The American Experiment

TBILISI, Georgia -- I have never been more proud to be an American citizen than I was this morning when I watched the election returns come in. All Americans should be proud of their country today, not because of any political agenda, but because of what this election represents. This presidential election breathed new life into the ideal on which the United States founded themselves, representative democracy.

"America has showed the world what real democracy is," said my friend, Eduard Atoev.

This election is not only about President-elect Barack Obama. It is also about Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. Hilary Clinton and even Rep. Ron Paul. The first three are obvious: the first black US president, or if he had lost, the first female US vice-president, and the first woman to be a serious candidate for her party's presidential nomination.

Paul's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination was driven by his supporters, who crafted his message nearly as much as he did. It was a decentralized campaign stripped of the traditional hierarchical power structure. It happened to some degree with every major campaign through things such as viral videos, blogs and Facebook. But Paul's campaign was the only one driven by this dynamic.

This phenomenon is here to stay and represents an opening up of the political system unparalleled in American history. In the past, campaigns set an election's agenda by picking up issues they hoped would resonate with voters. Today, US citizens have the capacity to set the agenda as well. In some ways, Paul's campaign demonstrated a greater fundamental development in American democracy than Obama, Palin and Clinton.

My first reaction to Obama's election was that it signalled the fulfillment of representative democracy in the US. But that is simply not true. It demonstrated that 232 years after it was established, America is still striving to reach the ideals it set for itself. The US has always been an imperfect democratic republic. It exists in an imperfect world in which ideals are inherently unattainable. But the great promise of the American experiment has been that we set high ideals as our goal, and have strove to reach them ever since.

American democracy is flawed, but Obama, Palin, Clinton and even Paul demonstrate that we are still trying to do better.

Democracy - foiled by snail mail, saved by e-mail

TBILISI, Georgia -- Six or seven weeks after being mailed, my absentee ballot arrived in Tbilisi today, on election day. That definitely qualifies as a day late, dollar short. Fortunately I had been able to get a ballot sent via e-mail, which I mailed through the US Embassy. (Interesting side note, domestic US postage rates apply to mail from the US Embassy to the US.)

So, I got to vote, and play my part. I felt very patriotic dropping my ballot off.

Last night a friend and I went to a hole-in-the-ground (literally) place that serves khinkali, Georgian dumplings. Two drunk brothers decided to sit down and start talking with us. (It's a very informal hole-in-the-ground place.) Turns out both were for Obama.

As the one with the wine bottle noted in broken English and Russian, Pres. George W. Bush loved Georgia, but the US and the world didn't love Bush. McCain loves Georgia, but is too closely associated with Bush to be that popular abroad. Obama will be a much more popular president, assuming he wins, and even if he doesn't love Georgia as much as McCain, his support will be much more effective.

Pretty astute observation from a sloppy drunk, I thought.

Then they showed us pictures of them "bear hunting," which mostly involved the two posing for pictures holding shotguns in front of waterfalls and other wonders of nature. No pictures of bears, though.

Economist: Georgia going strong for McCain

TBILISI, Georgia -- The Economist has an entirely unscientific look at a world election between McCain and Obama. Georgia and Macedonia are squarely for McCain, but not any other country.

Many Georgians have asked me who I think will win the election. The ones I've spoken with seem fairly evenly split between the two candidates. Of course, they are most concerned with how the outcome of the election will affect their country, especially in terms of military support and providing security from Russia. However, several are also concerned about US economic policy as it affects the world -- and Georgian -- economy. And some want the US to once again step up to its responsibilities as the world's oldest surviving democracy. One woman , Natia, told me today how disappointed she was when the US passed the Patriot Act, because it ceded citizens civil liberties to the state without providing any real check on these new powers of government.

"If young democracies see the oldest one doing this, then their leaders can say 'see, even America does it; it's no big deal'," Natia said.

Georgia's experiment with democracy and civil liberties is less than five years old, and is already come under attack from the state.

Whether or not the US wants to be, it is still the standard for democracy in Georgia -- and perhaps still in much of the world. The Bush Administration actively picked up America's role as the great crusader state of democracy, at least in rhetoric. Georgia, though, is one country that responded with action. The Rose Revolution in Nov. 2003 brought Pres. Mikheil Saakashvili to power and set the country on a pro-Western, pro-democracy and pro-free market path.

However, Saakashvili has heard power's siren song, and has found subtle ways to quiet dissent, as reported in previous posts. Many Georgians who are concerned about the future democratic development of their country feel that the US has not prodded the current government to stay committed to its reform rhetoric.

Commentary: neither candidate understands Russia

TBILISI, Georgia -- Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama further proved Friday night how little American politicians understand Russia and Georgia. They are following a time-honored tradition of American foreign policy.

Neither McCain, R-Az., nor Obama, D-Ill., displayed a nuanced understanding of Russia, its invasion of Georgia or what is at stake in US-Russian relations.

In regards to Georgia, President Mikheil Saakashvili is not the great democratic reformer both candidates make him out to be. The media is controlled here, especially television, and government elites profit from steering no-bid state contracts to businesses they have interests in. Saakashvili did not take part in any of the debates during the last presidential election, which he moved forward by nearly a year, giving the opposition little time to campaign.

Both candidates endorsed Georgia's and Ukraine's desire to join NATO, a key motivation behind Russia's invasion.

Russia perceives NATO as a direct threat to its security, and it is difficult to blame them. With no Warsaw Pact, it is not clear who NATO is aimed at, but in the 1990s the US did tell Russia it could not join the military alliance. It is hardly surprising that they would perceive its creeping towards their borders as an existential threat.

Regardless of the pros or cons of NATO expansion, American politicians who endorse it must acknowledge that it will alter the world's strategic balance, especially in the Kremlin's view.

Obama puts far too much stock in the affect of words on Russia. The country sees America as didactic and hypocritical. It blames the West for the pain and humiliation it suffered in the 1990s. It doesn't want our advice on how to become a market economy and it doesn't want moral lectures about how to behave from us. It is absolutely ludicrous to think we can, as Obama said, "explain to the Russians that you cannot be a 21st-century superpower, or power, and act like a 20th-century dictatorship." Putin's response: "watch me."

Typical of American politicians McCain sees Russia as a one-dimensional stereotype: "a KGB apparatchik-run government." Can the US be so easily summed up? Of course not, but yet Americans insist on seeing every other country in the world in the most simplistic terms. It is a tendency that has led to painful miscalculations, not least of which in Iraq.

Russia is an authoritarian state with a highly controlled political life, but most Russians sincerely support Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his puppet, President Dmitri Medvedev. Their lives are undeniably better now than in the 1990s, and their country is once again strong.

Russians respect strong authority -- vlast' -- and Putin has returned it to Russia. The country's foreign policy is influenced by the idea of vlast' -- a tradition going back to the Russian Empire, and not simply the realpolitik extension of a cynical strongman determined to hold power at all costs.

McCain's brand of foreign policy is too simplistic to be effective with Russia. The reality is the US cannot strong-arm Russia so long as the US military is over-stretched by Iraq and Afghanistan, or without returning to somehting near Cold War military levels. The country must be handled more diplomatically.

With all due respect to Henry Kissinger and other members of McCain's foreign policy team, Obama has the upperhand here -- that is assuming Madeleine Albright is only window dressing to please the Clinton people. Obama's ace is Michael McFaul, one of the leading experts on Russia, and someone who has a nuanced understanding for its motivations.

As McFaul told the House's foreign affairs committee on September 9:

"Russia’s government actions in Georgia constitute just one front of a comprehensive campaign to reassert Russian dominance in the region through both coercive and cooperative instruments.

"American foreign policy leaders have to move beyond tough talk and catchy phrases and instead articulate a smart, sustained strategy for dealing with this new Russia, a strategy that advances both our interests and values."

Russia sees US interests as diametrically opposed to its own. And the US has done nothing to counter that perception.