why.
“I hate this idea that America is so bad,” says Libby. “We are the first ones
to help another country.” She believes that global warming is beyond man's
control and, with gas now $4 a gallon, the US should drill for oil. “The
polar bears are fine,” she says and the others nod. Of the six women, only
two have ever left North America. To them, the Democrat sneers that Palin
only just acquired a passport compounds the view that they are East Coast
snobs.
Indeed, the distinguishing feature of Obama supporters I meet at the gleaming
Medina sports centre, is that they have all travelled abroad and
consequently are distressed by America's reputation in the world. “Our
foreign policy is a mess,” says Therese Kerns, 44, a teacher. “I want
someone who has experience to negotiate with other world leaders.”
But mostly, the women I talk to would have the US rein its neck in, put
domestic interests first. Several ask me how Britain views Palin and when I
reply somewhere between fascination and horror, they just look hurt. And I
realise that it is not that small-town Americans don't care what the world
thinks of their nation, for the most part, they simply don't know.
Dozens of women I speak to like Palin because she is “feisty”, “a fighter”,
“won't back down”, is a mom just as they are. Despite her embarrassing TV
interview with Katie Couric earlier this week in which she struggled to
answer questions on foreign policy and business, her upbeat mood in a dark
time of war and recession appeals to them. She is can-do about intractable
problems, implies you just need to cut through East Coast smart-talk and
Washington bull. They don't care whether she understands the Bush doctrine
and any Alaskan scandal is dismissed as “Democrats digging for dirt”. Palin
is a new American icon: an icon is almost impervious to political weather,
an icon just is.
Later I visit Pam Miller, the chairman of the Medina Democrats, at her shop
that sells tasteful objets d'arts. A restrained and upright woman, she is
saddened about Janet's defection - she too was devastated by Hillary's
defeat - but when we speak of Palin she vibrates with fury. “That absolutely
abominable woman is an embarrassment to America,” she says. “I cannot
believe how someone who supported Hillary and everything she worked for
could switch to someone so ignorant, nasty and unqualified. The economy is
hurting in Ohio, I can't believe we are being distracted by cultural issues
such as creationism and abortion.”
But I am struck by how women on both sides judge Palin largely upon her
reproductive choices: one won't support her because she concealed her last
pregnancy too long, another because she has too many children. While at the
Iceland Stadium in nearby Strongsville I talk to hockey moms kitting up
their kids for battle in the rink and, one by one, unprompted, they commend
Palin's stand on abortion, for which they see in her Down's syndrome baby
that she has paid the highest price.
In these God-fearing small towns, abortion is a moral touchstone. Even those
who say they are “pro-choice”, such as Janet Rogers, would permit it only in
the strictest circumstances. Moreover few “pro-choice” voters believe that
the Republicans would ever ban abortion, even though McCain has declared it
his intention to reverse Roe v Wade and is only one Supreme Justice
appointment away. Feminists, they say, have cried wolf about this for years.
From Main Street, Medina, it is hard to see how Obama could demonstrate that
he has a thing in common with small-town America. He doesn't seem “real”,
not with his Kenyan father, his Harvard education, or his effortfully
perfect family. And “realness” is the quality by which every candidate is
being judged here. Palin is real in glorious technicolour.
On the Democrat campaign HQ is a poster of Obama that says simply “Hope”. But
Medina folk, I think, don't need hope. Their lives are pleasant and
meaningful. Neither do they need inspirational rhetoric or lofty principles.
What they want is cheaper gas.
At Whitey's, the army-and-navy surplus store, I buy my ten-year-old a T-shirt
saying “Kill everyone, let God sort them out” from a motherly woman called
Debbie Wentz. A registered Democrat, she says: “I don't like Obama, I can't
put my finger on why that is. But,” she adds quickly, “it's not race.”
When Laura Russell moved here from central Ohio she was shocked when a
neighbour said “and the great thing about Medina is there aren't many black
folks”. Indeed there are just 1.2 per cent African-Americans here (compared
with 12 per cent in Ohio overall) and I see only a handful around town.
But Obama's race is another factor that marks him out as different, evoking
non-specific unease. Janet Rogers worries that his grandfather was a Muslim,
that he sat his young girls through the hate sermons of the Rev Jeremiah
Wright and didn't put his hand over his heart for the national anthem. Libby
at the knitting circle frets that every criticism of an Obama presidency is
being fielded as racism. “The race thing just complicates everything,” she
says. “I don't think we're ready. We should have a black man standing for
vice-president this time. Then we could get used to the idea. Now, quite
likely he'll get assassinated and that would cause all kinds of problems.”
I am a lifelong republican (in the British sense), but in Medina find myself
oddly grateful for the Queen. At least UK elections aren't about which
person best embodies the essence of our nation. Obama isn't even winning
over those I meet in Medina who would benefit from his policies because, at
heart, they can't see his face on the dollar bill.
Looking at the Obama mask I buy as a souvenir I see the nature of the problem.
Lampooning political leaders at Hallowe'en has become a US tradition. But a
latex mask of a black man has a hint of eye-rolling minstrel. Is it
offensive? Could it be taken the wrong way? The women of Medina, sipping
Earl Grey in Miss Molly's chitzy tea-rooms, would rather elect someone with
whom they feel comfortable - a fellow mom you could chat with while watching
hockey practice - than have to walk on eggshells for four years.
Moose-hunting, Sarah Palin style: Watch Ben Macintyre's video from the
Alaskan wilderness here
