US presidential poll: Trump shows why nations need strong institutions

The world is aghast at the events in the United States since the November 3 presidential election. Today, three weeks after the poll, the losing candidate, Donald J Trump, has still not conceded the election, alleging “widespread fraud and corruption” even though independent US agencies have repeatedly said no such things occurred.

The London Times described President Trump as “the most capricious of presidents”, and one conservative writer, Gerald Baker, calls him “the most narcissistic and pugnacious president in modern history.” And in true fashion, Trump has shaken America’s democratic institutions to their core.

By alleging “the worst voter fraud in history”, President Trump called into question the integrity of America’s electoral system. And by refusing to give a concession speech, despite losing, even though every losing US presidential candidate has done so since 1896, he deviated from a long-established norm of electoral democracy.

But perhaps the worst fear is about the manner in which he would leave office. In the past, every sitting president had almost immediately invited the president-elect to the White House and ordered his staff to cooperate fully with the incoming president’s transition team. But President Trump has not given that cooperation to President-elect Joe Biden, whose he refuses to recognise, even though Biden won 80m in the popular vote against Trump’s 74m and won 306 electoral votes as opposed to Trump’s 232!

Although President Trump filed a flurry of lawsuits to challenge Biden’s election, most of which have been dismissed, the preponderance of opinion is that no lawsuit or recount – Biden won the Georgian recount – would change the outcome of the election. As former President George W Bush said, “The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.”

Several world leaders, including leaders of Britain, France, Germany and even China, as well as the pope and the secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, have congratulated President-elect Biden. The world has, indeed, moved on, and is expecting a Biden administration to assume office in January.

Yet, the world is also concerned about the nature of the transition. For instance, would President Trump ever meet President-elect Biden face-to-face before January 20, when the new president would be inaugurated? Would he even attend Biden’s inauguration?

The general view is that President Trump is so bitter about losing he harbours a “burn it down on the way out” feeling and is willing to wreck the transition or mobilise a right-wing grievance campaign against Biden’s presidency. This is not impossible, given that, for eight years, Trump led a “birther movement” that promoted the false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in America and, therefore, ineligible to be president.

Yet, all the above said, the fact is that America’s strong and robust institutions can weather the Trumpian storm. As someone rightly said, “the wheel of the institution will continue to move.” But imagine the US situation being replicated in some developing countries, with a Trump-like incumbent. First, all the state institutions would be corralled to do the bidding of the losing incumbent; second, there would have been widespread violence and bloodshed.

Nigeria avoided that catastrophe in 2015 only because President Goodluck Jonathan was not a Trumpian character. After losing to Muhammadu Buhari, he conceded and congratulated him to affirm the legitimacy of the election and of democracy itself. He rightly earned a well-deserved kudo and legacy for that singular act of gracefulness!

But what the situation in America shows is that no country immune to the emergence of narcissistic and authoritarian leaders. A strongman can emerge in any country, whether developing or developed, who is willing to push the boundaries of established norms. The only antidote to such situation is to have strong and resilient institutions that can countervail the power of such leaders. Despite the strangeness of its system, America’s institutions can control an errant president, and they are working in the current situation.

To be sure, America’s democratic institutions are exceptional. For instance, the Electoral College system under which a candidate can win the popular vote and still lose the election if he or she does not have at least 270 electoral college votes is bizarre. There have, so far, been six US presidential elections in which the candidates that won the popular vote did not win the election. In 2016, for instance, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 3m in the popular vote but she still lost to Trump, who had 306 electoral votes as against her 232.

Of course, the electoral college is a function of America’s federalism, which protects each state against federal power and, indeed, against dominance by other states like California with huge populations. The electoral college ensures that no presidential candidate can ignore the small states and focus only on the most populated ones during the campaign, because, in a tight race, a state like South Dakota with just three electoral votes can decide the winner.

The electoral college system also means that presidential elections in the US are entirely a matter for the states, and each state has its own electoral rules. For instance, in this year’s election, some states like Pennsylvania decided to count votes cast on the day of the election first and those cast by ballot later. Traditionally, Republicans vote on Election Day, while Democrats prefer postal voting, which was accentuated this year by Covid-19. Thus, when Pennsylvania counted the in-person votes first, President Trump was leading by about 600,000 on election night. But as the postal votes were being counted, Trump’s majority began to vanish. He tweeted: “Stop the Count!”

But imagine if the US had a national electoral body like Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, President Trump would have ordered its chairman, appointed by him, to stop the counting. But thanks to true federalism, the states ignored the president and continued to count. Trump lost Pennsylvania by 18,000 votes!

Another positive feature of American political system is the diffusion of power in society, which makes it difficult for a president to dictate outcomes. For instance, because there is no national electoral body, election results are declared state-by-state. But once the results from each state are known and once a candidate reaches the 270 electoral votes, the media would declare the candidate the winner without waiting for official certification by each state.

Traditionally, once the media networks project a candidate as the winner, that candidate would immediately give his or her acceptance speech and the losing candidate would almost immediately give his or her concession speech. No one waits for the states to certify the results, which normally happens weeks after the election.

But President Trump ignored the convention and rejected the right of the media to declare the winner even though he gave his acceptance speech in 2016 as soon as the networks projected him as president-elect and Hillary Clinton gave her concession speech almost immediately. But the American media cannot be intimidated by a president.

Nor can independent US institutions. For instance, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the main US government body overseeing election software security, refuted President Trump’s persistent claims that the election was rigged, as well as allegations that an electronic counting software used by a company called Dominion was used to manipulate the results. The agency said: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”

So, the US is able to withstand the Trumpian onslaught on its democratic system because American institutions are strong, independent and resilient.

Nigeria badly needs such institutions. Sadly, critical state institutions in Nigeria are weak, politicised and can easily be manipulated by a Trump-like leader!