Sunday Times 2
Election antics
View(s):I have been musing this month about the strange hoo-ha unfolding in America.
It is so ludicrous that I am tempted to laugh—except that the selection of the leader of one of the most powerful countries on earth is a really serious matter.
Every four years the American electorate gets the opportunity of electing a leader—someone to preside over a people who consider themselves to belong to ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’
This process of electing the president in America is like a soap opera or teledrama—full of hopefuls spending millions of dollars to push their candidatures, appealing to the baser feelings of the voters, debating at the lowest level by flinging accusations and insults at each other, and later on getting together in alliance with the very opponents they pilloried as if nothing had happened.
This year, of course, the American election has provided even more entertainment than in the past, with initially a crude megalomaniac and convicted felon like Donald Trump contesting a well-meaning but senile octogenarian like Joe Biden.
Being myself now in my eighties (though I must point out that I am not as slow nor as forgetful as Biden), I have from my schooldays followed the US elections since Dwight Eisenhower was elected president in 1952. When I think of the amount of money spent on this 2024 election (Kamala Harris is said to have pulled in over eighty million dollars in donations in the 24 hours since she announced that she would seek the Democratic Party nomination), I am shocked. Taking into account the 100 million dollars already in the Democratic Party’s presidential campaign fund, one realises what an inordinate amount of good money is wasted on this circus.
And what a circus it is proving to be this year. There was a debate between the putative candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump in which Biden slurred and stumbled over his words, confusing his billions with his trillions, while Trump belittled his opponent and generally went off on a tangential rant without answering the questions put to him. And the disrespect with which the debaters treated each other—each calling the other a criminal—was palpably obvious.
It is a sad fact that in a democracy, it is the electors who are asked to select who they think is the best candidate for the job.
When I first applied for a job as a journalist, I (in addition to having a degree from the university in Peradeniya) had to take a written test and then face an interview. The serious folk on the interview panel asked me some probing questions to assess whether I could perform the job that I had applied for—and fortunately for me, they found me suitable and selected me.
But when it comes to selecting the head of government of a nation, democracy dictates that we depend on an “interview panel” of several million voters who may or may not understand the issues involved or even what the work of the president involves. They cast their votes based not on what they think with their brains but on what they feel with their hearts and guts at the time of casting their vote. These judgements—based on their gut feelings at the moment in time when they go to the ballot box—are what provide us with the leaders who then rule our country.
And the emotions of voters can so easily be manipulated. Candidate Trump gets shot at by some random man in the crowd while addressing an election meeting, and the outpouring of sympathy would surely have garnered him a large number of votes (just as the 1999 assassination attempt on Chandrika Bandaranaike elicited a large sympathy vote that enabled her to defeat Ranil Wickremesinghe for the presidency).
With Joe Biden increasingly appearing frail and forgetful, the Trump team kept relentlessly attacking his age and his senility. With his surprising withdrawal last week less than four months before the election and his anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrat candidate, Biden sprang such a surprise on his opponent that the wind has been taken out of Trump’s sails. Now he is left as the old man candidate (he is older even than Mahinda, Ranil, and Dinesh!) and he has to look for a new strategy to attack his opponent.
Moreover, being a convicted felon (like Minister Prasanna Ranatunga) and a man who has had to pay legal fines for his crimes (like MP Aly Sabry Raheem), Trump must be dreading having to face a televised debate against Harris, who is an experienced lawyer and seasoned legal prosecutor. Like so many others all over the world, I am eagerly waiting to witness the debate when it is televised.
Our own presidential election is to be held on September 21. We will have that exercise done and dusted by the time the American people, following the months-long soap opera in their country, go to the polls.
No wonder Socrates was so hugely pessimistic about this whole business of democracy!