Democracy headed at the world, traveling at Internet speed
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Ocak 24, 2009 00:00
Most of us, like millions if not billions worldwide, have spent much of the past week debating and speculating about what the future will bring with a new and so very different U.S. president now in office, Barack Obama. I will leave to others the gazing into crystal balls. But I do think those seeking to divine a direction for so many areas of policy should consider the question differently: what has changed in the American political system that has enabled the election of someone with such an exceptional background?
Readers who follow my column know I eschew "war stories" from the past. Reporters who wind up editors at mid-life tend to spend the remainder of their careers boring readers with columns that begin with some variant of, "when I was in the PunjabÉ" or worse. But I have decided to make an exception; this is after all one of those rare cases where what I did for a living for more than 20 years in the United States has some relevance to the job I have today at a Turkish newspaper. I actually covered four presidential elections before throwing in the towel and (obviously without success) swore off the newspaper business in 2000. This was for Gannett Newspapers, the world’s largest chain, most often associated internationally with USA Today. The first was in 1988, when the race was between Republican George Bush the elder and Michael Dukakis, a Democratic governor from Massachusetts.
By 1992 I had a rather open-minded boss at the Gannett headquarters in Washington, D.C., Ronald Cohen, who had come to us after many years running the venerable news service United Press International. One presidential election was enough, I told him, assign somebody else. But after listening to me rant about the closed nature of the American political system, Ron took me up on my offer. For the next three presidential election cycles I covered the so-called "independent parties," everything that was not a Democrat or a Republican. Most people are surprised to learn what a rich tapestry of political parties America has outside the much-sung "two-party system." In fact, in the most recent election, some 37 parties fielded or endorsed candidates across the United States -- usually in just a handful of states. They range across the spectrum from the relatively mainstream "Conservative Party" headed up by former presidential speech writer Patrick Buchanan to the downright bizarre. Those in this latter category include the "U.S. Marijuana Party" founded in 2002 which seeks to legalize cannabis and the "Prohibition Party" which has been trying to ban alcohol since 1869.
My argument, then and now, was that yes, these parties seldom garner more than a sliver of the total votes cast. But no, this is not because they don’t have ideas and proposals that will resonate with the public. It is just that it almost impossible for them to get on the ballot. Rules promulgated in the 50 state legislatures by the two "main" parties are nefarious. For example, if tomorrow you want to create a new party to sponsor candidates in congressional races across America, you will have to collect the signatures of slightly more than 1.6 million people. And that’s the easy part.
My argument, then and now, is that this is all the cause of two things: One, America has the lowest voter turnout of any country in the industrial world; this year it was just 56 percent, however dismal still the highest since 1968. Secondly, despite the sound and fury on issues like abortion or school prayer, there are few deep differences between the two parties. Americans have opted out of a political system with just Coca Cola and Pepsi on the menu of choices.
Of course I knew Ñ as did my boss Ron Ñ that the candidates I would be covering had no chance of winning. But frankly, it was interesting to interview people like the Reform Party’s Ross Perot on government deficits in 1992, the Natural Law Party’s John Hagelin on preventative medicine in 1996 or the Green’s Ralph Nader on the need to harness wind energy in 2000. Their campaign volunteers, frankly, were also far more fun.
The experience gave me a perspective on American politics different than that of many reporters. I have argued for years that my homeland’s politics are inherently undemocratic. This does not reflect a lack of patriotism, just reality. America is, in fact, in violation of an international treaty signed by the United States known as the "Copenhagen Meeting Agreement" which specifically bans the burdens placed on most American political movements.
This is what Obama’s campaign changed. Democracy was the winner in this election. He effectively bypassed the labyrinth of obstacles tossed in the path of political outsiders. He was really an "independent" candidate with nominal Democratic party backing.
"They have basically invented their party that is compatible with the Democratic Party but is bigger than the Democratic Party," Republican strategist Stuart Stevens told the New York Times during the campaign.
Obama’s team bypassed this historic political traffic jam with the electoral equivalent of Istanbul’s new "Metrobus" and its dedicated lane. In his case, this lane was the Internet. It allowed him to reach out beyond conventional channels of communication and also circumvent the established party and lobbyist-dominated mechanism to raise money. As his been much reported, he actually raised more money from small donors than his rivals could raise from businesses and the wealthy.
By election day, Obama had amassed a database containing a staggering 13 million e-mail addresses, a quarter of them belonging to his now-famous donors of $10 and $20 checks. His Web site www.mybarackobama.com on election day had 2 million users and some 35,000 distinct chat groups. His list of mobile phone numbers allowed his campaign to communicate by text message with more than 1 million people. By one estimate I read, 25 percent of the Americans who voted for Obama last November were connected directly to his campaign electronically. At one point in the campaign, I read that Obama had something like 1.4 million "friends" on Facebook.
We will all continue to debate the significance of Obama’s skin color, his Muslim father or his schooling in Indonesia. But what was radically different about this election was just how he did it. Obama cannot be exported, cloned or scale replicated. But the tools he mastered certainly can be. And surely they will be. The triumph of democracy is coming at the world, traveling at Internet speed.
David Judson is editor-in-chief of the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review
By 1992 I had a rather open-minded boss at the Gannett headquarters in Washington, D.C., Ronald Cohen, who had come to us after many years running the venerable news service United Press International. One presidential election was enough, I told him, assign somebody else. But after listening to me rant about the closed nature of the American political system, Ron took me up on my offer. For the next three presidential election cycles I covered the so-called "independent parties," everything that was not a Democrat or a Republican. Most people are surprised to learn what a rich tapestry of political parties America has outside the much-sung "two-party system." In fact, in the most recent election, some 37 parties fielded or endorsed candidates across the United States -- usually in just a handful of states. They range across the spectrum from the relatively mainstream "Conservative Party" headed up by former presidential speech writer Patrick Buchanan to the downright bizarre. Those in this latter category include the "U.S. Marijuana Party" founded in 2002 which seeks to legalize cannabis and the "Prohibition Party" which has been trying to ban alcohol since 1869.
My argument, then and now, was that yes, these parties seldom garner more than a sliver of the total votes cast. But no, this is not because they don’t have ideas and proposals that will resonate with the public. It is just that it almost impossible for them to get on the ballot. Rules promulgated in the 50 state legislatures by the two "main" parties are nefarious. For example, if tomorrow you want to create a new party to sponsor candidates in congressional races across America, you will have to collect the signatures of slightly more than 1.6 million people. And that’s the easy part.
My argument, then and now, is that this is all the cause of two things: One, America has the lowest voter turnout of any country in the industrial world; this year it was just 56 percent, however dismal still the highest since 1968. Secondly, despite the sound and fury on issues like abortion or school prayer, there are few deep differences between the two parties. Americans have opted out of a political system with just Coca Cola and Pepsi on the menu of choices.
Of course I knew Ñ as did my boss Ron Ñ that the candidates I would be covering had no chance of winning. But frankly, it was interesting to interview people like the Reform Party’s Ross Perot on government deficits in 1992, the Natural Law Party’s John Hagelin on preventative medicine in 1996 or the Green’s Ralph Nader on the need to harness wind energy in 2000. Their campaign volunteers, frankly, were also far more fun.
The experience gave me a perspective on American politics different than that of many reporters. I have argued for years that my homeland’s politics are inherently undemocratic. This does not reflect a lack of patriotism, just reality. America is, in fact, in violation of an international treaty signed by the United States known as the "Copenhagen Meeting Agreement" which specifically bans the burdens placed on most American political movements.
This is what Obama’s campaign changed. Democracy was the winner in this election. He effectively bypassed the labyrinth of obstacles tossed in the path of political outsiders. He was really an "independent" candidate with nominal Democratic party backing.
"They have basically invented their party that is compatible with the Democratic Party but is bigger than the Democratic Party," Republican strategist Stuart Stevens told the New York Times during the campaign.
Obama’s team bypassed this historic political traffic jam with the electoral equivalent of Istanbul’s new "Metrobus" and its dedicated lane. In his case, this lane was the Internet. It allowed him to reach out beyond conventional channels of communication and also circumvent the established party and lobbyist-dominated mechanism to raise money. As his been much reported, he actually raised more money from small donors than his rivals could raise from businesses and the wealthy.
By election day, Obama had amassed a database containing a staggering 13 million e-mail addresses, a quarter of them belonging to his now-famous donors of $10 and $20 checks. His Web site www.mybarackobama.com on election day had 2 million users and some 35,000 distinct chat groups. His list of mobile phone numbers allowed his campaign to communicate by text message with more than 1 million people. By one estimate I read, 25 percent of the Americans who voted for Obama last November were connected directly to his campaign electronically. At one point in the campaign, I read that Obama had something like 1.4 million "friends" on Facebook.
We will all continue to debate the significance of Obama’s skin color, his Muslim father or his schooling in Indonesia. But what was radically different about this election was just how he did it. Obama cannot be exported, cloned or scale replicated. But the tools he mastered certainly can be. And surely they will be. The triumph of democracy is coming at the world, traveling at Internet speed.
David Judson is editor-in-chief of the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review