America’s presidential elections: A personal narrative

Election day in the US is officially on Tuesday, but millions of Americans have already cast their ballots in early voting events. Photo: Bloomberg

Americans will be electing their forty-seventh President on Tuesday. It is yet too early to venture a prediction about who between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will emerge triumphant, seeing that it is a tight race. But, again, a miracle could happen, as was the case in 1948 when the underdog Harry Truman ended up defeating favourite Thomas Dewey. But who is the underdog and who top dog in 2024?

As a non-American I have my own opinion on the 2024 election. But that is beside the point. Of importance to me is the many ways in which I have remained a keen observer of US presidential elections. There is always something electric about these elections, enough to have excitement flow through us who happen to not be citizens of the United States.

I was too young in 1960 to keep tabs on the election which placed John F. Kennedy over Richard M. Nixon in the White House. But then the assassination of JFK in November 1963 linked me to American politics. The image of Lyndon Johnson being sworn in as Kennedy's successor, right inside the presidential aircraft called Air Force One, made me go into a study, not yet a teenager though I was, into a study of American Presidents. I was in Class Four in 1964 and was beginning to dabble in history. I welcomed Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater and happily told my father that the world would be a safer place without Goldwater in the White House.

It was in the year 1968 that my interest in US presidential elections became quite pronounced. I wanted Richard Nixon to clinch the Republican nomination against George Romney. Nixon won the nomination. By then I had learned that besides losing to Kennedy in 1960, Nixon had lost the California gubernatorial race to Pat Brown in 1962. Among the Democrats I had hoped Eugene McCarthy, the poet and senator from Minnesota, would be the presidential nominee. 

But 1968 was a terrible year, with Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr falling to assassins' bullets. I desperately hoped Nixon would beat Vice President Hubert Humphrey. I was worried that Humphrey was beginning to close the gap between him and Nixon in the opinion polls. In the event, Nixon won. On Christmas Eve, Apollo-8 went round the moon with three astronauts.

In 2004, my disappointment prevailed when John Kerry lost to Bush. In 2008, I was initially sad at Hillary Clinton's inability to wrest the Democratic Party nomination for President. But when Obama won the election, I was glad

1972 was a different matter. President Nixon, having journeyed to China on a breakthrough mission to meet Mao Zedong and Zhou En-lai and then travelled to the Soviet Union, was in a position where no Democrat could beat him. He won re-election by a landslide. George McGovern had no chance against him. But Nixon's fortunes took a nosedive with Watergate. His second term finished abruptly when he resigned in August 1974, leaving Vice President Gerald Ford to take charge of the presidency. I was in college in 1974, saddened at the fact that Nixon had been involved in a criminal act through having people burgle the Democratic Party headquarters before the November 1972 election. Had the scandal become known before the vote, he would have lost to McGovern.

By the time the next American presidential election came round in 1976, I was a student in the English department of Dhaka University. My friends and I made it a point to visit the American Centre in Dhanmondi every weekday and pore through TIME and Newsweek to know of the route the political winds were taking in Washington. The centre arranged to have the debates between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter shown to library members. It was a delight to watch the debates, the first since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates. We were thrilled. And we expected Carter to win. Our expectations met with success. Carter won easily.

My disappointment came four years later, in 1980. President Carter, in an embattled state over the economy and the hostage crisis in Tehran, was behind Ronald Reagan in the opinion polls. Reagan exuded confidence. He dominated Carter at the presidential debates. On Election Day, Carter was a beaten man, a one-term President. We felt the American electorate had placed the wrong man in the Oval Office. When, post-presidency, Carter went into social and human rights work around the world, it saddened us to know that a good man had been deprived of a second term as President. He recently completed a century of life and is a statesman honoured in the world.

In 1984, it was a foregone conclusion that Walter Mondale, Carter's Vice President, would lose to Reagan. Americans had four more years of Reagan, followed by a single term for George HW Bush. I hoped Michael Dukakis would take the White House back from the Republicans, but a focused campaign by Bush and his team prevented that from happening in 1988. In 1992, I was overjoyed at Bill Clinton's election as President. Despite Monica Lewinsky, I have always believed that Clinton has been one of the most brilliant of American Presidents in our times. The others have been Richard Nixon with his profound understanding of foreign policy and Barack Obama with his comprehension of the pulse of politics. All three men have been intense readers of books on various subjects.

I was disappointed when in 2000 the US Supreme Court intervened to stop the counting of what is called hanging chads in Florida. That move deprived the winner of the election, Al Gore, of the presidency and placed the loser, George W. Bush in the White House. It was a reminder to me of the lingering suspicion that Nixon had defeated Kennedy in 1960 but Chicago Mayor Richard Daley had somehow manipulated the final outcome of the vote to enable Kennedy to proclaim victory.

In 2004, my disappointment prevailed when John Kerry lost to Bush. In 2008, I was initially sad at Hillary Clinton's inability to wrest the Democratic Party nomination for President. But when Obama won the election, I was glad. I was a trifle sad, though, that John McCain, a thorough gentleman, had lost to Obama.

And so it has gone on, my rather abiding interest in American presidential politics. I read of presidential historians and of their works. I sit back and reflect on the individuals --- Nelson Rockefeller, Eugene McCarthy, Edward Kennedy, Hillary Clinton --- who could have been President but stumbled somewhere. Back in my schooldays, as the harsh winter winds blew across town in late 1968, I made my way almost every day to the American Cultural Centre (it later became Quetta Divisional Library) in Quetta to read the thirty-seven volumes on all thirty-seven US Presidents (till that time). I finished reading all of them.

A quarter century ago, I stood beside John F. Kennedy's grave in Arlington. On a bright summer morning, I found myself before the grave of George Washington. At the Lincoln Memorial I thought back on the meaningful leadership America's 16th President demonstrated during the Civil War to restore the unity of the republic.

I wait for the outcome of the election on Tuesday. The future of America, of global politics, the shape of it, depends on it.

Syed Badrul Ahsan. Sketch: TBS

Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, history and diplomacy.