IN HIS foreword note in his book “The Choice”, Bob Woodward, a veteran journalist who shot to fame along with another journalist, Carl Bernstein, for their investigative work on the infamous Watergate scandal, framed the U.S. presidential elections this way.
“Presidential elections are defining moments that go way beyond legislative programs or the role of the government. In the private and public actions of the candidates are embedded their best answers. Action is character, I believe, and when all is said and sifted, character is what matters most.”
Those ancients ideals, still at work a quarter of a century ago, seem to have been lost in the highly contested 2020 U.S. presidential election where there is no clear winner yet but one, former Vice President Joe Biden, appears to have a wider path to the White House than the incumbent Donald Trump.
As pundits put it, America is now a 50-50 nation, a half-of-a loaf, and one U.S. politician saying not sure if the “land of the free” and “home of the brave” is a republic or a democracy.
If character was the one singular decisive factor that ultimately determines who should be elected the most powerful person in the world, the deep division in the ongoing presidential race shows it’s not existent or as important anymore.
To be sure, other factors may have weighed in the voters mind as they went to the polls, most earlier than the November 3 date because of the pandemic. The continuing spike in COVID 19 cases, the economic problems that it spawned in its wake, racial strifes,the ethically challenged demeanor of the sitting president and the alleged intervention in the electoral process of Russia, China and Iran. All this, one way or the other, must have swayed American voters in coming down to their choice.
It’s doubful now, however, if preserving democracy was foremost in the American voters’ mind or still is. What’s obvious is that political partisanship has taken over democratic ideals in favor of populist, cult-like leadership that has shown penchant for demagoguery and self-serving rant, much of it lies that passed for truth. The recent election was supposed to be a litmus test. But the needles are moving in opposite directions.
Even mainstream, legitimate media must be concerned about its impact now in the democratic life of the American people, seeing how their traditional credibility appears to have waned in the face of the highly divisive presidential race. Trump and social media must have been effective in, well, trumping the old-fashioned truth and trust.
In a word, old America is gone and a new one has risen from the rubles of its old self. The next U.S president now faces the challenge of reviving the old America, the “city on the hill”, the American exceptionalism, amidst the partisanship issue that is seen to even grow more intense, especially so in the light of the eventual electoral result,
No less than Trump has indicated so in no uncertain terms as he threatens to bring his case even to the Supreme Court, agitated by his baseless accusations that there were irregularities in the election
And Biden, who’s on the brink to the White House with one or two more states to complete the required 270 electoral votes, knows too well that what he’s up against in the next four years in the country never so politically divided.
When all has been said, however, one thing needs to be underscored. Without the coronavirus disaster, Trump would have likely won his reelection bid, hands down. In the end, it’s the virus that might have saved American democracy, not the American people.
That’s bad news for enemies of the democracy in the world, some of whom have been trying, with limited success, to impose their authoritarian and dubious ideologies in the world as the U.S. shrank from its leadership role on the global arena.
How to recover that lost footing should be part of the priorities of the next U.S. president.
In the Philippines, while the Duterte Administration is playing coy about the likelihood of Biden presidency, it’s conceivable that it is recalibrating its so-called independent foreign policy in light of new realities and new potential issues that will have to face, particularly on human rights and its coziness with China.
This early, the government is said to be reconsidering its earlier decision not to participate in the joint patrol of the South China Sea along with other countries led by the US.
It used to be said a long time ago that when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. That paradigm is no longer operative in a world where China is vying for hegemonic dominance.
But the rise of a restored America could be a game changer for much of the world, including Asia and the Philippines. Vice President Leni Robredo and the opposition must be cheering on the side.
