U.S. election deja vu

It may sound ironic, but it’s not, if that indeed happens. Look at what had happened in Taiwan on March 22. It was the sitting president, Chen Shui-bian of the ruling party, who helped the opposition candidate Ma Ying-jeou win.

The similarities are striking. In the United States, President Bush’s appalling unpopularity could only be matched by that of his Taiwan counterpart. The eight-year Bush presidency is regarded as a total failure, much the same as Chen’s two-term mis-rule. In both cases, the voters were fed up.

Of course, anything could happen in the next 24 days. A front-runner is not a sure bet for victory. The lesson of Taiwan’s 2004 election is a case in point. Two mysterious bullets on election eve turned the tables overnight.

Watching America’s presidential campaign, now entering the home stretch, evokes an eerie sense of deja vu. Don’t think only Taiwan’s politicians are good at smearing, fear mongering, character assassination, race-baiting and all sorts of negative tactics. American politicians are as good, if not better.

McCain’s campaign, trailing about six or eight points behind Obama, has decided to go negative, obviously because the 72-year-old Vietnam war hero will lose the election if he does not shift the focus of the campaign from the economy to personal issues. The financial storm on Wall Street is ominous for his campaign, because the crisis “is the verdict on Bush’s failed philosophy,” as Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate, said this week in Indianapolis.

Bush’s “failed philosophy” is not limited to the economy, but also foreign policy and national security issues, including the war in Iraq, which McCain has supported from day one. He still supports Bush’s “surge” in Iraq and assails Obama’s proposal for withdrawal as surrender.

Negative campaigning is common in elections everywhere in the world, to be sure. But what the McCain campaign team is employing this week is quite over the top. It has gone into race-baiting and fear-mongering. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, has assumed the role of a “pit bull” to attack Obama and impugned his patriotism.

“This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” she said this week, intentionally twisting Obama’s long-passing association with William Ayers, an urban terrorist in the 1970s. She implies that Obama is sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government and “sees America as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who target their own country.”

Sound familiar? Certainly. In Taiwan, it was “love Taiwan” or “betray Taiwan,” a sort of demagoguery that worked like magic at election time. But excessive use of the tactics risks becoming worn out, as evidenced in Taiwan’s last election.

Will McCain’s negative tactics revive his anemic campaign? Palin’s race-baiting rhetoric at a campaign rally drew shouts like “kill him,” “terrorist,” etc., quite a frightening and ugly scenario. It was a low point in McCain’s campaign that most sensible voters wouldn’t like to see. Those of us watching the campaign half a world away can’t help wonder why democracy has to be so cynical, even though our own experience was no better.

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