American Analogies

By Swapan Dasgupta

American presidential elections, with all its accompanying media hype and razzmatazz, hold out a strange fascination for those who insist on celebrating the virtues of ‘evolved’ democracies over fledgling ones. In the early phase of the 2009 general election when the memories of President Barack Obama’s spectacular 2008 triumph was fresh in everyone’s mind, the chief poll strategist of the BJP was exasperated by the frequency with which advertising professionals making a pitch for the party account tried to suggest that the themes of the Democratic Party campaign could be replicated in India.

Since the Left-liberal intelligentsia exercises a disproportionate influence on media common sense, President Obama’s re-election earlier this month has again begun to shape a part of the political discourse in India. Apart from the usual lamentation about the Indian politician’s inability to make the type of inspirational speeches the US President delivered in Chicago to celebrate his victory, there has been the familiar outpouring of multiculturalist joy at white, male Americans having been shown their place by a rainbow coalition of the diverse. Most important, there has been unconcealed glee over the deflation of a Christian fundamentalist agenda centred on the denial of abortion rights for women. The implications were clear: the age of conservatism that Ronald Reagan heralded in 1980 and which George W. Bush upheld so robustly till 2008, has finally been rolled back.

Whether two successive defeats in the race for the White House can upturn a social agenda that has struck roots in the past 25 years must await the judgment of history. After all, between the Reagan and Bushes, Bill Clinton also occupied the White House for eight years. Clinton was a charismatic figure and still remains a great charmer who contributed in no small measure to motivating the loyalists to stand in long queues for Obama on November 6. But, as the conservative writer George Will had remarked in 1998, he was “akin to the man that walked across a field of snow and left no footprints.”

That it takes more than securing 270 electoral votes to redefine the tone of society should be apparent. In most democratic countries, politics is by and large about governmental power and not social attitudes. True, there is no Great Wall of China separating the two. Yet, until the notion of the ‘moral majority’ came into play in the US of the 1970s as a reaction to the permissive liberalism of the late-1960s, it was impossible to apply the conservative-liberal schism to political parties en bloc. The Democratic Party of the 1960s and 1970s, for example, had its share of liberals such as the Kennedys, Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern but they coexisted with pragmatists such as Lyndon Johnson and racial segregationists such as George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.

In India too, it was facile to suggest that the Nehruvian era was marked by a simple liberal-conservative polarisation. The Nehru family may have paraded their ‘progressive’ views but they had to factor in the deep social conservatism of the likes of Purshottam Das Tandon and Morarji Desai. Likewise, the conservatism of the Swatantra Party was limited to economic management and the conduct of foreign policy. On social issues, the pro-business stalwarts such as Minoo Masani and even, up to a point, C. Rajagopalachari were definitely more ‘progressive’ than many of their Congress counterparts.

Past trends are, however, not necessarily a guide to the present. The culture wars that have erupted as a consequence of economic change (notably globalisation), the rise of feminism and the re-discovery of religiosity have had an impact on party systems. According to the discourse that is shaped by liberal perceptions, the Congress is held to be the progressive party while the BJP is construed as the epitome of regressive attitudes. This perception has even shaped voting preferences. The Congress, which is seriously beleaguered on the issue of mega-corruption and crony capitalism, has tried (often very successfully) to offset its poor performance in government with its allegedly uncompromising stand on secularism. The secular-communal divide has become the Indian equivalent of the sharp polarisation in the US over ‘family values’, the Judaeo-Christian ethos and abortion. Consequently, using an imagery borrowed from a very different democracy, the BJP has been painted as the desi version of Mitt Romney’s white, male vote bank which is disdainful of the educated, the modern woman and ethnic minorities.

As a caricature of the real world this polarisation holds good. However, on closer examination the loose ends become visible. The Congress makes a big deal about the separation of religion and politics. Ironically, what is conveniently glossed over is the fact that the greatest influence of theology-based certitudes is to be found in the Muslim minority of India, particularly its defence of sharia law and its identification with the wider ummah. These attitudes have, ironically, been internalised in the Congress and repackaged as secularism. Thus, secular commonality makes it possible for the Congress to seek expedient alliances with the Samajwadi Party which combines its espousal of Muslim autonomy with regressive attitudes towards women.  

Like Obama who successfully leveraged the culture wars and old-style vote bank politics to defeat the Romney challenge, social issues have always proved handy for formations that don’t have a worthwhile record of good governance. This is a lesson India’s politicians would do well to imbibe. To some, Obama is inspirational; to others he is a hoax.

Deccan Chronicle/ Asian Age, November 16, 2012 

BJP can’t afford to do a Romney

By Swapan Dasgupta

Unlike the Left that sees itself as an international tendency, the Centre-Right is inclined to be more national in its outlook. The conclusive re-election of US President Barack Obama was consequently an event celebrated by the Left and liberal forces world-wide, not least, in India. The defeat of his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, on the other hand, didn’t generate a similar solidarity of the despondent. In Britain, the governing Conservative Party, for example, had carefully detached itself from Romney and had shown a marked inclination to be supportive of Obama.

The national orientation of Centre-Right forces has, however, not been a deterrent to various commentators drawing parallels with their own countries. Some of this was, predictably, puerile and as laughable as those who imagined that the Indian general election of 2009 could be fought and won using Obama’s famous “Yes we can” slogan. In a more serious vein, there were scholars and commentators that gleamed similarities between the Republican failure to grapple with the emergent identity politics of minority groups in the US and the BJP’s over-dependence on the caste Hindus of Middle India. The implication was obvious: there can be no serious Centre-Right challenge to the Congress and its allies until the BJP go beyond what is referred in the US as ‘heartland’ politics.

Just because all the features of the US experience don’t apply to India is no reason for the entire argument to be rubbished. There are at least two features of the American landscape that are loosely mirrored in India.

First, demographic data suggests a definite “browning” of America. The proportion of white voters is gradually coming down and new immigration has led to the rise in the proportion of Hispanic and Asian voters, particularly in the urban clusters. It was Obama’s energetic mobilisation of these minorities, particularly the African Americans, which enabled him to see off a determined Romney challenge that was primarily based on ‘white’ exasperation with Obama.

Secondly, there is some evidence to suggest that US voters were divided in their attitudes to the social agenda of both candidates. Republicans were perceived to be excessively Christian, fanatically opposed to abortion and even contraception, and generally illiberal. These attitudes are believed to have repelled women, including white women, and prevented the election from becoming a referendum on Obama’s performance.

Both these themes from last week’s US presidential election resonate in India and have a relevance to the management of politics by the BJP.

To begin with, there is now enough demographic data to indicate there is a rising importance of the minority vote across India. There are approximately 150 to 160 Lok Sabha constituencies where the Muslim community account for 20 per cent or more of the voters. Empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that Muslim turnout in elections is significantly higher than other communities. This implies that the Muslim community exercises an influence far greater than their actual numbers would suggest—a situation that was true for the African Americans who voted in large numbers and resoundingly for Obama on November 6.

The BJP receives less than five per cent of the Muslim vote and this figure is unlikely to improve in the immediate future. More important, in many constituencies the Muslims vote strategically by which is meant that the community focuses its primary attention on ensuring the defeat of the BJP candidate. As the main ‘secular’ party, Congress is the principal beneficiary of this tactical voting, although there are regional variations. 

There is a suggestion that the BJP should secularise itself more and remove misgivings from the minds of Muslim voters. As the Congress found out between 1937 and 1946, this is easier said than done. The alternative suggestion that the BJP should embrace strident Hindutva and forge the unity of all Hindus belongs to the realms of fantasy. In today’s climate nothing would be worse for the BJP than contrived religio-political nationalism. The party runs the risk of focussing on issues that are not uppermost in the minds of Hindus.

Romney may have failed to fully capitalise on his better credentials for running the economy. That does not mean the approach was flawed. In today’s India, economic management, anti-corruption and development are the issues that concern the electorate. These are the issues the Congress is most vulnerable. The BJP has no choice but to focus on these.

Yet there is a risk of derailment. Just as Romney lost out among the young and women by being to be on the side of social regression, the BJP is invariably distracted by irrelevant issues that touch on social and religious attitudes. The objection to some suggestive song in a Bollywood film was the latest of these. What this loss of focus does is to weaken the party’s already tenuous hold on women and young voters, in sharp contrast to the late-1990s when the BJP was fired by youth support.

To prevail against the powerful forces of sectional mobilisation the BJP has to be single-minded in its focus on the economy and governance and complement it with organisational rigour. In effect this means achieving the maximum unity of every group that doesn’t have a theological allergy to the party. The finer points of contested social and religious agendas need to be consigned to the cold storage.

What was powerfully demonstrated in the US was a simple truth: without securing the ‘swing’ vote, the ‘core’ vote becomes valueless. 

Sunday Pioneer, November 11, 2012

QUESTIONS OF LUCK - Obama’s victory needs to be put in historical perspective

By Swapan Dasgupta

In any contest involving the top political job, there are no prizes for the guy who comes second. On the contrary, the post-mortem exercise often leaves the runner-up even more bruised since the focus is invariably on his personal shortcomings, the strategic miscalculations of his team and his misreading of the electoral landscape. Moreover, there is an unending preoccupation with missed opportunities and the what-if questions.

Historians who have studied presidential elections in the United States have often thrown the what-if teaser to their readers. What if, it is often asked, Richard Nixon had cared to remove his six o’clock shadow and been a little more careful in choosing his suit for the legendary TV debate with John F. Kennedy in 1960? If nothing else, Nixon would certainly have appeared a less ghostly personality than his Democratic challenger who cut a dashing figure on the screen. Appearances mattered because the majority of those who saw the encounter on TV thought Kennedy was the clear winner, while the majority who heard the debate on radio thought that Nixon had prevailed. The issue is relevant because the results revealed a mere 0.2 per cent difference in the popular vote between the winner and the loser.

There is certain to be a similar, big what-if question that future studies of the 2012 presidential election are bound to throw up. Was President Barack Obama the luckiest presidential candidate, with God on his side? Consider the facts. For the week before Superstorm Sandy created havoc in the east coast of US, Obama had witnessed Mitt Romney steadily closing the gap and, indeed, two days before the storm, overtaking him in most of the polls. Romney seemed to be on a roll and the President, far from being the silver-tongued inspirational orator, had become distinctly unfocussed. So much so that he had to summon the evergreen charmer President Bill Clinton to shore up his defences and rally the faithful.

Sandy halted the Romney momentum, allowed Obama to act presidential and bipartisan and, most important, reminded wavering voters that there are obvious pitfalls in taking the idea of less government to extremes. Sandy rehabilitated Obama both personally and ideologically. It is entirely possible that the Democrats would have won even without divine intervention. But the margin of victory would have been tantalisingly close. Sandy succeeded in informing many people who were disappointed by Obama’s performance but who were averse to voting for Romney to take a second look at the President, help conclude that he wasn’t such a bad guy after all and, therefore, worth the effort of a vote.  

If Sandy did indeed make the critical difference between a wafer-thin margin and a conclusive victory, it also calls into question the resulting over-interpretation of the implications of the President’s re-election. For a start, it is important to keep some elementary electoral statistics in mind. The margin of Obama’s victory (it may increase after the full Florida results come in) against Romney was 2.82 million votes (2.4 per cent). That this was nowhere near the awesome 9.52 million vote (7.2 per cent) margin separating him and Senator John McCain in 2008 need not be held against him. An underperforming presidency was lucky to just register a victory on November 6 and limit the loss in electoral votes to the states of Indiana and North Carolina. To my mind, what is more significant is that Obama polled nearly 9 million votes less than what he did in 2008.  It may also be worth noting that the Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives and confined their net Senate loss to just two seats—including that of the bigot who made the bizarre comment about a conception from rape being a gift of God.

Ever since the exit polls suggested that Obama’s re-election was made possible by focussed mobilisation of African Americans, Hispanics, students, sexual minorities and women (particularly single women), there has been a clamour to suggest that the President has ridden the crest of a social revolution. Elated by a victory they never imagined would be so conclusive, a section of the commentariat has argued that the 2012 election marks the death of social conservatism, fiscal conservatism and the so-called moral majority. In 2004, at a time the George W. Bush administration was on a high and scholars were describing the US as a ‘Right nation’, Samuel Huntington had warned of a steady erosion of the Judaeo-Christian values that had hitherto set the tone for America. Was his prophecy now unfolding?

The statistical evidence indicates a compelling need to be cautious about rushing to judgment. Over the years, some occupants of the White House have certainly redefined politics for future generations. President Franklin Roosevelt certainly created a New Deal coalition based on active state intervention in the economy. On his part, President Ronal Reagan demolished the Democratic consensus of yore and put self-improvement, low taxes and Christian values on top of the agenda. Indeed, in seeking re-election both FDR and Reagan improved on their majorities (just as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush also did). This is the first occasion an incumbent President has been credited with a social revolution after actually losing votes.

Maps can often distort perspectives but a bird’s eye of the electoral map of the US doesn’t endorse the claims of a social upheaval. What the huge swathe of red states bordered on the north-east and west by blue borders point to is a deeply divided America. It is true, as the pundits in TV studios emphasised on election night, that states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and even Florida which should have been Republican, voted for Obama for two consecutive elections.

That new immigrants, particularly Hispanics who today account for nearly 10 per cent of the national electorate, perceive Republicans as less sympathetic to their interests and aspirations is undeniable. An emerging bloc of minority voters comprising Blacks, Hispanics and Asians may also, in time, become a reliable support base for the Democrats, particularly as the overwhelming white dominance of the country is diluted. However, those with a sense of history will readily admit, that voting blocs have never remained constant. Till the election of 1964, for example, the South, particularly the old Confederate states, was overwhelmingly committed to the Democratic Party so much so that Republicans didn’t even bother campaigning there. Yet the convulsions created by the Civil Rights legislation passed by President Lyndon Johnson resulted in the South become solidly Republican after 1968.

A historical perspective is necessary as a corrective to the impression that President Obama has crafted a new Democratic majority that will, in time, make Republicans unelectable to the White House. Certainly there are many lessons for the Republicans, not least of which is the need to tap the social conservatism of Hispanic voters and address the mismatch between gender and community. The Republicans also need to seriously deliberate on the wisdom of incorporating contentious social issues such as abortion and contraception into the larger political platform.

Against this, however, there is an equal danger that an exultant Democratic movement may carry minorityism and social liberalism a bit too far and, in the process, project the metropolitan values of California and New York in places less inclined to appreciate the virtues of personal liberty over social cohesion.

In securing re-election against tremendous odds, President Obama has shown himself a crafty strategist. But has his victory turned existing politics on its head? The jury is still out on that question. 

The Telegraph, November 9, 2012