If George W. Bush becomes president of the United States we may be in for another shot at the New World Order: the future promised by his father when he was president, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. If Al Gore wins, we will still have had this interlude in which to take a closer look, not only at the way in which the US is run but at the nature of a society that most of us - like most Americans - tend to take at face value.
Here was an opportunity to look beyond bland screens and come face to face with Americans, from super-rich to impoverished, in the melting pot of race, religion and class; a continent as often as not concealed by the mysteries of inward-looking politics which still lays claim to a New World Order.
Ah, some say, this business of choosing the most powerful man in the world would have been better left to business. Corporate America, like Ireland Inc, knows how these things are done. Like hell it does. This mess is corporate America's, from start to finish, from corporate funding to corporate competition; from ownership of the candidates to insistence on being first with the results at all costs.
It was this insistence that had the networks celebrating the second coming of the New Order with a monumental, high-tech, journalistic cock-up, the like of which we have not seen before but which can truly be called historic.
The networks, with their super-rich owners and pompous presenters, should not be allowed to forget it. Nor should we ignore the new dimension which the US election has added to the debate here about the course which Ireland should follow.
It's a question which will be asked of our electorate in the election for which the parties are preparing with some enthusiasm: are we to follow the American (essentially Republican) way - winner takes all - or are the needs of our lopsided society best met by the European social model which stresses partnership and redistribution of our undeniable wealth?
The American debate, much of which only reached here in the reports of Joe Carroll, Patrick Smyth and Elaine Lafferty, asked a similar question but in necessarily different terms. The Republicans haven't forgotten the rhetoric of George Bush and Ronald Reagan, as you may have gathered from speeches and interviews laced with missionary references to "saving the free world" (from what threat isn't clear) and "defending our values" (shades of Sile de Valera, or is it Monica Lewinsky?).
Bush went for a gentler form of conservatism. So does Mary Harney when faced with attacks on a broad front, by Frances Fitzgerald and Michael Noonan on welfare and tax; by Derek McDowell, Ruairi Quinn and Brendan Howlin, on fiscal policy and immigration.
On Thursday Mary Harney calmly admitted to Marian Finucane that prosperity had yet to reach many of the citizens of this State. But when she went on to suggest what might be done to ensure that this was not only a prosperous economy but a fairer society, she backed up the old boreen of the very ideas that have failed us, as if reliance on tax cuts and the trickle-down effect had not been at the root of many of our problems.
Harney is not the only Coalition Minister whose tone is deceptively sympathetic: several Fianna Fail Ministers manage to sound as if they were in opposition. The trouble is that their audiences wake up to discover that what they really have on offer is more of the same.
Harney, at least, is clear that in the choice between US and EU she comes down on the side of the US. Eamon Dunphy, another supporter of the New World Order, went farther in his Last Word interview with Justin Kilcullen of Trocaire.
Kilcullen had dared to criticise the Bushites and Republican governments generally on grounds which seemed both well prepared and well supported.
Dunphy ignored his account of their records on UN funding, foreign interventions and aid, and accused him of following a political "leftie" line.
But would Bush be better for Ireland, asked David Dunseith on BBC's Let's Talk on Thursday night. To which the Unionist MP Willy Thompson replied that Bush would certainly show less interest than Bill Clinton.
Bad news, then? Not so, said Willy. He was against Americans having hand, act or part in Northern affairs - especially, I suppose, if they were to show support for that brave man David Trimble and his efforts to convince all sides that democracy works best without the threat of paramilitaries.
An irony crept into Let's Talk with the news that Bush had won 68 per cent support in a school in Newcastle, Co Down, because he was, of all things, "pro-life". Presumably the rate at which he sanctions executions in Texas doesn't count.
The real Bush line on Ireland - or something very close to it - was expressed in a Sunday Business Post report by Catherine O'Mahony on a survey by the Heritage Foundation - which she described as a right wing think-tank - and the Wall Street Journal.
The survey praised Ireland on most counts, especially low levels of protectionism, government intervention, wages and prices . . . Improvements were noted in taxation, capital flows, banking and finance. Ireland, in fact, was the third-freest economy in the world. After Hong Kong and Singapore.
The neo-liberals or denizens of the new right see enterprise and wealth creation as the only way forward. Some lean to the view that corner-cutting is permissible if the results are what you were aiming at from the beginning.
In a piece published in these columns, Dan O'Brien of the Economist Intelligence Unit took a somewhat different line. He hinted that we were taking an unduly serious view of the scandals of the last 10 or 15 years.
We were no worse than others.
We'll know that when we've got to the core of these affairs. When they were happening, we didn't know - or couldn't say - what was going on. Can we be sure that other rip-offs aren't in progress now? Our best chance is to expose the damage done, take action against the offenders and close the loopholes even if it means offending the New World Order.
dwalsh@irish-time.ie