From Foreign View, Democracy U.S.-Style Is Perplexing at Best

Imagine the outside world’s confusion:

Vice President Al Gore gets the most votes for president but doesn’t win. A Senate candidate who died three weeks ago defeats his live opponent.

Millions of votes cast for third-party presidential hopefuls fall by the wayside while a few thousand absentee ballots from Floridian diplomats and troops serving abroad acquire the power to determine one of the closest U.S. elections ever.

And most perplexing of all for the millions who watched with furrowed brows as the U.S. electorate reached a deadlock is that the outcome will be official only in December, when 538 delegates to the electoral college cast the real vote.

The idiosyncrasies of the U.S. electoral system are confusing enough for Americans, and there was a “Huh?” heard around the world when the returns from the campaign whipsawed between Democrat Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican nominee, and still offered no certain winner more than 24 hours after the polls closed.

Some observers were critical of the U.S. system, which will disregard Gore’s nearly 200,000-vote advantage if Bush maintains his less than 1,800-vote lead in Florida after a mandatory recount and once all the absentee ballots are in.

“I have lost my voice by now trying to answer endless media queries about why it is possible in America for a presidential candidate to lose the election in which he gets a majority of the popular vote,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Moscow-based Politika Foundation think tank. “Of course many Russian people are baffled by it and tend to regard it as a vivid demonstration of how imperfect this system is.”

One foreign leader who seemed to revel in the murky outcome was Cuban President Fidel Castro, whose Communist regime has outlasted nine U.S. presidents. Castro disparaged Bush and Gore as “boring and insipid,” and he got his wish, at least for now, for the ideal winner: none of the above.

“The bafflement and perhaps smug schadenfreude [German for pleasure at another’s misfortune] is that here’s the world’s greatest democracy that can’t make up its mind,” said Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

Votes From Abroad Could Hold the Key

Not everyone abroad understood the complexities in the contest for leader of the free world, but that didn’t stop them from weighing in on the discussions.

“Italians know very little about the American system . . . . This was a very unusual race, and commentators didn’t seem to know very much and didn’t explain things very well,” former Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Martino said of his nation’s television coverage, which went on all night.

In Israel, analysts gleefully predicted that the 85,000 registered U.S. voters there might actually help resolve the impasse.

“I can’t say that the Israeli overseas voter will decide the presidency, but I am prepared to say that the overseas ballots globally could,” said David Froehlich, the U.S. voting coordinator in Israel.

While the overwhelming majority of U.S. voters in Israel are thought to be supportive of Gore and his Jewish running mate, Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman--and hundreds are thought to have voted absentee in Florida--other analysts say the U.S. vote from abroad traditionally favors Republicans.

Foreign leaders were keen to learn whether Bush or Gore would occupy the White House, and that eagerness got in the way of better judgment. From Berlin to Beijing, politicians fired off congratulatory messages to Bush as soon as U.S. television forecast his victory, leaving red faces the world over when those greetings had to be retracted once it became obvious the winner was still in question.

Ironically, most of the leaders who jumped the gun were, in their hearts, Gore supporters. In Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Labor Party shares President Clinton’s desire for strengthening the political middle, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook rushed to assure Bush that relations with London would continue on a solid footing.

German President Johannes Rau was the first foreign head of state to prematurely convey his best wishes to Bush. “We know you as a good friend of our country and look forward to the continuation of close friendship of our people during your time in office,” Rau said in a statement his press secretary scrambled to retrieve from news agencies minutes later.

In Paris, French President Jacques Chirac issued a similarly congenial statement. But the conservative head of state made no move to revoke it amid the uncertainty about which candidate would prevail.

Mexican newspapers proclaimed a Bush victory in banner headlines, then seemed to project their country’s own history of election corruption on the disputed U.S. outcome. “Fraud Suspected in U.S.,” the respected daily Milenio headlined, claiming that 30,000 ballots were missing in Florida.

Although the neck-and-neck battle between Gore and Bush probably has more consequences for U.S. relations with China than any other nation, Beijing struck a posture of indifference. Still, the Communist giant is known to have a clear preference for Gore because he is more likely to continue Clinton’s policy of constructive engagement and is less supportive of the controversial missile defense system that the U.S. could extend to protect Taiwan.

Some countries where Bush was favored were reluctant to concede that the race remained open. “We are happy to hear that Bush has won the election,” proclaimed Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab of Indonesia, where relations with the Clinton administration have been strained in recent months.

In Japan, where leadership is decided more in smoke-filled back rooms than in polling places, concern was expressed that the deep divide obvious in the U.S. electorate could signal flagging interest in foreign crises.

“The issue of Israel and Palestine can’t wait, and this [deadlock] could affect the U.S. ability to respond diplomatically. Likewise with the North Korea issue,” said Takashi Kiuchi, economic advisor at Tokyo’s Shinsei Bank.

In the troubled Balkan states, where thousands of U.S. troops are deployed, there was worry that the current uncertainty and the possibility of an eventual Bush triumph could undermine the fragile peace now reigning in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, the separatist province in southern Yugoslavia.

“The United States is the guarantor of [Bosnia’s peace accords], which is our destiny,” said a nervous Mirza Hajric, a government spokesman in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. Bush has threatened to pull out U.S. troops from the Balkans--a plan many observers chalk up to campaign rhetoric but one that has frayed nerves in the region.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also made clear that he was holding his breath awaiting the final vote count. “The United Nations is significantly impacted by changes in the U.S. presidency,” he told reporters in Geneva. “All the world waits impatiently.”

“This is stimulating. It has created much more interest,” effused Christian Hacke, a political science professor at the University of Bonn. “This is a fundamentally positive development and in no way damages the United States’ power to act. There is a functioning president, and everything goes on as normal.”

The interest boost wasn’t limited to the 50 U.S. states.

“It’s so interesting and thrilling just to watch how it goes,” said Tokyo high school teacher Makiko Sakai. “It’s much better than watching soap operas.”

Interest in the U.S. vote was intense in Eastern Europe, but not everyone grasped the details. A Polish television report asking people in the street their opinions included one armchair analyst offering the certain prediction that “Clinton will obviously lose.”

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Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Rome; Maggie Farley at the United Nations; Mark Fineman in Miami; David Holley in Belgrade, Yugoslavia; David Lamb in Hanoi; Mark Magnier in Tokyo; Tyler Marshall in Jerusalem; Marjorie Miller in London; Ching-Ching Ni in Shanghai; Richard C. Paddock in Jakarta, Indonesia; Maura Reynolds in Moscow; Sebastian Rotella in Buenos Aires; James F. Smith in Mexico City; and Paul Watson in Sarajevo contributed to this story. Also contributing were special correspondents Maria De Cristofaro in Rome, Sergei L. Loiko in Moscow, Reane Oppl in Bonn, Rie Sasaki in Tokyo, Achrene Sicakyuz in Paris, Cristina Mateo Yanguas in Madrid and Amberin Zaman in Ankara, Turkey.