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A Roman colossus, redux SHOULD OUR 'PROVINCES' VOTE IN U.S. ELECTIONS?

December 7, 2008 12:36 am

ST. LOUIS

You could see that plainly enough during Obama's campaign tour through Europe. Wherever the senator went he was met with throngs of adoring supporters, all hoping that this time Americans would elect the right man. Public opinion polls showed Obama trouncing John McCain by wide margins in every European country. In France, Italy, and Germany he led by more than 50 percent. When the final tallies were in, the leader of France's ruling party proclaimed that "Americans have today chosen the American Dream." Not to be outdone, the leader of the centrist Mouvement Democrate called the election "a change that touches and affects the very conception one has of relations between men."

But what if Obama had lost? After all, he was certainly not up by 50 percent in the United States. It is safe to say that, just as in 2000 and 2004, there would be millions of very frustrated Europeans right now. Indeed, that frustration was already palpable before the election. In September, for example, Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian wrote: "If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift."

OLD WORLD FRUSTRATION

Europe's frustration is understandable. Because no matter how much attention Europeans pay to the American elections, they have no way of affecting them. They can turn out to cheer Obama, but they could not vote or even contribute money to him.

This frustration has been growing for some time. In 2000, George Monbiot wrote in the Manchester Guardian that "everyone on earth should be allowed to vote in American elections. All the major decisions about the future of the world are now brokered by the United States. Washington now exercises more control over the lives of British people than Westminster." In 2004 the Financial Times noted that for the first time in history every country in the world had been polled on the U.S. election, as if it were for president of the world.

Frustration spilled over into action in October 2004 when the Guardian launched "Operation Clark County," which urged readers to contact American voters in Ohio and lobby for their favored candidate (i.e., John Kerry). The effort backfired. Resentment at foreign interference led the county and the state to swing narrowly to Bush, thus arguably winning him the election--a victory that was greeted in London's Daily Mirror with the headline, "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?"

Before the 2008 election Europe's editorial pages featured several laments about disenfranchisement. In January, a column in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard declared: "American presidential elections are not 'home affairs.' American decisions have repercussions all over the globe. Hence, the world should be given the right to vote. Because the current situation is a blatant case of taxation without representation, against which the Americans rebelled in 1776."

Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph suggested that Britons should each have half a vote. "After all, since we are a strategic colony of the U.S., it would be nice to have even a marginal say in how the empire chooses to dispose our goodwill and our blood and treasure." A June editorial in the Portuguese Expresso bemoaned the fact that "For ill--or for good--it's out of our hands. We start from the fact that if you're not American, you don't have the right to vote and to choose between the two in November. This is a great injustice ."

PAX ROMANA

As hard as it may be to believe, the ancient Romans had a very similar problem. By the mid-second century B.C. they, like Americans, had built a strong confederation of allies that kept peace in their world--especially Italy. The Italian allies (or socii) benefited greatly from this arrangement. But they could not get around the fact that, although they elected their own local governments, it was the elections in Rome that really mattered. Roman policies and actions had more impact on their lives than their own domestic politics.

Calls for suffragium (the right to vote) probably began in the 140s B.C. and even sparked a small revolt in 125 B.C. The famous Roman reformer Gaius Gracchus responded with a bill to grant citizenship to the Latins (longtime allies who spoke the Romans' native tongue), but it was deeply unpopular among the Roman people and quickly went down to defeat. When subsequent legislative efforts also failed, the frustrated allies did something amazing. They went to war against the Romans, demanding either citizenship or an end to the alliance. After much bloodshed, they finally won their right to vote in Rome.

Is there a lesson here for Americans and their European allies? Well, as long as Americans keep electing Europe's candidates, everything should be fine. But what happens when they neglect that Old World wisdom? The Roman example and recent history suggest that calls for foreign participation in U.S. presidential elections are only going to increase--particularly among America's closest allies.

At present there is no domestic political advantage to championing such a cause. But if that softens--and over time it likely will--then a few American politicians may one day follow the example of Gaius Gracchus, dangling the suffragium before the eyes of our own socii.

After all, Europeans do "vote" overwhelmingly Democratic.