The New York Times

Tuesday, November 14, 2000

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The Way We Win

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

For foreigners, the most important aspect of this American election is not who wins, but how he wins.

Who wins this election is not very important to foreigners because neither candidate has spoken to the world or about America's place in it. More on that in a minute. But how they win, how the votes are counted and how the disputes are resolved is critical. Because since the fall of the Berlin Wall more countries have moved toward democratic elections than at any time in history. And in many cases, American democracy has been their model, and Americans have been enlisted as the monitors and arbiters of what constitutes a free and fair election. We can't blow that.

"I have monitored 20 foreign elections," said Emory University's Robert Pastor, who pioneered President Carter's election monitoring teams. "There are always disputes about the mechanics of the process, but what I remember most is people in all these countries asking me at some critical point, `How do you do it in America? Why are there no problems there?'

"I always tell them: We have problems, but we have institutions that prevent our election problems from becoming violent or the results discredited. Those institutions are impartial election administrators and independent judiciaries. It would be tragic, not just for America but for the process of democratization around the world, if there were a rush to judgment in Florida that discredited, or short-circuited, America's election administrators or our independent judiciary."

That's why foreigners are watching. But here's why they're not listening: Foreigners are watching our election the way they watch the N.B.A. finals on satellite TV - to see which team wins, but with the sound off, because the words mean nothing. Because for foreigners there wasn't much to listen to, since neither candidate offered any inspiring vision of America - any argument for why its values and institutions were important for the world, or why the world, with both its needs and aspirations, was important to America.

Both Al Gore and George W. Bush need to understand, though, that the vapid inward-looking campaigns they ran have implications for America abroad. They have left the playing field out there wide open for those whose vision is to oppose America or seek its destruction. The America- haters have all the energy now in Europe and the Middle East. Our friends are mute and on the defensive.

And why not? If they did turn the sound on, what they heard was a country where politics had been reduced to what your interest group can suck out of the government, from tax cuts to prescription drugs. Who could blame foreigners for feeling that these candidates were the political equivalents of genetically modified food? Both men were devoid of any natural ingredients. They were test- tube candidates, produced by consultants with poll-tested positions geared to interest groups, but with nothing to say about America as a whole.

The notion that the very reason America has the prosperity it does is because of its values, institutions and deeply imbedded ideals goes unarticulated these days. And so our enemies abroad, the sort of people who blew up the U.S.S. Cole, paint us as nothing more than a sterile, money-grubbing society that is only interested in exporting trade agreements.

There is a remarkable quote in Newsweek's latest insider account of the election in which Al Gore compares himself to the lead character in the film "Being John Malkovich," whose body gets possessed by others. "That's what I feel like," Mr. Gore complained during the campaign. "A guy whose head is occupied by all these people telling me what to do."

Imagine how we feel. Either we get a president whose head has been occupied by political consultants, or we get a president whose head has been occupied by his father's friends.

The only thing left to do now is pray that as this election is resolved, our institutions emerge unscathed and the winner emerges as a better man than the one who ran. Pray that Al Gore as president won't be a pandering partisan, but will let his natural love for policy and American government emerge. Or pray that George W. Bush will develop some curiosity about the world and some energy to reach beyond the retreads of his father's cabinet, and will allow his bipartisan instincts to rule. Pray. And pray hard.