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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dealer who wrote (24803)	12/13/2000 5:41:20 PM
From: Nick	Respond to of 65232

An editorial from an African Newspaper. Bush Sr. through his right wing Ambassador pushed "democracy" on them in 1990, and those actions have resulted in chaos for them. Can't believe they can even make statements like this one: US needs new code for the presidency To many Africans, it did not matter who, between George Bush and Al Gore, should have won the American presidency. Because of Bush's linguistic deficiencies, inability to grasp complex intellectual issues and a deeply right-wing disposition unlikely to favour Africa and other Third World regions, they are not excited that he has been declared the next President. But they would equally have been uninspired by Gore's humdrum robot-like mind, his boring intellectual unmalleability. That there was little to choose from was made manifest by the fact that theirs was one of the closest presidential contests and lowest turnouts in US history. Yet their struggle – the whiff of rigging by Bush and the prolixity with which Gore has challenged him – has revealed two serious shortcomings in the system. Something is clearly wrong when a candidate beats his closest rival by 200,000 votes but loses the contest. This is not a big figure by US presidential voting standards. It is only slightly larger than the some 120,000 popular votes by which John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon 1960. But that's the point. Kennedy went on to be cleared by a much more comfortable margin in the Electoral College because he had also carried most of the more populous states. Thus it is not the sizes of the popular figures that matter. Natural justice demands that if a candidate wins by even one popular vote, that should be the end of things unless the constitution stipulates a runoff. But in the US system that is true only of the Electoral College. If a candidate wins a state by even one vote he takes all of that state's electoral members. It is, therefore, important for a candidate to carry most of the populous states because the more populous a state is, the bigger the number of members it has in the college. It is through this default – by being handed a state as populous as Florida – that Bush has stolen the presidency from Gore. It is a big blow to democracy because it has arrogantly denied 200,000 American voters their democratic choice. As a superpower with great responsibilities in all countries, the US opines, often rightly, on how those countries should govern themselves. But if it is to continue to present its political system as the paradigm for other states to emulate, it must also listen to criticism from those other states. It is in this spirit that we suggest that Thomas Jefferson's constitution is long overdue for amendment to remove this anomaly. Moreover, secondly, when a country has become the world's policeman, it is important for it to inspire that world through inspired leadership. Therefore, it must devise a system by which to ensure that the highest office in the land, the most powerful in the world, is occupied by an individual who evinces a certain level of intellect, knowledge, morality, honesty, flexibility and bonhomie. Yet, in modern times, the US has been ruled or nearly ruled by a mixture of schizoids, demagogues, fuzzy minds, pachyderms and war-mongers. Notable have been Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Dan Quayle, George Bush Junior and Allan Gore – people who are not only a danger to democracy itself but often also, by sheer lack of sympathy with or grasp of issues affecting the world, a threat to world peace.