Thursday, November 09, 2000

Our emerging democracy

OK, I'm really just thinking out loud here, fascinated as I am with the on-going news coverage of the still-pending presidential election. They're recounting the votes in Florida, the linchpin state in the electoral morass that will decide who won and who didn't win, so all of the Democrats and the Republicans are watching that process pretty closely. The GOP sent former Secretary of State James Baker down south to watch Hollerith cards; the Dems chose another former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, to be their watchdog. I caught a few minutes of President Carter on C-SPAN, urging the nation to be calm and let the process play out and, quelle surprise, the Rev. Jesse Jackson is decrying the disenfranchisement of West Palm Beach citizens into any microphone that gets within 20 paces.

So it occurred to me: These are all the same folks we send into other countries to monitor their elections, presuming that newcomers to the democracy game might not be playing it on the up and up. We've got a lot of smug superiority going on here in America -- and, it must be said, over 200 years of hard-gained experience -- and we figure we can teach the world a thing or two about carrying on a fair election.

Wouldn't it be interesting and a bit ironic if the world decided to return the compliment? After all, our neighbors to the north, south, east and west have almost as much invested in the outcome of our elections as we American citizens do. How would we react if the government of, say, Yugoslavia decided to send over some "observers" and parked 'em down in Dade County, just to make sure our math is right? Do you suppose President Clinton would indignantly refuse if the Canadian prime minister suggested a neutral third-party might be better suited to police the polls now that things are getting sketchy?

I'm certainly not suggesting that we're on the verge of revolution or even constitutional crisis, and I'm pretty damned sure it will take more than a few missing ballots before the military revolts and tanks surround Blair House demanding the immediate egress of Al and Tipper. Still, we exert a lot of time, money and manpower making sure that emerging democracies are staying within the lines. If I were the leader of one of those countries whose ballot boxes we'd been backing, I'd certainly give some thought to sending an envoy or two to check in on the most powerful nation on Earth. Wouldn't you?

Besides, when you think about the whole of human history and the rise of democracy among nations in particular, we upstart Americans are still "emerging" too.