Guest Blog - Alex Wilcock on the US Presidential Elections

4.20.04pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 5th Feb 2008

Alex Wilcock

My favourite half-American - Alex Wilcock - writes for www.colin-ross.org.uk on his take on the US Presidential Elections:

The US Primaries, Super Tuesday and Chris Rennard's Ideal Retirement Home

Today, 'Super Tuesday', twenty-four states get to vote in primary contests to see who'll be their choice for the Republican and Democrat Presidential challengers this Fall.

The candidates' chances have changed a lot over the last month; it's difficult now to remember that the Republicans were split between four main challengers and looked to be heading for the first 'brokered Convention' in decades, when today there's a strong chance Senator John McCain will sweep up the nomination in one (barring any more exciting turnarounds like Hillary's press-embarrassing "Dewey Beats Truman" win in New Hampshire). Meanwhile, the Democrat race has shifted from a front-runner and two other significant candidates to two front-runners apparently neck-and-neck, with that party's contest instead the one with a slim chance of running all the way to the Convention.

With Rudy Giuliani out, Mike Huckabee faltering and Mitt Romney's sudden conservatism and old fortune keeping him up only as far as second (much to the disappointment of Democrats looking forward to the Republican candidate being a serial flip-flopper from Massachusetts with too many millions), the Republican candidate looks very likely to be John McCain. His advantage is that he's seen as a "straight-talking" hero and can appeal to independent voters. His disadvantage is that, while polls show him taking nearly 50% of Republican preferences, most of the other 50% hate him almost as much as they do Hillary because he's not a foaming religious bigot. But the Republicans' winner-takes-all primaries mean they're likely to look united, despite being split down the middle.

The Democrats are quite different - though they have nothing like the Republicans' deep ideological split between religious and rational conservatives, because they have two candidates of similar electoral weight and a mostly proportional system of electing Convention delegates (no, like the eventual Presidential election, these are technically elections to an electoral college rather than the popular vote, but Colin's asked me to keep this shorter than my usual articles so you'd best look that up yourself), the Democratic race is much less predictable.

In Hillary Clinton, the Democrats have an experienced, sure-footed candidate who's able, intelligent, full of plans and has already taken every bit of scorching opponents can muster and come through it. On the downside, she doesn't set the house on fire with her oratory, her husband's 'hardball' has been off-putting and tarnishing his reputation as a charmer, and a nation of three hundred million people might be expected to pick its presidents from more than two families. In Barack Obama, they have a charismatic speaker who'd leave behind '60s culture wars, someone with an inspiring message who can reach across parties and has the potential to improve America's standing in the world, and heal its divisions inside. In the downside, no-one knows how he'll stand up to the Republican attack machine, nor whether there might be a 'Bradley Effect' of voters secretly voting against him over his ethnicity (as opposed to the much more open misogyny directed against Senator Clinton), and his opposition to the Iraq War is compromised by compensatory posturing for the future - "Bomb Pakistan," for Pete's sake! It boils down, really, to Hillary Clinton being a known effect with quantifiable risks, and Barack Obama being full of unknowns but with greater promise for triumph or disaster. It's difficult not to warm to him, nor (for seasoned British politicos) to see a relatively youthful politician who speaks in soaring non-specifics and not feel the shadow of Mr Blair.

Both campaigns have turned unpleasant at times. Senator Obama's campaign slung Senator Clinton's Indian and (less clumsily) Latino supporters against her, then Bill Clinton personally tried to paint him as just the black candidate. Senator Clinton's supporters tried to disenfranchise some voters in Nevada, then Senator Obama said Senator Clinton's victory in Florida didn't count because all the Democrats there were right to be disenfranchised (yes, Democrats are people that don't think votes count. And in Florida, of all places! Some mistake, surely?). But out of this, people have given Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt and distrusted Hillary Clinton for it… And being able to win people over like that is a useful trait in an election. So, while I'd much rather - and I suspect the vast majority of Democratic voters would too - that they agreed to be each other's Vice-Presidential nominee, and I think Vice-President is the best place to learn all that Senator Obama still seems not to have a clue about, I don't think there's a hope in hell of them picking each other. Shame. In which case, I think Barack Obama's talent for getting people to like him may just win out.

Perhaps the oddest thing about all this for British observers is not the idea that millions of voters get to choose party candidates - rather than a couple of dozen members in a draughty hall - nor even that so many millions of dollars are spent before the 'real' election gets underway, but that, having opened up the selection to mass democracy and masses of money, most of the choices are still made my a tiny number of smallish states before the mass of people get to vote. Increasingly over the past couple of decades, the 'later' states have been shortening the contest by bundling together into a 'Super Tuesday' so as not to be altogether left out, but although the twenty-four states voting today make it the biggest set of primaries so far - leading many pundits to try and find super-Super superlatives such as "Super-Duper Tuesday" and "Tsunami Tuesday" - they'll still have far less effect than if all fifty states had voted together, rather than let the particular preferences of Iowa, New Hampshire and others crush candidates who might otherwise have had nationwide appeal (just look at the disastrous result of Rudy 9iu11iani's attempt to buck that system).

Yes, to British politicos, this looks like an election being fixed in a set of self-selected marginal seats. Insanely, states like Florida were even denied representation - despite holding, you know, proper votes and everything (well, by Florida standards, at least) - because they moved their voting forward rather than wait for Buggins' Turn. Even more than the money thrown at it all, this makes the whole primary process look like a fix, with a wide field of candidates hacked down to one-ish and two-ish real contenders before Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Tuesday comes around.

So, if you were a British Liberal Democrat who moved to the USA, you'd probably be shocked at this dubiousness and campaign for electoral reform. And if you lived in one of forty-odd states, you'd feel the need very bitterly. But if you lived in one of the chosen few… Well, I know it's wrong, but wouldn't it be fun? I am, in fact, half-American. I have dual nationality. So watching the US elections feels like more than an academic exercise to me, and though I'm fond of Boston, New York and San Francisco, I get a special bit of excitement when the Primary season starts and New Hampshire suddenly appears on all the news broadcasts. In part, that's because my Grandma lives in the state capital, Concord, and I always look to see if they're showing a street I know. But it's also because I know that, should I ever wish to live somewhere where politics really gets taken seriously, New Hampshire is the place where all the ambitious candidates press the flesh for years at a time. It's an informed and, indeed, pampered electorate that in many ways gets more attention than the rest of the country put together.

When Chris Rennard eventually decides he's had enough of running election campaigns, don't be surprised if he opens a great new retirement home slap-bang in the middle of NH. After all, can you think of a better place for a Liberal Democrat activist afterlife, a paradise on Earth? New Hampshire - a rotten political system, perhaps, but where else in the world can you find in effect a two-year-long by-election campaign held regularly every four years? To a certain breed of leaflet-addicted Lib Dem, it could be very Heaven.