America is the land of hype, but the presidential race between Al Gore and George Bush surpassed all advanced billings and was indeed the closest, most exciting and strangest election in living memory.

First there was the television comedy, where the networks declared that Gore won Florida, then rescinded their projections, then called the state for Bush, then declared Bush the next president, then changed their minds again.

It turned out that whoever won Florida won the presidency. And after a mandatory recount Bush ended up with a less than 1,000 vote lead out of over six million cast. Yet though Bush was the likely winner, not all absentee ballots were accounted for and the result could not be certified until this Friday. To add to the confusion, numerous charges of voting irregularities were made, the main one centering on thousands of questionable ballots in Palm Beach county.

Even weirder was the fact that Gore had seemingly lost the race despite gaining about 200,000 more votes nationwide than Bush. For in America each state has a certain amount of electoral votes and it is the electoral count that decides the president, not the popular vote. Bush’s apparent Florida victory gave him a majority of electoral votes and so he was president-elect, even though he got less votes than Gore.

Interestingly the Green Party’s Ralph Nader, a former Democrat, polled about three percent of the total vote. So his presence not only cost Gore a decisive victory, it hurt his own movement, since the conservative Bush is hardly likely to support green environmental causes. Nader, as they say, cut off his nose to spite his face.

In another a notable sidelight the majority of Americans again voted for the taller man – Gore being taller than Bush - as they have done in nearly every presidential election. Perhaps this tendency traces to man’s hunter-gatherer origins when the biggest and strongest man was most effective at protecting the tribe. Brains are more important than brawn nowadays, but primeval instincts die hard and the ‘when in doubt vote for the biggest alpha male’ propensity may exist in most democracies. For instance in independent Jamaica taller men have won five elections, shorter men two – Sangster in 1967 and Seaga in 1980 - while in 1972 Hugh Shearer and Michael Manley were about the same height.

The watching world was hugely amused by the chaos in America. But behind all the jokes this year’s US elections proved once more that money talks. Over three billion dollars were expended in house and presidential races, and the candidate who spent the most on advertising won almost every contest.

Normally Bush would have had no chance of beating Gore, who was after all vice president in an administration that presided over the greatest economic boom in history. It was cold hard cash that brought Bush virtually the same number of votes and a probable electoral count victory, for he outspent Gore by a large margin. In a sense Bush and his money men might have bought the American presidency, rather as Didius Julianus once bought the Roman Empire.

The 2000 vote also confirmed the growing trend of incumbent impregnability, with an estimated 98% of those with seats in congress and the senate winning re-election. It may cost a lot to get elected in the US, but once you get in you almost never lose. As America is the world’s trend setter, this is not a heartening sign for democracy.

These elections also revealed the American electoral system as an archaic mess. In all multi-party Parliamentary systems there are occasions when the party with most seats does not win the popular vote. It happened in Jamaica in 1949 and Britain in 1955. But in a straight race for a position such as president the person with the largest number of votes surely has a mandate to assume office.

This is the fourth time that an American president-elect received fewer votes than his opponent. Perhaps it is the cumbersome procedure for amending the US Constitution that makes this absurdity still possible. But as a Zimbabwean commentator noted, if his country’s president assumed office after getting less votes than his opponent, America would be threatening sanctions.

It was astonishing to see how rapidly the Florida vote controversy degenerated into blatant political warfare. High-minded speeches about constitutionality, dignity and patriotism quickly gave way to accusations of politicization and distortion. And when Gore's campaign vowed to back a court fight over the disputed ballots and asked for a hand recount of votes, Bush spokesmen threatened countermeasures in other states.

Bush’s camp argued that his electoral majority made him president-elect, implying that Gore was trying to steal the election through the courts. Gore’s side claimed the moral authority of a popular vote victory and accused Bush of attempting to subvert the will of the people by not letting the law take its full course. All talk of responsible non-partisanship vanished as Democrats and Republicans spewed bitter invective at each other. The legislators of the world’s most advanced nation nakedly revealed themselves to be what all politicians really are - hostile tribes fighting for power.

When .3 per cent of the vote separates two candidates it doesn’t really matter which of them take charge, as long as his opponent willingly accepts defeat. The truly important thing in democracy is not so much the people’s will, but that the losing party does not pack its guns and head for the hills. As Sir Karl Popper said, democracy is the type of government which can be removed without violence.

And while no one has taken to the hills in the US, both sides have done the modern American equivalent and brought the lawyers in and launched a slew of lawsuits. Will a judge decide the next US president?

But if a close election can so bewilder America, imagine what would happen in Jamaica if both main parties won thirty seats. At best there would be political paralysis, at worst violent chaos as dons and not lawyers sorted things out. And there seems to be no provision in our constitution for this possibility. After seeing what happened in the US, we had better make some clear stipulations.

There is clearly no perfect political system. But flawed as it may be, our first-past-the-post Westminster arrangement is at least familiar and intuitively easy to understand. And this year’s US elections have surely laid to rest all talk of implementing an American style presidential system in Jamaica. More confusion is the last thing we need. changkob@hotmail.com