Uncle Sam's unique democracy

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Arvind Lavakare may be 71, but the fire in his belly burns stronger than in many people half his age. The economics post-graduate worked with the Reserve Bank of India and several private and public sector companies before retiring in 1997. His first love, however, remains sports. An accredited cricket umpire in Mumbai, he has reported and commented on cricket matches for newspapers, Doordarshan and AIR. Lavakare has also been regularly writing on politics since 1997, and published a monograph, The Truth About Article 370, in 2005.

Judging by foreign news agency reports splashed in our English press, the uninitiated Indian reader like me would be justified in believing that the long exercise for finalising the Presidential nominee of the two major political parties of the US is wastefully competitive and unusually complex. And, sometimes, comical as well.

Just see Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama of the Democratic Party engaged in an intense, occasionally bitter, contest as they jet across the vast continent, with their better halves in tow, to speak to packed halls. Watch them attend meetings called caucuses and primaries, raising funds on the way to reach the so-called magical figure of 2025 delegates for clinching the nomination.

How are caucuses different from primaries, and how is 2025 the magical number? Our media doesn’t tell us. Why the Indian media seems almost obsessed with the US elections at this early stage is another puzzle.

Full coverage: US Presidential Election 2008

(The 45th Democratic National Convention, to be held in Denver, Colorado, in late August, will have a total of 4,048 delegate votes, with 2,025 (a majority) necessary in order for a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate to be nominated, explains a Democrat website.)

But we must keep learning throughout our life. And American democracy does have something to teach us -- take it or leave it.

For one, Uncle Sam’s electoral rules are immensely complex for the uninitiated Indian like me.

Consider this: This time around, delegates won by the Democratic candidates in Florida and Michigan are not to be counted in the rat race for the magic figure. Reason? Those two populous states were punished by the party because they “broke the rules” and held their primaries in between key votes in New Hampshire, on January 8, and Super Tuesday, on February 5.

“Super Tuesday” -- another Americanism in the nomination exercise —apparently rules when primaries are to be held and where. Whether such rules apply to caucuses --- another baffling term -- is not known to the uninitiated Indian who will, if he can, have to go to Google for help.

Then there are delegates and “super delegates” of whom some are called “committed”, some apparently are not. Committed to whom or what? To the candidate or to the party philosophy? Foreign agency reports published here don’t explain, though our English newspapers carry those reports ever so copiously and faithfully, including graphics of delegates won by each Democratic candidate.

There is also something inexplicably comical about the intense competition between two candidates of the same party.

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Obama’s apparent refusal to shake the extended hand of Ms Clinton at some important assembly hall makes a front page box item; explanations come in another box item the next day -- all about a silly, missing handshake between two of the same party.

Again, in the Florida primary in January, John McCain and Mike Romney of the Republican Party sparred publicly over the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. McCain, whose strength is security, accused his party colleague publicly of wanting to set a timetable for the withdrawal. This, he said, was “simply wrong, dishonest”, and wanted Romney to apologise.

Will one of these two children at a school fracas become the new US President this November? Can you imagine two senior leaders of our Congress or the BJP indulging in such a spat among themselves in pubic?

But McCain and Romney belong to America’s democracy, free and fair and unique in some unbelievable ways.

There is no electoral code of conduct hanging over candidates and parties. There are no party election manifestos drafted for a Presidential election. The candidates vying for Presidential nomination have the choice of resorting to their party’s funds (where conditions apply) or can publicly raise millions of dollars without fear of the Federal Election Commission and without promising favours in return.

Candidates apparently jump into the fray on their own initiative, without being officially chosen or endorsed by their party. An interested candidate forms an exploratory committee, raises funds, tests the water at a primary or two and then takes a final call all by himself.

That’s what Rudy Guiliani (famous for handling the 9/11 disaster as New York’s Mayor) of the Republican Party did this time after first issuing some 3,000 TV ads, twice more than Romney did, in Florida. He could never have been the party’s choice because of his pro-abortion and pro-gay beliefs, which are so fundamentally opposed to the Republican Party’s philosophy in recent years. He therefore first dared on his own, and later retreated.

What a contrast with the practice in India. Here, the BJP central executive decides to nominate Advani as its prime ministerial candidate and that’s that. The Congress leaves the choice to its one-woman High Command, and that’s that. No complications, no caucuses, no primaries. All so short and sweet and inexpensive.

A simpler version of the primaries model of the US, would, however, be excellent for choosing candidates for our legislative assemblies and Lok Sabha elections, so that the best are picked and there are no “rebel” candidates who feel aggrieved at being denied their party’s ticket.

Three more quaint facets of the US democracy need mention.

One: The President is not chosen by the strength of the votes he gets but the votes delivered by the Electoral College, which comprises pre-determined votes of representatives from all the states of the US.

Thus, Al Gore won more popular votes than George Bush in 2000, but the latter was declared President because of the College votes. This is as distorted as our own system, where the candidate with the largest number of votes in his constituency is declared elected, though that number is invariably less than the majority of the votes polled.

Two: the date for electing every US President is fixed and unchangeable -- the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, every four years. This prevents the ruling government from manipulating the system by resigning prematurely in order to force a new election when it seems advantageous to do so.

Also read: Will the Budget bring early polls in India?

But while that has the benefit of ensuring continuance of the government of the ruling President for his full term, it pre-empts the remedy of the “no confidence” motion that acts as a brake on misgovernance.

A fixed date even for a possible mid-term poll may well be the answer for getting the best from both the practices. Do our Parliamentarians have the spine to undertake a constitutional reform on these lines?

The third remarkable fact of the US Presidency is that a President cannot stay on for more than two terms of four years each. Indians would love it if a similar constitutional limit could be put on our MPs, ministers and PMs included.

So what are two candidates for the Democratic Party nomination, Clinton and Obama, telling the voters? While this is mostly ignored by the foreign wire service reports carried by our English newspapers, Google tells us that both are talking a lot on policy issues.

Obama, who had dubbed President George W Bush’s intrusion into Iraq as a “dumb war”, is talking of restoring fiscal discipline, of reversing Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy; he is emphasising that his country is on the wrong track, that there is a need for a change of stance and attitude. He rejects the concept of partisanship and wants “not blue states, not red states, just the United States” to come together. Internationally, he is willing to talk to the enemy.

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Clinton is promising 200,000 jobs in New York over six years, a global development agenda to fight HIV/AIDS, end to malaria deaths, basic education for all, expansion of women’s opportunities and children’s health, elimination of poor country debt, improvement in US development assistance in consonance with America’s traditional generosity of heart and a cabinet-level agency to fight poverty around the world, where more than two billion people are living on less than $2 a day.

Both, however, seem to have overlooked what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says is poisoning America: Domestic poverty.

In 2006, he says, 17.4 per cent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And even this, he thinks, probably understates the truth. And he reminds Presidential hopefuls that poverty rates in most European countries are much lower than in the United States.

Yes, just like in India, high poverty is a grave problem in the US. The uniqueness of that truth is that the Indian still thinks the US to be a land of milk and honey.

Tailpiece: In America, the most scientifically advanced country, a studied magazine article says that Obama’s horoscope is pointing to the Presidency.

The views expressed in the article are of the author’s and not of Sify.com.

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