Outside the Beltway

EUROS ON ARNIE

James Joyner · Friday, October 10, 2003 · 2 comments

This Slate piece is an excellent companion to the George Will column linked in the previous post.

“And America is the country that stomps around the world demanding other countries adopt the same political system as its own? No wonder it is taking so long to set up elections in Iraq.” So began an op-ed in Britain’s Independent after Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Tuesday night California recall election victory. Elsewhere in the paper, an editorial said that “even by the bizarre standards of American elective politics,” Schwarzenegger’s victory “is a strange event.” El País of Spain claimed, “California’s electoral process confirms the inconsistencies of American democracy revealed in the presidential election of 2000,” and Russia’s Nezavisnaya Gazeta sniffed, “Hollywood actor Schwarzenegger’s victory over a professional governor has once again showed the defective nature of the American electoral system.”

The Independent found the recall mechanism an “undesirable” arrangement: It “is profoundly anti-democratic and militates against the strong but unpopular action that governments have to take from time to time.” The Financial Times also opposed the recall process, declaring: “The procedure was intended as a safeguard to remove the most incorrigibly corrupt, not as a tool to create permanent political revolution. Its use now will only further entrench the triumph of politics over good governance. California has constructed a political system that leaves its elected officials beholden to the vagaries of instant political gratification.” The editorial said it would have been possible to swallow doubts about the process if it had produced an exceptional leader, but Schwarzenegger is not that man, “[T]here can surely be few less palatable candidates for the office of governor. It is not simply his scary past that should trouble voters but the arrogant refusal to discuss the future in anything other than bland generalities.”

The lone dissenter was not European:

The Australian saw the election as a demonstration of “the American genius for embracing new ideas and new people.” The editorial concluded, “Australians too easily dismiss the achievements of famous political outsiders who achieve high office in the US–and too readily mock self-made individuals who break the stranglehold of the political machines.”

Indeed, the performance in office of previous non-politicians has been mixed. But, then, so has that of career politicos.