# 6 US Presidential Circus

What, I think, accounts for the lapse of time since the last time I wrote something for this space is the obligation I feel to try to cope, somehow, with the rising flood of media verbiage downstream from the extraordinary, current US presidential election circus. My prolonged silence could always, on the other hand, stem from a sense of despair.

In any event, it is always worth reminding oneself that the present election circus is more properly a US one, not technically an American one. They have elections in Colombia and Chile and Canada too, after all. They’re just as ‘American’ as I am. Isn’t ‘circus’ a great metaphor, by the way?

As I write – these things move along quickly – serious allegations of chicanery in the New Hampshire results have just emerged. The exit polls showed Obama well in front; the count went to Clinton. What happened?

Now, in my recent experience, before anyone falls into intriguing speculation about the possible roles played by race, by sexism, by emotion, by any of that, one should first ask another question entirely: how were the votes counted? Isn’t that sad? Yet recent history demands that answer first, before all the others.

In this case, the great majority were counted by machines. Written, by hand, on paper ballots, yes, but instead of being counted by hand, they were counted by machines. Whose machines? Diebold’s, the most universally and officially derided machines of all, if I’m not mistaken. So bad they’ve had to change their name. As someone complained the other day, voting is supposed to be by secret ballot; by contrast, counting should be public and open to all to see. We should be so lucky.

As I write, I can report having just sent off by air mail to New York – the last
US address of record for me, back in 1963 – my absentee ballot in that state’s
Democrat primary election. I’ve never voted Republican in my life. And I’ve voted all my life, the first time being for John Kennedy. This time I indicated that I favored Dennis Kucinich. I hope that my ballot is counted by someone and not fed through a machine.

Why Kucinich? I’d scarcely even heard of him until two or three years ago. In that interval he has persuaded me that he is the most honest and the most courageous and the most sympathetic to me of all those seeking the Democrat nomination. He seems to me willing to speak truth to power, the consequences be damned. He declares, like the others, that the president and vice-president are disastrous; unlike the others, he introduces a bill to have them impeached.

He has known from the start that the Iraq adventure was wrong, seriously and hugely wrong, yet he is the only one to have followed the logic of that knowledge to its conclusion and voted against the war. For me, as a result, when he pledges to bring the US military back home right away, I believe he’ll actually do it. Is that not a refreshing prospect in a politician?

Similarly, Kucinich has tackled the knotty question of the US so-called health care arrangements uncompromisingly. He has proposed something very like a national health service which would, among other things like encouraging fairness and value for money, bring about an end to shameful public subsidies, which is the present case, of the huge insurance and pharmaceutical concerns.

That’s three good reasons. There are others. Let me admit that I simply like the man’s style: direct, often humorous, honest, intelligent, fluent, courageous. Though he’s poor, that means he’s not in the pocket of some group of financiers as his rivals are. He doesn’t invoke religion. As far as the US goes, that’s two strikes against him already. He can’t win. In the US they like a winner, I’m told.

Why vote for Kucinich then? I suppose that it’s because, life being short, I want to be able to look back to this time and say that I did. I agree with him. I am persuaded that he is right. I wish with all my heart that his was the very model of a modern politician, which it surely isn’t. For me, it seems more and more like a matter of principle. Why, when I’ve got him, vote for someone else? Someone who has a better chance of winning, of beating the opposition, of jumping all the right hurdles and crossing the line first. Someone who’s already compromised, with whom I’m not nearly as fully in agreement, who’s likely, once elected, soon to fall into the same, tired Washington routine as the others. No, that’s a politics of despair. I’ll stick with the one I think’s best, because it’s right. Voilà.