You Can’t Skate Around the Politics of Human Nature

“Justice was done.”

So said David Pelletier, the Canadian skater who, with his pair partner, Jamie Sale, was promoted from silver-finisher to gold-medalist by the damage-controlling International Olympic Committee on Friday. By now, even those who don’t know a double axel from a double play, or a triple loop from a triple crown, know about “skategate.”

But the conflict over the judging wasn’t so much about justice as it was about politics.

To be sure, many observers thought that a Russian skating pair was wrongly awarded the gold medal in the original competition Monday night, but after the conflict came a compromise; both the Canadians and the Russians will be gold medalists. And that’s a reminder that, in questions of human judgment, the answer is likely to be found in human nature--which is to say, in politics. As Aristotle observed 2,400 years ago, “Man is by nature a political animal.”

Most Americans are probably happy for the Canadians. But is that a case of Americans being fair-minded, or is it our rooting for our friendly neighbors to the north?

For their part, the Russians see the flap differently.

A correspondent for Tass complained, “The controversy was initially fueled by NBC commentator Sandra Bezic, a former Canadian pairs skater who openly was rooting for the Canadians.”

And in Moscow, the daily Trud called the scandal a “soap opera in a glass of dirty water.”

Meanwhile, the most senior woman in the Russian government announced she was heading to Salt Lake City “to support the moral spirit of our team.”

An American might say that Russians are making political hay out of the Olympic issue, but of course, a Russian might say in response that American President Bush, the star of the opening ceremony, had already made big hay.

To be sure, it does appear that the skating judges misbehaved. And happily, unlike, say, the notorious “long count” in the Dempsey-Tunney fight of 1927, or the much-instant-replayed “safe” call at first base in the sixth game of the 1985 World Series, some degree of adjustment--justice, even--can be made.

To put it another way, if there’s a political aspect to a problem, there’s a political aspect to the solution. Other organizations also often make decisions with an eye toward a reasonable balance, not righteous absolutes. For instance, the actor John Wayne had never won an Oscar after four decades of movie work. Realizing that he was owed, Hollywood finally awarded him one in 1969. In 1974, the Nobel Prize for economics was awarded jointly to two graybeards, Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich Hayek, even though the socialist Myrdal and the libertarian Hayek had diametrically opposite views on every economic question. And in 1999, after her 18-times unrequited quest had become a saga of its own, Susan Lucci finally got her Emmy for “All My Children.”

Even loftier subjects can’t escape the grubby clutches of human nature. Two great 17th century mathematicians, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, feuded for decades over who deserved credit for inventing calculus. To this day, historians of science weigh out the evidence, although the fact that few Americans have ever heard of Leibniz suggests that Newton’s spin has prevailed--at least in the English-speaking world.

But if the Canadians won their political battle for Olympic gold, the Americans who supported them may end up losing another political battle--for the Olympics themselves.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Feb. 6 of a “deep undercurrent” within the IOC of “resentment toward a perceived American arrogance.”

Amplifying that theme, the Manchester Guardian reported on Friday that “the wave of American jingoism and intense security has led to senior officials of the International Olympic Committee privately expressing concerns about whether the U.S. can ever stage another Olympic event.” And the Sydney Morning Herald compared the Salt Lake City games to the Nazi propaganda-fest staged in Berlin in 1936.

Most Americans will find that comparison outrageous, but that’s human nature for you--that humans see things in different ways and can be stubborn about what they see. And the perception that Americans are domineering overdogs has set in--at least among non-Americans.

This year, a kind of political justice made Canada a winner. But in the years to come--in the judging of events, in the location of the games themselves--Americans may find themselves on the losing side of Olympic politics.

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James P. Pinkerton writes a column for Newsday in New York.