MG ----------------------------------- My Canada includes the White House By Larry Krotz Globe and Mail August 10, 2004
On Nov. 2, in the election to decide the world's most important office, I won't get to vote. Nor, you might say, should I be able to cast a ballot in the American presidential election, since I'm a Canadian. Not so fast: Opening the White House ballot to anybody who lives in the spreading shadow of U.S. empire (which would be at least half the world) ought to become the political-reform cause of the 21st century.
This isn't just a matter of how I might feel about another four years of George W. Bush; the idea first came when Bill Clinton occupied the White House. Even though I was not an American, I could no more avoid the Clintons than fly to the moon. The multiplying powers of the media made sure we who dwelt outside U.S. borders were as intimate with Hillary, Bill, Chelsea and, yes, Monica, as anybody residing in the 50 states.
The White House was the lightning rod, not just of politics -- the global economy, diplomacy, war and peace -- but of popular culture. In comparison to the attention we directed toward Washington, our own Prime Minister enjoyed about as much status as the governor of Ohio.
Which raises the point: The appeal of democracy is the power to accept or reject, on every level. You must be able to influence whatever it is you're going to have to put up with. Wasn't my time and attention (though admittedly not my dollars) being taxed without proper representation?
With the presidency of George W. Bush, everything has become more urgent. In November of 2000, when the strange election that brought the current administration to power took place, I was in Russia. Night after night, on the television in my St. Petersburg hotel room, the drama of the hanging chads played itself out. Not one person I encountered, Russian or foreign, lacked an opinion about who should win; little did we realize how, just 10 months later, it would be critical to all of us.
As this administration has polarized not only America but the world, the decision about who occupies the White House has become one of life and death.
The Oval Office is a Global Office. No president since Herbert Hoover has been able to function on a predominantly domestic agenda. Things, like the rest of the world, get in the way.
So what about that rest of the world? The Bush presidency has driven home the ease with which the superpower can make its own rules. The exceptionalism under which it has approached not only military actions but such matters as the Kyoto Protocol, International Criminal Court and various arms-control conventions, has disabused us of illusions the world was naturally multilateral. Even that much-used term "coalition" is really just a piece of the rhetoric. Terminology aside, what can't be denied is the huge investment we all have in how America is run and, in particular, how it operates in the world. As a citizen of that world, I want some right (and rite) of participation.
In vassal states of empires past, certain rights always accrued. The biblical Saint Paul got great mileage out of being a Roman citizen, even though he lived in Greece and Asia Minor. Voting, of course, was not one of those rights, but then most people inside the empires didn't vote either. That had to wait until the 18th century, with the French and American revolutions, to gain place as a cherished measure of citizenship. The ideas of representative government followed quickly, pushing relentlessly forward until women, as well as men, held the right to vote. Now it is the universal standard by which all citizenship is measured and participation offered.
I can imagine who else might want in on this. The Mexicans, perhaps. No doubt the Israelis and Palestinians. The Iraqis and Afghans for sure, at least this time round. We don't want to vote for the president of France, but we'd like a say in the one contest that counts.
I predict that, over time, it will make ever more compelling sense. Many observers, including Benjamin Barber, have pointed out the possibly terminal problems of the traditional nation-state, along with the accompanying difficulties for democracy. In the age of both globalization and single-superpower supremacy, that system seems in need of serious adjustments. This, perhaps, could be one of them.
Larry Krotz is a Toronto-based writer.