killer buffalo

Part II

Zimbabwe is a democracy. On June 27^th over 2.5 million Zimbabweans traveled to the polls, over 85% of them destined to vote for incumbent presidential candidate, Mr. Robert Mugabe. The next day, President Bush spoke in Washington, accusing Mr. Mugabe’s runoff election of being “in no way free or fair.” Mr. Gore and his allegations were nowhere to be found.

But remember, Mr. Gore’s and Mr. Bush’s 2000 standoff was only a consequence of their partisan greed. To Mr. Gore and the Democratic Party, it didn’t matter if the political party’s namesake form of government was used to place Mr. Gore in office, and to the Republican’s it didn’t matter that popular democracy had been subverted by the obsolete electoral college or that overzealous Supreme Court justices had subverted Florida’s electorate; what mattered to Mr. Gore was what mattered to Mr. Bush: that the opposition not take office.

In that Mr. Bush prevailed. And eight years later, the lesson is not about Bush, not that he is a bad man or a bad politician or a bad president. The lesson is that undermining democracy comes with catastrophic results.

It’s a lesson that the Democratic Party could have learned in 2004 when it forced independent presidential hopeful, Mr. Ralph Nader off the ballot in eighteen states through litigation, only after reportedly attempting to pay him not to run. Indeed the Democratic Party succeeded in neutering Mr. Nader’s campaign but at what cost and to what results?

Spoiler or not, the fact that a political party can challenge the right to run for office is a testament to the current extent of perversion of the democratic system. Even the prerequisites for a presidential run—two-hundred to several thousand signatures depending on the state—are a threat to any republic. Not only do they consolidate power, they exacerbate the power of incumbency: fame, money, and the privilege to appear on the ballot—a privilege that, if it remains one, may soon be for sale like the White House and like the electorate before it; if you look close enough, you may encounter your own vote on Ebay. Zimbabwe is a democracy.

-David Lamb

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