Facing international derision, America gets the last laugh

As this election descends into melodrama, intrigue and sometimes just plain silliness, newspapers and other media outlets in the United States have begun to pick up rumblings across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Something is happening, the papers say. The world is laughing at America.

This is not just another fabrication by a biased media. People all over the world really do find all this very amusing. Foreigners cluck their tongues when they learn that the Electoral College makes it possible for someone to win the popular vote, yet still lose the presidency. They giggle when parties fly in hordes of lawyers chomping at the bit, ready to file lawsuits at a moment's notice. And they are literally rolling in the aisles when thousands of senior citizens supposedly weep and gnash their teeth in the parking lots of polling places after they have proven themselves unable to read and comprehend a simple ballot.

Oh, it's all very funny. But the ramifications for Americans abroad are not. I think specifically of the Princeton students preparing to study abroad next semester. During my time in Melbourne last semester, a favorite topic of conversation for my Australian friends was a dissection of everything wrong with American society, culture, government, education, language and so on. America was the tall poppy, as Australians say, and it needed to be cut down to size, ironically by a much smaller country notorious for its raging insecurity about its place in the world.

The criticism could reach a feverish pitch at times, and other Americans — no doubt feeling extremely guilty about being from such a horrible country — often joined in the anti-American refrain. They were so fervent that one would think they were going to go down to the immigration office and pledge allegiance to the Queen of Australia that moment. With this election, I can only imagine what the Americans are going through right now. With this in mind, allow me to humbly offer some talking points for Princetonian-Americans who are going abroad this coming semester.

First of all, most criticism comes from countries that are in absolutely no position to criticize. The United States has the world's oldest written constitution, and it has survived more than 200 years with relatively few alterations. Moreover, the Constitution is one of the primary reasons the United States is also one of the most stable countries in the world. The uncertainty of the presidential election is drawing panicky headlines from foreign newspapers, but only yawns or exasperated sighs from Americans. We've been through this before, and we'll get through it again. We can depend on the founding principles of our country — it will help us survive.

Compare this stability and assurance with countries now lording our week of electoral uncertainty: France (currently on its fifth republic), Russia (a gleaming example of an oligarchy for everyone to follow), Australia (a country where only a bare majority of citizens know it has a written constitution) and China (don't even get me started).

Surely, these critics say, America will lose its obnoxious exceptionalism and admit it's no better than us. Surely, they crow, America's political system is just as messed up as ours. Surely the State Department will stop issuing those annoying human rights reports, and they'll disband all those agencies dedicated to spreading democracy around the world.

But it is a tribute to American peace and stability that whatever protests have occurred have been peaceful. In many cases these scenes are staged for TV cameras rather than designed as violent outbursts to overthrow the government. The fact that we can have these protests and openly discuss — even bitterly disagree — on this election is proof positive that not all is rotten in the state of Denmark (so to speak).

Ultimately, I found that others' criticisms of America were often rooted in their own sense of national inferiority. If America's mission to carry democracy throughout the world is stunted by this election, it will not be because America's political system is fatally flawed, but because other countries often have a simplistic and wrong-headed view of how America works. For Princeton students abroad to respond to these criticisms with jingoistic patriotism is probably inappropriate, but we should certainly not be ashamed of America.

If anything, this trying election has proven just how strongly rooted America is in its democratic principles. Whatever the outcome, America will survive. The same cannot be said for so many other countries in the world. Justin Hastings is a Wilson School major from Bedford, Mass. He can be reached at justinh@princeton.edu.