US voters and the adversity effect
18th October 2008
With less than a month to go until the US election, the BBC’s North America editor, Justin Webb, explores why a certain streak of pro-Republican individualism in Middle America may be left unscathed by the economic collapse.
But there is a second fact as well, which the economic emergency tends to mask – times were already tough for most Americans, and on one level, they kind of like it that way.
One of the attractions of Sarah Palin – which does not really translate to Europe in a readily explicable way – is that she lived the ordinary life in an ordinary town, and still does to a large extent.
This is seen by many Americans as admirable in and of itself: she coped.