Sick healers peddling snake oil

Tuesday 5th January, 2021

The unfolding political drama in the US, which makes itself out to be the greatest democracy on earth and even ‘exports’ democratic governance to other countries that are not within the sphere of its influence, reminds us of a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet—‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’—and the recurring image of the snail under the leaf in Katherine Mansfield’s stories. It has now become obvious that there is something rotten in the United States, and the unsightly snail under the leaf of American democracy is visible.

President Donald Trump has not conceded the 03 November presidential election, and the Republican Party, save some of its prominent members, has thrown its weight behind him. Some GOP senators have reportedly decided against endorsing President-elect Joe Biden in the congressional joint session scheduled to be held tomorrow to count the Electoral College votes. This decision has divided the Republican Senators, some of whom have already accepted Biden’s win. Trump’s campaign to get the presidential election overturned has thus suffered another setback. But he is not likely to give up even if he fails to undo Biden’s victory.

The fact that Trump has won the title of the most admired man in the US (2020), beating Barack Obama, has apparently emboldened him to fight on and redouble his efforts to bolster his claim that the presidential election was stolen. Vice President Mike Pence, who was seen to be dilly-dallying, has also endorsed the pro-Trump Senators’ decision to refuse to certify Biden’s election win. His office has said he shares ‘the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities’.

The Trump camp is all out to have an ad hoc bi-partisan committee appointed in keeping with the 1877 precedent to conduct an emergency audit of the election results in the ‘disputed’ states. But odds are stacked against it, given the many judicial decisions dismissing Trump’s petitions, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and dissension among the GOP Senators. Chances are that Trump will be among the US Presidents who failed in their re-election bids. Presidential hopefuls in the GOP, which is full of ambitious politicians, must be impatient to see the back of Trump and realise their aspirations. But they are likely to be disappointed.

Trump may be able to remain a force to be reckoned with in national politics as a popular ex-President with the potential to contest another presidential election successfully. He might even be able to make a stunning comeback a la President Grover Cleveland, who lost re-election in 1888, but secured a second, nonconsecutive term by defeating Benjamin Harrison in 1892. However, nobody has been able to get inside Trump’s elusive mind and predict his moves.

President Trump’s straight-to-camera denouncement of the US election system, specific charges against election officials and, above all, his claim that his rival’s victory was owing to polls frauds have tarnished the image of the US democracy beyond repair. Trump is under fire for having undermined the Americans’ faith in their election system.

Whoever would have thought, several decades ago, that a US President would denounce the American election system in this manner? Allegations such as the one that an election system is under ‘assault and siege’ are usually heard from the developing world, which the US never misses an opportunity to lecture on the need to conduct clean elections.

Hereafter, when Washington takes the moral high ground, expresses its concerns about election malpractices in the developing countries, and calls for measures to strengthen election systems, US diplomats serving there will have others laughing up their sleeves. Sick healers peddling snake oil cannot be taken seriously, can they?