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Constitutional crisis in the US: what, me worry?

I must be a bad person: for I am gleeful at the mild misfortunes of others, especially of those who go around putting on airs. This schadenfreude is especially sweet when it is the supremely confident Americans who stumble: they who have proclaimed "the end of history" and the millennial triumph of the "American way". Americans are convinced that they know best how to run things (and to be fair, most of the time they do do a good job), but they have egg on their face at the moment. What better than to kick them when they are, temporarily, down?

I have often suggested to friends that it is wholly immaterial who wins American elections, because the two major-party candidates are usually Tweedledum and Tweedledee, essentially mirror images, and determinedly centrist. It is true that typical Republicans are slightly to the right of center, and typical Democrats are slightly to the left of center.

I think in a largely affluent country, it is the tyranny of demographics that drives politics: as we all know, there is a Bell Curve, a normal distribution of political opinion, and the prize is the huge bulge in the center. A candidate would be foolish to alienate the great unwashed middle-classes, the middle Americans of Peoria, Illinois and their ilk, by catering to the fringe left or right. This has been demonstrated by, for example, Pat Buchanan or by Ralph Nader: the system is stacked against them.

Noam Chomsky argues in his classic Manufacturing Consent that the US elections are a charade, and that the military-industrial-media complex is so pervasive that it gets whatever it wants. Moreover, it is able to convince the citizenry that they, the citizenry, really want what the military-industrial-media complex wants. I tend to agree: for the average American is politically very naïve and easily led.

But the average American can also rest assured that whichever candidate comes to power there are certain principles that are sacrosanct. All US administrations follow these principles:

• Mercantilism: the US government, despite Abraham Lincoln's fine words, is "government for business, by business, and of business."

• Nationalism: there is no question as to the thrust of foreign policy. As in George Kennan's disarmingly direct statement, the objective of US foreign policy is to ensure that Americans dominate the world; they are not shy in pursuing this goal.

• Status quo-ism: they will never countenance any disruption to American civil society. Anybody who is outside the norm is put down forcefully. This was for instance the job of J Edgar Hoover and the FBI, who spent untold millions on internal espionage, the penetration and dissolution of dissident black groups, etc. The last time there was massive dissent was during the Civil War in the 1860s: there will never be another civil war in the US again, as it will be nipped in the bud.

• Valuing American lives: A Vietnam will never happen again. You can rest assured that whoever killed 17 American sailors in Aden will be methodically tracked down and punished. If there is any danger to the lives of Americans, the government withdraws its citizens and uses proxy forces and mercenaries to die for them.

• Boosterism: They are so convinced of their "manifest destiny" that they actively push their Coca-colanization agenda. (It also makes sound business sense: observe the huge overseas markets for Coke, Levis, Microsoft, Hollywood, music labels etc.) Fifty years ago, Jacques Servan-Schreiber issue a prophetic warning about Le Defi Americain (The American Challenge) and this is still true.

I am sure there are other precepts that I cannot think of at the moment. But I invite you to take a look at the list above. These ideas are pretty sensible; in fact, this the kind of thing an Indian administration should also do. I can only hope that India's incompetent politicians and strategic planners can come up with a coherent national purpose within the next fifty years. The much-maligned Indian diaspora does have a coherent agenda that approximates the above, and I hope they will have an increasing say in national affairs.

In contrast with America, it does make a big difference in India as to who wins the elections. Even though in India too the middle classes end up dominating discourse, and therefore there are tendencies towards centrism, there is in practice a big gap. For instance, if the Communist Party of India-Marxist ever come to power (heaven forbid), they will sell the country to China. After all, as far as they are concerned, India is part of China, which is why they have always argued that the 1962 border war was a justified act, an internal matter, on the part of China.

If the Indian National Congress ever comes to power again (heaven forbid!) it will go back to the sycophantic dynastic cronyism, the divide-and-rule, the non-alignment, the oppression of Hindus, the intrusive license-raj, the collectivisation of all industry, the Nehruvian Rate of Growth, and all the other lovely shibboleths of the Nehruvian Stalinists that have beggared the country over the last fifty years.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, in power, although certainly better than the alternatives, does bring out the regional chauvinism and intolerance of the Indo-Gangetic Plain-dweller. But they at least pay lip service to the idea of an assertive India; and in truth, they have demonstrated that a nuclearised, regionally active India (I love the new Ganga-Mekong initiative and the recent naval exercises in the South China Sea) is possible and even desirable.

So I think it is axiomatically true that for Indians, it may be a life-and-death issue; while for Americans it hardly makes any difference who comes to power. In fact, even the differentiation that the candidates manufacture during the campaign disappears when they are in power. For example, Bill Clinton successfully undercut the Republicans by borrowing many of their sensible ideas about the economy.

As things have turned out, things haven't changed a great deal after Election 2000. The Republicans are still in control of both the Senate and the House, but their margins have been reduced. One would a priori imagine that it would be easy for Bush (if he were to win) to ram things through a pliant Congress, but that is not necessarily true. If previous experience is to guide us, things have not been hunky-dory even when one party controlled the US Presidency and both houses of the legislature.

There are a couple of areas where the US President matters. There are the appointments to the Supreme Court and to the Federal Reserve. Something like five out of nine Supreme Court Justices are likely to retire during the next four years; and since they have essentially lifetime appointments, they are likely to affect the US for many years to come. Similarly, as many as five of the seven members of the Fed board may be up for replacement in the next four years.

Since the liberal-conservative balance in the US Supreme Court has changed direction several times in the recent past -- remember the Civil Rights Era Brown v Board of Education, or the abortion-rights Roe v Wade -- the composition of the court may have a significant impact on American society. Similarly the policies of the Federal Reserve Board -- remember the near-universal adulation for Alan Greenspan for policies that helped the US boom in the last few years -- are also important for Americans. Yes, Bush v Gore makes a difference in these areas.

Microsoft is also probably rooting for Bush, as the Republicans are much more likely to revert to the Reagan-era hibernation on anti-trust matters. Big business will benefit. There are foreign policy differences too. Bush would be much less willing to countenance the "let's bend over backwards to appease China" syndrome that has afflicted the Clinton presidency. As a columnist put it, "Clinton made China safe for Coca-cola" and that enabled that bellicose nation to ride roughshod over the human rights of Tibetans, and to flex its muscles all around: in the Spratlys, regarding Taiwan, and so forth.

But back to the schadenfreude part. I find it highly risible that the efficient and systematic Americans have been reduced to counting ballots by hand. Where is the boast that their results are posted within minutes of the close of the polls, as compared to those dim-witted Third World countries where it takes a week for the results to come through? Ah, hubris!

There was also all the idle speculation about what would happen to the running of the US government if there were in fact a tie in the Electoral College vote. I loved the scenario where this would lead to a serious constitutional crisis. The Speaker of the House of Representatives would be next in line. If he will not resign his Congress seat, next would be the 97-year-old arch-conservative, Strom Thurmond, head of the Senate.

If Thurmond cannot make it, the Secretary of State would be President. But that is the esteemed Madeleine Albright who is not American-born, so she is disqualified. This would mean Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary, would become President until they could sort the whole mess out! Yes, an unelected political appointee at the helm of affairs, a whiz-kid World Bank economist notorious for his leaked memo advocating the export of hazardous wastes to the Third World!

I also love all those allegations about irregularities in the polls in Florida. What, I ask, is the difference between this and the large-scale booth-capturing and rigging of polls made so popular by Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar? Is Jeb Bush, brother of George W, and the governor of Florida, just a slightly more presentable Laloo Prasad Yadav? Is it pure coincidence that major electoral problems are happening in Jeb Bush's state and not elsewhere in the US? Is it possible that, the American way of democracy is, horrors!, flawed?

I found it quite entertaining that Buchanan has captured an unusually high share of the vote in Florida, because the voters got confused and thought they were voting for Gore. Nobody usually questions the sagacity of the average American voter, but I will: I believe the average American voter is pretty stupid. They couldn't figure out where to punch the little voter card!

I also liked the cameo appearance by the Reverend Jesse Jackson and his allegations that black voters were prevented from exercising their franchises through means foul and unfair. I am reminded of a story I read somewhere. Blacks were denied the right to vote for many years in the US Deep South. One of the popular mechanisms used in Jim Crow days was the clause that insisted people demonstrate their literacy by reading a newspaper.

So there is this little Dixie town, and on election day, this old black man goes to the voting booth to exercise his rights. There is a Bull Connor-type sheriff on duty, who informs the old man that he will have to read a newspaper. Sure, says the old man. Whereupon the sheriff produces a newspaper, only it is written in Hebrew! Says the old man, "Sho', I can read that. It says no nigger ain't going vote in this town today"!

Errata

I gave the wrong link to the "Tribute to Hinduism" site in my previous column. The correct link is: www.atributetohinduism.com

Rajeev Srinivasan