An Asian look at US polls

The two main contenders stand on two extremes of political spectrum, writes Binay Kumar.

In the penultimate week to the presidential elections in the United States, the picture has become more confusing than ever before. Even today- barely a few days to the real action- the talk about undecided voters and the swing states fill television screens and countless reams of newspaper columns.

That is why the rather plain and straightforward comments of a radio talk show host I heard this morning while driving to work stuck in mind like that stupid song you hear while saving and it refuses to leave you the whole day. But, unlike that song, this one made sense.

The host was loudly wondering how three or four days before the election anyone could still be undecided. His point was a simple one. The two guys that you have to choose from stand so much apart on practically everything under the sun that they leave you with no choice but to be on either side. Period. You can't take the middle ground here because none exists. The two main contenders on the ballot stand on two competing extremes of the political spectrum.

Let us sample some of these extreme choices:

Gay marriage is an issue which is typically American and has come to occupy centre-stage in the run-up to the elections. Bush, whose rigid faith in a religion should never be confused with religiosity, inevitably opposes gay marriage and promises a constitutional amendment to banish the 'scourge' from the land. Kerry, a self-proclaimed devout Catholic, offers equal rights for gay couples, even though he is personally opposed to gay marriage. Not surprisingly, he opposes any state intervention like a constitutional amendment to ban it.

Similarly, abortion and contraception are highly divisive issues in American politics today. I refuse to separate the two even though the latter commands widespread respectability across the divide. Not surprising again because the birth control pill was the first medication ever designed for purely social (and, therefore, by implication has political and economic side to it) rather than therapeutic purposes.

In 1968 a popular writer ranked the Pill's importance in the modern way of life, best represented as in the American way of life, with the discovery of fire and the development of tool-making. Twenty-five years later, the leading British weekly, The Economist, listed the pill as one of the seven wonders of the modern world. For more than 40 years, more people have taken it than any other prescribed medicine in the world. And when it comes to numbers America is always top of the heap. No wonder therefore that abortion is right on top of the political agenda.