What Constitutions can achieve - and what they can't
by Peter Selby

All through the goings on in Florida I kept thinking of my friends in the USA. I have sat up late at night on many occasions in the past, listening to election results coming in here, and when they've been going badly have had that inner sinking feeling that many of the readers of The Witness must have had last November. But I've never had to sustain the uncertainty for so long. So if I write about my reactions from this side of the Atlantic, it is with a real sense of solidarity with those who are still living with disappointment and feeling a lot of foreboding about what is to come.

Here we vote by making a cross with a stubby pencil on a ballot paper, fold the paper and put it in the box. And we count them by hand. And the event, in each parliamentary constituency, is presided over by a Returning Officer who is not allowed to have a declared political allegiance. I say that not in order to suggest that British politics is free of all corruption, or that people who are supposed to be neutral do not in fact have their biases. Rather, I say it in order to explain why what happened last November has been greeted by many people over here with a real sense of shock.

As somebody who came from here to the USA as a student and found a set of constitutional arrangements I could really admire, events like this are more than disappointing; they feel like betrayals. More than that, I have a real fear that respect for the USA has been undermined to the point that any initiatives for good (and far be it from me to suggest that a Bush administration won't take any initiatives for good!) will lack the credibility that free and fair elections give to a government and its policies.

So the overt politicisation of the judiciary, let alone the constant reporting of the politics of those responsible for the conduct of the elections, are potentially very serious. They indicate, if that was needed, that the brilliant checks and balances that the founders of the United States wrote into the constitution are in the last resort not an adequate protection against determined attempts to use power for ideological purposes.

We all know, of course, that in matters legal as well as historical there is no ultimate objectivity, no 'view from nowhere', no truly unbiased opinion. But it is a vital feature of democratic traditions that they require there to be some processes that are not dependent on the cut and thrust of political processes and allegiances. When the murderer of Jonathan Daniels was acquitted in 1965 by a jury composed quite largely of relatives and political supporters the same question arose: do we all believe that there have to be some people and processes that in some way stand above the ideological battle, even if they will often produce outcomes contrary to what we, whichever side we are on, would have wanted? It's one thing to have to keep saying to yourself, as a friend wrote, 'President Bush' to get used to an outcome that is hard to bear; it's much more serious to have to keep saying to yourself, 'Supreme Court' in order to persuade yourself that the constitution is still intact.

I know that many in the USA have had these reflections, and in that sense there is nothing original about them. Why I wanted to state them from my particular distant vantage point is that these are considerations that will affect the USA's dealings with other nations over the next four years, and perhaps far longer than this presidency. It feels as though one of the most majestic achievements of post-Enlightenment politics has been somehow violated. That damage may have repercussions for us all if it means that the very notion of guardianship of the constitution, of supra-political processes, has become so suspect that newer democracies won't even try to create them.

More serious for a Christian readership would be a decision that the life of the Church too must be totally ideologically controlled. I have ideological commitments, and The Witness is of course committed on numerous issues. But this raises the question, are not communion in the Holy Spirit, eucharistic fellowship, biblical obedience, the life of prayer and all else that constitutes the Church of God ultimately above our ideological commitments. That none of us can ever be totally above the swirl of our own commitments - which of course we believe to be deeply rooted in the gospel - doesn't exempt us from the obligation to be clear that God never belongs to 'our' party, and the things of God have been given to all of us, even, perhaps especially, to those with whom we deeply disagree. This presidential election needs to be an occasion for getting ourselves clear in mind and heart that there is One who is supreme over our perceptions, even our best perceptions; and that therefore politically as well as ecclesially we also need institutions and processes that will not be captive to ideology, not even our own.

January 2001