The United States will find it hard to sell democracy if its leaders can't fix their own

There are exactly two weeks to go before Joseph Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States (US) on the steps of the US Capitol in Washington DC. His predecessor Donald Trump is, however, not giving up and recent revelations about a phone call that he made to the Secretary of State in the US State of Georgia is as bizarre as it is frightening. In a recording made available to the US media outlets, Trump is heard asking the Georgia officials to “find” 11,780 votes so that he can overturn Biden’s narrow win in that State. American constitutional and legal experts believe that Trump’s phone call was inherently illegal and could land him in trouble once his presidency ends. The 45th President of the US, ironically the man who is trying to thwart democracy itself, sounds increasingly desperate when he proclaims that he would “fight like hell” to hold on to the presidency; the fact that all the 10 living former Defence Secretaries recently wrote in an Op-Ed that “the time for questioning the results has passed”, notwithstanding. But as if matters were not bad enough, a whole host of US lawmakers and the Congress and Senate — many of whom owe their political careers to Trump — have said that they will try to delay the certification of the results. This despite the fact that Biden not only won enough US States to win the convoluted Electoral College, he also won a plurality of votes.

The 2020 US Election had the highest turnout in history and while Trump is right in claiming that he polled more votes than any incumbent US President in history, it was more a function of the higher turnout and an increased population. Biden won the popular vote by over seven million, having a margin of 4.4 per cent over Trump. Trump’s attempts to overturn this election are a little different from the protesters’ who cried “Not My President” when Trump won in 2016. Sowing the seeds of doubt on the electoral process, just like sore losers do in India when they blame the electronic voting machines, is the worst possible thing to do to build confidence in democracy. The US elections prove that it is a deeply divided country and Biden and his Vice-President Kamala Harris have a tough task uniting a country that talks in terms of ‘Blue’ States and ‘Red’ States. If the world is to look up to the US and not China, the 46th President has to be less divisive and become the Uniter-In-Chief.