Reaching for the impossible

A BLACK man is about to become president of the United States. Not even the most liberal Americans, let alone the rest of the world, had expected to see this in their lifetime.

For Barack Obama, born of a Kenyan father, possessing an alien name and growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii, even winning the nomination of a major political party was a staggering achievement. In the final weeks of the election, he now enjoys a distinctive lead in the polls. Americans are pinching themselves to check if they are dreaming.

They may not be dreaming but Obama certainly is. His genius has been to understand that a revolution must ultimately be stitched from dreams and hope, and to craft this political reality into an eloquent appeal for making his country a better place for all. In the beginning this message was dismissed as hopelessly naïve but events have proved it to be anything but. In fact, it has been an artful rallying cry unlocking the latent optimism of a beleaguered citizenry. Eight years under what many feel has been its worst-ever presidential administration, America is desperate and reeling. Obama’s message of healing, harmony and hope has resonated.

With his stature and credibility rising, Obama’s opponent, the long-serving Republican senator and decorated war hero John McCain, has been forced into one misstep after another. National polling data shows Obama decisively ahead by four to eight percentage points, with the various polling organisations such as Gallup, Hotline and Rasmussen Reports in near-complete agreement. In some polls, Obama is even touching 50 per cent popular support. History testifies that this close to the election, such figures are strongly predictive of victory on election day.

Some experts have warned that Obama’s numbers may be misleading because people are falsely supporting him in sampling polls to avoid being considered racist. This anxiety dates from 1984 when an African-American named Tom Bradley ran for mayor of Los Angeles with a healthy lead in the polls, yet still lost. But a consensus has emerged that the ‘Bradley effect’ is no longer at play. Obama’s poll numbers have seen real-time trends, becoming negative after the Republican National Convention but recovering as the political climate changed. Moreover, different polling methodologies — such as punching your preference on a telephone keypad instead of speaking to a poll-taker — are revealing the same results. With a range of polls pointing in the same direction, the margin of error is negligible.

Even more convincing is Obama’s lead in the electoral calculation. The US presidential election is decided by a simple majority in an electoral college comprising the country’s 50 states, with each state’s electoral votes assigned in proportion to its population. A populous state like California has 55, for example, while small states like Maine, Vermont and Hawaii have votes in the single digits. Each contest is winner-takes-all; with 538 electoral votes in total, the candidate with a minimum 270 votes wins the White House. Several states that George W. Bush carried in 2004 are today either up for grabs (e.g. Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina) or leaning for Obama (Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico). If the election were held today, Obama would defeat McCain 286 electoral votes to 252.

American presidential elections, like American sports, are transparently tactical. Using a strategy of divisive identity politics, the Republican Party has occupied the White House 70 per cent of the time over the last four decades. This platform, which has its roots in Richard Nixon’s victorious presidential campaign of 1968 and whose elements range from national security and unregulated markets to gun ownership and opposition to abortion, has been devastatingly exploited by clever tacticians like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove to defeat sensible and reasonable Democratic candidates. Yet after eight years of George W. Bush, this red-meat message has spoiled. The core Republican base remains sizeable but the bulk of independent-minded voters, the decision-making segment in any electorate, are ready for a change.

McCain’s mistake in this election has been to keep appealing to an inconsolable Republican base, which has de facto ceded the battle for independents to Obama. This was most patently demonstrated in McCain’s selection of a vice-presidential running mate, where he chose an unknown and inexperienced governor from a marginal state like Alaska because of her appeal to xenophobic and parochial Republican diehards. It did energise the party base but independents are bewildered that McCain’s vice-presidential vetting system could have coughed up such a piece of phlegm.

Obama’s advantages have come from his natural gifts of intelligence, radiance and charisma, and from a superior tactical team that has brilliantly capitalised on a restless political season. Building on the experience of a hard-fought Democratic primary battle against Hillary Clinton, his campaign used internet tools to smash fund-raising records and register new Democratic voters in battleground states by the hundreds of thousands.

Events have also helped. American presidential campaigns have always been wary of an ‘October surprise’ — an unexpected game-changer that upends the election going into the final days — and it may have just happened with the economic earthquake in America’s housing market, mortgage firms and investment banks. Nearly a trillion dollars are missing after eight years of a Republican administration which has — coincidence of coincidences — burned that very amount away in a reckless war in Iraq. This has almost certainly placed the 2008 election permanently beyond Republican reach.

For our purposes, of course, the key question is what an Obama presidency would mean for Pakistan. Obama is not a neocon. He is even advocating diplomacy with Iran, America’s foresworn enemy. Yet his insistence that he would spare no effort in rooting out extremism from Pakistan’s tribal lands has been interpreted by many as hawkish warmongering. This is an unwarranted overreaction stemming from our misplaced soft corner for Republicans. (Given our penchant for ethnic distinctions, some silent racism may also be at work.)

The key point is that Republican rule may have coincided with years of relative stability in Pakistan but it has also coddled dictators and delayed the institutionalisation of democracy. The Bush policy for Pakistan was neoconservative, dictator-centred policy all along. Obama is very clear that he seeks to root out extremism and terrorism through engagement with the Pakistani people.

Our dalliances with Republican US presidents have repeatedly landed us in hot soup, so hoping for another Republican saviour would amount to insanity. The call of sanity, therefore, is crystal clear. We have to give Barack Obama a chance. It may be the only chance we’ve got.

Democracy’s foibles

BEFITTING a nation suffering from many ills, there are many soothsayers and would-be healers here. They have grand ideas for saving us that are rooted in familiar ideologies and idylls. The benevolent dictator, the malevolent avenger, the puritanical priest, the altruistic populist, the self-interested capitalist. I’m a wary incrementalist.

The surest way to arouse my suspicion is to suggest you have a cure for all that ails Pakistan. We’ve tried democracy and dictatorship and everything in between. We’ve had secular dictators become bedfellows with pious mullahs and pious dictators who have sidled up to the Americans; we’ve had constitutionalists who weren’t democrats and democrats who weren’t constitutionalists; we’ve had populists who were elitists and elitists who were revolutionaries; we’ve had technocrats who were wannabe politicians and politicians who were wannabe economic maestros. When nothing has worked, we’ve been left with two extremist camps: undiluted democracy and overweening dictatorship. On principle, I am opposed to dictatorship; in practice, I find democracy hard to stomach.

That’s why I’m a wary incrementalist. My fear is that like a cancer patient if you pump too much medicine, good or bad, into the system, the patient — Pakistan — will expire. The transition to democracy was a good idea because it set modest goals. Little did I know what a white-knuckle ride it would be.

A columnist for this paper would often ask me why I didn’t pile into Musharraf in his last days. For me, the problem was always apparent: he wasn’t the solution in 1999, and he certainly wasn’t in 2007. Prodded and nudged by the rabble he helped unleash, Musharraf was on his way out — and the country could finally get on with the business of finding a sustainable model for running the state. For several reasons, in Pakistan that model has to be rooted in some form of democracy. Clearly, democracy was the winningest theory of the twentieth century. Peer into any corner of the globe and you’ll find people yearning for it. Surely democracy has some intrinsic merit. On a more practical level, dictatorships are destined to fail in Pakistan because of a well-kept secret: rather than being weak, our political class is strong and very capable of defending its interests — the eventual capture of state power.

So we move on to implementation. Everyone is in agreement that the only way politicians as a group can eventually wrest control of their own destiny lies in two measures: one, they must strip away the anti-parliamentary, undemocratic powers in the constitution; two, they must provide an example of good governance even as they navigate treacherous waters to defang the establishment that will forever seek their failure. Which brings us to the Zardari model, circa 2008. Frankly, I am aware that the two of us are cut from the same cloth: Zardari has been as much a wary incrementalist as anyone in Pakistan’s history. Where we part ways is that I’m not sure what he is incrementally reaching towards, the consolidation of power for power’s sake or wielding it for the good of the people?

There is no schadenfreude in exposing his foibles; for me to be elated over his missteps would be the ultimate act of masochism — given that the choices he makes so directly impact the future of all of us. And — as the aforementioned columnist was willing to bet — there is no doubt that Zardari’s missteps do not rise to the level of Musharraf’s, or will for the foreseeable future. But every time I remember that it is Zardari who holds the keys to the transition, an indescribable terror seizes me. It’s not that I loathe the president — frankly, an untested quantity has just as much a chance of success as the swaggering patriarchs of our system; it’s just that the terrifying threats that confront this nation confound me.

Does the president have the nous to navigate Pakistan through its moment of ultimate peril? I don’t know. I do know that we don’t have the luxury of waiting to find out. Yet, wait me must — which is both the beauty and vexation of democracy. Stuck in this fine pickle that I’m exquisitely aware of, I pick up a newspaper each day with a mixture of dread and anticipation. ‘What would Zardari do?’ has become the bumper sticker of my life. A friend has accused me of being “manic-obsessive”; I prefer the term ‘concerned’.

Before Palin-gate lit up screens in Pakistan and India, an email from the US found its way to my inbox. The sender said nothing, just forwarded the story as it was covered in the US. I didn’t know what to make of it. I felt no disgust at the grieving widower flirting with Palin. Perhaps if I woke up to the story on another day, I would have. It was awfully sexist but at least he only threatened to hug her, I reasoned that day. Besides, Palin-gate was only a distraction from the real business at the UN.

How did Zardari do? I’m still scratching my head trying to make sense of it. On the bright side, Zardari adroitly deflected the questions about Pakistan firing on American helicopters with the red herring of flares. This was exactly what many have been demanding: doing the right thing (raising the threat of retaliation) without physical damage or a public falling-out. He also avoided a spat over terrorism with Manmohan Singh and pushed the envelope on trade with India, notwithstanding the jingoistic, nationalist line that he ceded too much to the Indian prime minister.

On the dim side, Zardari showed an unnerving tendency to ingratiate himself with American politicians. Surely not even Bush believes he has made the world a safer place. And Zardari told Palin that he is trying to emulate the Alaskan model for exploitation of oil reserves. I’m not even sure Palin — Alaska’s governor for two years — knew that she had set up an economic model, least of all one being followed by Pakistan. A presidential aide had to interject and remind reporters that Zardari had spoken to the other vice-presidential candidate, Joseph Biden, he of that piffling $1.5bn democracy dividend. And, demonstrating an astonishing lack of understanding of our economic crisis, Zardari was coy about directly asking the Americans for money — deferring that for a state visit, whenever that may come.

Overall, it wasn’t a week for rage at Zardari’s performance. But I have been struck by an anxious thought: has the president lowered the bar so much that anything less than disaster is a success? No doubt my friend will send another email about being manic-obsessive. I maintain, I am only concerned.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Terror’s paradigm

PRESIDENT Zardari’s visit to the UN was a nebulous affair, eliciting promises though without producing tangible results. However, two fairly important things came to light during this period.

The US was not going to budge on its policy on the war on terror in this region, Pakistan’s precious sovereignty notwithstanding. Yet, at the same time, it was more than ready with a show of paternalistic indulgence towards our fledgling democracy.

But that was all. If our president had gone to the US with high hopes, these were destined to be dashed. What he encountered there was a display of strangely hollow tokenism rather than anything else.

Given that the time was out of joint and the US administration was itself reeling from the effects of an ongoing recession, even the launch of the Friends of Pakistan Group by the G-8 and oil-rich countries in New York with its attendant prospects would seem to have come across as something of a rainbow.

Zardari had doubtless planned to bring the house down by drawing an analogy between the ‘Bhutto doctrine’ and the Marshall Plan in his maiden address to the General Assembly but, partly because of the comparison being just slightly far-fetched and the Bhutto magic being — ironically — conspicuous by its absence, that did not happen.

The president should be content with the fact that the World Bank is considering giving Pakistan an economic package of $1.3777bn. Raw as he is, besides being a trifle unconvincing in what still look like ‘borrowed’ clothes, he could hardly have expected better.

In any case, it must be understood that the West will be looking to prop up democracy in Pakistan primarily to enable it to combat militancy. So there will necessarily be strings attached to any economic support it might think fit to give which, it is reasonable to surmise, will also be of the ‘breadline’ variety.

It would additionally help to keep an ear cocked to what the presidential hopefuls of the US are saying. In the recent televised debate with McCain, Obama, for one, did not hesitate to trot out the figures per year in terms of aid extended to Pakistan over the last seven years on account of ‘counter-terrorism’. By his reckoning, we have so far received a total of $10bn. And it certainly seems that, at least on the ground, there is little to show for it.

Clearly, despite the somewhat overzealous operation currently being carried out in the tribal belt, there is no denying the fact that we have so far failed to contain terror in the country. The apocalyptic bomb blast at the Islamabad Marriott alone affords ample testimony to this. Other things aside, on the basis of volume alone, it would seem — not unlike the blast at Karachi on May 12 of last year or the Liaquat Bagh episode that took away Benazir Bhutto — to have had a distinctive signature. Not at all routine, all of these seemed, in their own macabre way, to have both an especially defiant and curiously orgiastic dimension.

However, the public at large can at last claim to be wise to what is happening in this context. It does not need historiographers to explain that the war on terror is, at some level, merely a cynical racket. At the same time, it is unfortunate that certain political parties tend to add fuel to the fire by blackmailing governments of the day into going into pacifist mode where they might be inclined to act otherwise.

Tired debates on the subject of the ‘ownership’ of the war do not help either. The truth is that war has a dynamic of its own. It cannot, properly, be ‘owned’ by anybody. On the contrary, it assumes ‘ownership’ of those who engage in it. The destructive process peremptorily brushes human volition aside and simply takes over.

So we in Pakistan are really ‘owned’ by the war on terror. This applies equally to the US, Britain and other countries involved in it. Sinister though the fact is, this is something we all have to live with. When he signed on the dotted line in response to the call on the hotline from the US in 2001, Musharraf had already acquiesced in this logic. He had been duly co-opted and there was no turning back. If he squandered various opportunities to set things right, it was partly because he was a hostage of the establishment and Pakistan’s bizarre, obscurantist history.

There can be no further compromises over this issue. The ‘friendly fire’ recently exchanged between Pakistani and Nato forces, followed by Gen Petraeus’s ominous forecast about the ‘existential threat’ to Pakistan, suggest that drastic measures need to be taken to remedy a fast deteriorating situation. The US general’s observation, which was neither coded nor guarded, indicates that much more than Pakistan’s sovereignty is presently in jeopardy.

It is all very well for the president to be true to his word and consult with parliament on the war on terror but, in point of fact, time is running out in this regard for Pakistan. We had been labouring under the delusion that Iran was being singled out by the West for punitive action but it has since come to light that, at least for the time being, our neighbour has proven just a convenient decoy.

Critical decisions have to be taken and, as supreme commander of the armed forces, it is the president’s responsibility to see to it that they are. Popular sentiment or, for that matter, blackmail should not be allowed to come in the way. The US is not asking for the moon in demanding that we make common cause with Isaf and the Afghanistan government to overcome the menace in the region.

It does not befit the president of the country either to seem to be dithering or be raising the alarm about the threat to his life at the hands of terrorists. Benazir Bhutto had returned to the country as the nemesis of the enemy within and consequently met the fate she did. She had both courage and charisma and her own incomparable standing among the world’s leaders. Zardari doubtless has his own merits. But he must not be bemoaning the hazards of a job that was never actually forced on him.

Polls won’t cure the financial crisis

THERE is common sense; and there is good sense. Common sense represents the received wisdom of years and the widespread opinion of the day. It may be rooted in fact, fiction, rumour or reality. On one level it doesn’t matter. So long as it is commonly held, then, in essence, common sense becomes a fact of life.

Good sense, on the other hand, represents those durable truths and stubborn facts that outlive their unpopularity. The fact that it is right does not necessarily mean that it is not marginal. It persists for the simple reason that prevailing conditions underpin its relevance even when prevailing opinion ignores it.

At times the two coincide, at others they collide. At different moments in different places, burning witches, a flat earth, eugenics, slavery, smoking in restaurants and corporal punishment in schools were all common sense. But they were never good sense.

“Common sense is not something rigid and stationary,” wrote the late Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who crafted the distinction from Mussolini’s prison. “It creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.” Good sense, he argued, was often concealed in common sense, but emerged primarily in times of crisis and transformation.

We find ourselves in one such crisis now. As markets plunge, banks fail and traders panic, the core principles that have underpinned western economic and political culture for a generation have been thoroughly discredited. Less than a month ago the invulnerability and inviolability of unregulated global capitalism was common sense.

The system that leaves half of the world living on less than a dollar a day, with some so impoverished that they are eating mud cakes and selling their children into bondage, was apparently working well. To suggest otherwise was to be dismissed as extreme.

But such orthodoxies can collapse even faster than markets. By the end of last week the US treasury secretary Henry Paulson was literally on one knee before Nancy Pelosi, Democratic speaker of the House, begging her to save the bailout deal. Later George W Bush warned of the entire American economy: “This sucker could go down.” Suddenly, government intervention in markets, reining in executive pay and placing controls on the flow of capital are good sense.

While the gravity of the crisis is clear, the prospects for transformation remain remote. The fact that this meltdown took place during a presidential election should be fortuitous. It ought to provide the two candidates with an opportunity to lay out different visions of how they would tackle the situation at a moment when the nation is intently focused on politics. If ever the country needed leadership, it is right now. And here are two men vying for it.

Yet the financial crisis has, for the most part, made the presidential campaign seem less relevant, not more. The credit crunch and the election are taking place as though on a split screen.

There is a connection between the two — Barack Obama has bounced back as a result of people’s attention being refocused away from lipstick and pigs and back on to their mortgages, retirement accounts and jobs. But it is not a substantive one. For while the crisis has changed the electoral conversation, nobody is seriously looking to this conversation for new ideas, let alone a solution.

The notion that there might be alternatives to rapacious capitalism have been all but banished from the public square. That limited discourse leaves us with limited options. Those who claimed that the government was the problem now cast it as not just the ultimate, but the sole solution. Good sense demands a thoroughgoing reappraisal of a system that’s in a state of collapse; common sense requires we subsidise it in perpetuity for fear that it breaks down. That sounds like nonsense.

“If you beat your head against the wall,” Gramsci once wrote, “it is your head which breaks, and not the wall.” Right now the American public has a terrible headache. And it doesn’t seem as if this presidential race is going to cure it.

It will be the task of whoever wins on November 4 to manage America’s decline in status and power and a consequent further deterioration in Americans’ standard of living. This process will be painful and could be protracted.

Little wonder, then, that nobody wants to talk about it. Instead they keep talking of America as the shining city on the hill, without realising that the city they are referring to is bankrupt and the lights are about to be cut off.

It was clear from Friday (SEP26) night’s debate that neither John McCain nor Obama really know what to do. The little that they will commit to are things they agree on. Both stand at the mercy of events and the market.

— The Guardian, London