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Cynicism Ceiling
// America, Russia, and the Politics of Elections
I'm looking at the results of the midterm Congressional elections in the United States and remembering how, after September 11, 2001, the nation rallied around its government, forgetting about the differences between Republicans and Democrats. And I'm also remembering the kinds of letters received by my American colleague Trudy Rubin after she published a book in 2004 entitled "Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq." That was the year of the last presidential election. Readers accused her of all but selling out the interests of the country. And she couldn't believe her eyes: what had happened to Americans to make them all go so willfully blind? It is to the point that Trudy, who visited Iraq more than once before and during the military operations there, had traveled her own path from approving the war to realizing how many mistakes had been made and how dead-end the situation is. I calmed her down then by saying something about the resilience of the Bill of Rights and about the ability of her country to work on its mistakes. She was more skeptical then than I was.
And America has come around. In the space of a single day. Either the nation is exceptionally firm in its foundations or the system was very well thought out. Elections foster recovery from mistakes instead of deepening them. There are no fixed approval ratings for either politicians or parties. America is still making movies about a war that it lost decades ago, in which the country set off to follow convictions that led to still-burning shame. In America people vote because otherwise the country risks losing its way.
I am certain that American politicians relate to the voters who pick them with the same level of cynicism as Russian politicians do. Just take a look at "All the King's Men," a movie featuring Sean Penn in the role of Willie Stark that came out right before the election. The movie is an adaptation of the best book that has been written about American elections, or even about elections in general. But American politicians know exactly what will happen on day X, when this multitudinous public goes to vote. And they know that between them and the voting public there was, is, and always will be not only public relations people but also a free press that unwraps and unpacks their pre-election speeches, that talks about their pasts and their futures, that dogs their steps and won't lay off until the campaign is over. Every American politician standing for office always risks losing. That, in my opinion, is the most valuable achievement of democracy, and one that we are in no danger of seeing here in Russia any time soon.
The Kremlin politicos will soon have to deal with both the Republicans and the Democrats and, in two years, possibly with a Democratic president as well. Likelier than not, when the American Democrats look into the eyes of our unchanging leadership or their hand-picked understudies, they will see a little bit more than President Bush has. Russia risks being left without any of the trump cards that it has played so successfully with the Republicans. The last remaining such trump card, for example, is Iran. In addition, the distinctive Russian brand of democracy, which the Republicans have more or less accepted in the name of their own interests, may be viewed by the Democrats as suspect. Politics is a cynical matter, and thus bilateral relations between Russia and the US will depend on which cynicism ceiling with regard to Russia the Democrats will adopt in light of whatever further victories they may win.
Natalya Gevorkyan
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 09, 2006
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