Vietnam asks for UN membership

The other day the UN Security Council brought up the ticklish business of Vietnam's request to join the United Nations. Well, before the request was on the table, it was pretty certain that it would get nowhere this year if only because the United States will veto it so long as Vietnam fails to give an accounting of the American servicemen still officially listed as missing.

However, an odd thing happened. This month's president of the council simply announced – he didn't take a vote on what was a procedural matter, something that can become as fractious and wordy as an exchange between Mohammad Ali and Ken Norton about the time and etiquette of the weighing-in – he simply announced that on the initiative of the French delegation, Vietnam had agreed to postpone the whole question till some time in November when it could be aired before the autumn session, the annual session, of the General Assembly. 

Not a very thrilling or juicy item, you might say, but I don't remember a time when an issue as explosive as that has been so quietly postponed, one anyway on which we are bound to hear a continuous artillery of abuse of the United States from the Soviet Union, Albania and the Warsaw satellites. It seems that Dr Kissinger had been talking to the French and the French have civil relations at least with Vietnam. So, it's put off, even though the United States is certain to veto it until she hears about those men who are either dead or imprisoned. 

Why Vietnam piped down so meekly is a puzzle, but not one that's going to keep us awake at nights. Perhaps it's true that the Vietnamese don't want to be heard raging about America's imperialist ruling circles just when Dr Kissinger is doing a good deal to liquidate imperial traditions in Southern Africa. What most Americans are bound to notice is that the Vietnam issue was postponed not until next week when the General Assembly opens but until the middle of November, by which time we shall know who is the next President of the United States and who is his Secretary of State. If Mr Ford loses, you can be quite sure of one thing. Dr Kissinger will be looking for a new job. 

I take this, however, as simply a conspicuous example of the way in which an American presidential election campaign consigns burning issues from the griddle to the deep freeze. It's not that either candidate feels he must concentrate on domestic problems and let the world go hand, the candidates are off and debating hard about foreign affairs too. But both Ford and Carter must avoid putting themselves in any firm position on any issue, especially an issue of foreign affairs, and then finding in November that their position is that of a president who's painted himself into a corner of the White House. 

After 2 November, you may be sure that, suddenly, the man who won will develop a new set of lungs and a remarkable increase in the decibel volume of his pronouncements. He will be speaking then, saying he's speaking anyway, not for the Democrats or the Republicans but for the American people which is an ideal group not necessarily the same as the people who live in America. 

Mr Carter in particular, I think, would be likely to shock us all by the sudden revelation of iron in his character and melodious fiddly bits in his prose because, if he wins, he's likely to carry with him thumping majorities in the Senate and the House. Then we should have the rare condition that Europeans always sigh for, an executive and a legislature, a president and a Congress that is, ruled by the same party. Whether Carter wins or not, we shall almost certainly have a Congress run by the Democrats which will give us a repeat performance by Mr Ford of ruling by veto, of knocking down the bills Congress sets up and complaining that things would be very different if only the people would have had the sense to elect a Congress with a Republican majority. 

Before anybody begins to yearn for a Carter landslide and the chance of having one party run the country over a feeble opposition, I think I ought to point out what strikes me as the most important, if not the most distressing, feature of this election. It is that whoever wins, and by however splendid a majority, he will be representing only a fraction, possibly even less than half, of the American who are qualified to vote. Notice I didn't say 'voters' but 'people who are qualified to vote' – and didn't do it. 

The New York Times and the national television network have together taken a statistical survey of how many qualified Americans are unlikely to vote. It comes out at the staggering figure of more than 70 million. There were signs in the survey that it might be more than that and that for the first time in modern history, an actual minority of American voters would go to the polls. Evidently 50 per cent or more of Americans who have the vote don't feel that either man, either party is worth the bother of a vote. Now the motives of these (laggards) have not been analysed. Perhaps indeed they're impossible to analyse. There must be, for instance, many people who will try to resist the impulse not to vote because they don't have strong convictions about either man and are tempted to leave the decision to people who do have them. There's a beguiling case to make for this attitude: why not leave all elections to people of conviction so that the winner will represent their strength rather than the flabbiness of people who yawned as they voted or might as well have tossed a coin? 

The picture of a nation indifferent to the main weapon of democracy becomes a little more frightening when you consider that the choice of Ford and Carter in the first place was not made by anything like a majority of each party. On the whole, only about 40 per cent of the people registered as party members and, therefore, qualified to vote in the primaries, did vote in the primaries. So, two minority choices are up for election and now about only 50 per cent, more or less, of the voters will decide between them. So that if this election runs true to form in this century, the winner will come out with 51, 52, 53 per cent of the vote and that means he'll have been put in the White House by 25 per cent of the population that's qualified to vote. Put it at its most stark and say that three Americans in four either didn't want him or couldn't make up their minds or didn't care. It's not the most promising prescription for strong leadership or for what the Kennedy jargon used to call 'a national consensus'. 

Now, among all the people who, for one reason or another, have decided not to vote the most shocking defections are among groups who are most vocal, or most violent, or both, in the great protests days of the Sixties: the blacks and the newly enfranchised 18-year-olds. You'll certainly recall the ringing campaign to give the vote to 18-year-olds sung to a resounding chorus of 'Old enough to fight, old enough to vote'. Well, there may be many and complicated reasons why some blacks here, some students there, don't intend to use their votes but when the mass of them, who fought so long and often so bravely for the vote, throw their vote away, we are led to wonder if this democracy, and not only this one, isn't coming close to collapse by default. 

Well, that's the picture painted in its most sombre or perhaps melodramatic colours. If you look back at the record, you have to recognise that this year, while the millions of people who won't vote make up an unprecedented number, it's not all that much more than the regular defections of the past. If you ask old people today, old Democrats especially, what sort of majority Franklin Roosevelt racked up in the great days of the new deal, ask young people who've only heard the echo of that crusade in history books and magazines, they tend to lurch into heroic figures like the one old codger convinced that in 1936 Roosevelt must have won with an 80 per cent majority. He won 46 States in 48, didn't he? Yes, he did, but he got 60.8 per cent of the vote. And only one president has ever got more, Lyndon Johnson in the Goldwater debacle of 1964. He got 61.1. 

The average majority in presidential elections since 1900 comes out at exactly 53.9 per cent. Put the old figures at their strongest! Go back again to Roosevelt and his second whopping victory and dream for a moment that those were the days when America was a mighty people marching towards a single goal! Except for Roosevelt’s favourite targets, the rich, and what he called the 'horse and buggy' conservatives, at his best he represented 60 per cent of the 65 per cent of those qualified to vote, which means he was put in by 39 per cent of the electorate. So for every four Americans who were hot for Roosevelt, there were six who were either against him or were too lukewarm to bother voting for him and yet, if America ever seemed to have a leader governing with the full consent of the government, it was Roosevelt. 

Well, this year the outlook is for a leader, so-called, who will get in the White House over the opposition or indifference of seven in ten. It does appear that the two old parties are not expressing the true wishes of most Americans, or that half of the American people are sunk in indifference or cynicism about their main democratic privilege which is the right to choose their rulers. 

For murky reasons beyond our ability to probe, this year may be some sort of nadir of enthusiasm, not about the privilege of voting but about the two candidates themselves and some hope of a swing in 1980 towards a more active democracy is offered by the curious fact that one man judged by his majority of the popular vote swung, in four years, from being the most unpopular president in history to the second most popular. In 1968 he registered an all-time low majority of 44.3 per cent of the vote. In 1972 he was only one-tenth of one per cent behind Roosevelt's 1936 record. He got 60.7 per cent. Today, four years later, what would he poll? 

His name? Richard M. Nixon.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.