Column

Gender and race are supposed to be the two overriding themes of the presidential election in the US this time round. Sometimes it appears that the fight is between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, representing two entirely new ideas in US national politics. If either wins, it will bea big breakthrough. Obama is a presidential candidate, but Sarah Palin too is tantalisingly close to one day taking over the top job. If the McCain-Palin ticket wins, there will be continuous speculation about the president’s health and what would happen if he dies in office. Will an ice-hockey mom from a small town in a relatively insignificant American state, Alaska, become the supreme ruler of the world? If one reads the American and international media commentary, it is as if a collective shudder has run down the spines of everyone at the horrifying prospect of Palin, clear-eyed and conservative, a hunter and a quasi-redneck, ignorant and insular, taking over.

There is a sub-text beyond the gender and race issues that is playing out in these elections. While the world has concentrated on the race of Obama and the sex of Palin, for a lot of Americans, it is what these two represent that matters more. The black candidate emerges as the sophisticate and the urbane one, while the white woman comes across, to the city slickers at least, as a hick.

Some time into the campaign, when Obama was fighting to get the party’s nomination, several commentaries pointed out how both he and Hillary Clinton were trying their best to show how down to earth they were. That, in the American context, meant an ability to roll up one’s sleeves and down a beer with the boys in the neighbourhood bar. Analysts said that she was better at it, though both had to struggle to ‘come down’ to the level of the ordinary American.

The ordinary American in this case represents the one living in the hinterland and is generally seen to be white, middle-class, conservative and anti-liberal causes (even borderline racist). A caricature would show him to be truck-driving, gun-loving and God-fearing person who is suspicious of the power elites of Washington and the media-academic east coast liberals. There is of course a lot of stereotyping in this, but the general point is well-taken, that unless a candidate can empathise with the culture of the ordinary citizen, he or she will not get very far.

Which apparently explains the sudden burst of enthusiasm for the Republican party after Palin’s name was announced. This self-same bunch of middle-Americans apparently came out loudly in her support, the implication being that she represented their own values. At the same time, Palin has outraged liberals who see in her everything that is wrong with their country: insularity, a love for guns and a macho attitude that the world so hates.

A similar contest played out between John Kerry and George W Bush the last time round; the former was seen as patrician and remote from the ordinary Joe while the latter came across a back-slapping, pick-up truck riding regular guy. Here’s the twist though — both came from rich, well-educated backgrounds; it’s just that Bush in his plaid shirts and Texas ranch managed to change his persona, while the stiff, French-speaking and fine-cuisine eating Kerry couldn’t.

The battle between the urban and the rural (and the urbane versus the simply demagogic) is not limited to the US, it happens elsewhere too. In India, the levers of power at the Centre were in the hands of the educated, urban classes for many years after independence, even though there were important rural leaders. When Charan Singh became the prime minister for a short while after the Morarji Desai government fell, his supporters hailed the emergence of a true ‘son of the soil’; urban India was not convinced. The revolution in north Indian states, where Lalu Yadav and now Mayawati have emerged as credible political forces shows how far India has come. Yet, this “class struggle” is not fully over. Urban drawing rooms shudder at the thought of Mayawati becoming the prime minister one day.

At the heart of this debate lies the notion of what is “real” and what is not. True, elections are about numbers and brute majority, but is that all there is to democracy?Apparently yes. Say anything against Mayawati and you are labelled an elitist, disconnected with the true spirit of India. The same presumably applies to Palin. But we have had leaders — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Indira Gandhi come to mind — who came from urban and well-off backgrounds but yet had the ability to reach out to the whole country. In the US, John F Kennedy was a patrician, but carried his nation with him.

In recent weeks, Obama has shown this same quality. He has overcome his race handicap with a wide cross section of the US population. That will give him a twin advantage which will perhaps pull him through. McCain could be handicapped byPalin who has no cross-over appeal. In the end, the combination of the urban, educated person who can also connect with the average citizen is very hard to beat.

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net