1948 or 1876?

As Ukraine's presidential elections approach, I find my thoughts drifting back to the US election of 1948, the stuff of which political legends are made. President Truman's Democratic Party had split three ways, with the Left and the segregationist Right each running their own candidates for the top spot. All the media were against the incumbent. Even his own staff knew he could not possibly win. Everyone knew it except, it seems, Harry Truman.

The President hired a train and whistle-stopped his way across America, giving hell to the “do-nothing Republican Congress” from the caboose in every little town he came to. The public opinion polls still showed him losing, and based on early returns one prominent newspaper reported his loss. Too bad for it. Truman won.

With Ukraine facing the most crucial election in its history, it is now the challengers who are campaigning against a “do-nothing President,” who has always favored reform in theory, but seems never quite to have figured out just what reform is. Instead, he is surrounded by a bunch of thieves and rapscallions who have robbed this country blind for five years running. Former President Kravchuk may not have been a complete angel, but in his days there were certain inhibitions that prevented politicians and official structures from casting all rules of law and decency to the winds. No longer. Moreover, while feigning friendship with the West, Ukraine's shadow economy and shadow politics have become completely integrated with Russia's. It is simply impossible to tell just how independent this country is. Ukraine simply cannot survive another such half decade. The question is whether we have any Truman out there to pull off the seemingly impossible against all the levers of state power, which have been illegally pressed into the service of the incumbent's campaign.

One also thinks of another US election, that of 1876, when Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote and the electoral vote, until Republican officials in the Reconstruction South sent in a second set of returns, allowing Republican Rutherford B. Hayes (subsequently referred to as “His Fraudulency”) to win by one electoral vote. In other words, the election was stolen pretty blatantly. One hates to think that such things could happen here and now, but, having lived here for six years, I can assure my readers that this is a country where literally anything can happen. And does.