Why Mitt Romney would be less bad for India than Obama

To mix metaphors wildly, it is Scylla and Charybdis. Or Hobson’s Choice. Or any such thing where, in fact, India does not have much of a choice. Neither US Presidential candidate is going to do India a whole lot of good. India is not even on their radar, as demonstrated by their final debate on foreign policy: they mentioned India exactly zero times, compared to China 34 times. So all the heated arguments among Indians about the relative merits of the candidates are meaningless, but it is still good to consider who might turn out to be (slightly) better for India. [caption id=“attachment_504238” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Unless Obama pulls an October Surprise out of the hat (an invasion of Libya, maybe?), it is possible that Romney will win by a nose. Reuters[/caption] In general, it would be good for India (and Indians, and Indian-Americans) to cozy up to the eventual winner: that much is obvious. But who is likely to win? Nobody knows, of course—for instance, it would have taken a brave man to predict Obama’s win in 2008. But based on their performance in the debates, an argument can be made as follows: Romney came out guns blazing in Denver, and that erased all the negatives he had accumulated in a gaffe-prone campaign till then. Obama hardly looked presidential. The fact that Obama felt the need to be aggressive in the third debate, while Romney was conciliatory, also gives an indication as to the campaign managers’ relative confidence: Democrats felt the need to be aggressive, to rally their own; whereas Republicans were doing triage: secure in his core constituency, Romney needed to move to the centre to appeal to the undecided. This suggests a certain desperation on the part of the Obama camp. The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan went so far as to declare (“When Americans saw the real Obama”, 25 October) that the election was over at that debate in Denver when voters saw the real Obama. She suggests that they didn’t like what they saw. Without going that far, it is reasonable to suggest that the Big Mo—momentum —swung to Romney, and it is a virtual dead heat now days before the election. Despite Obama’s performances in the other two debates, the damning comparison to Nixon vs. Kennedy continues to haunt him. Unless Obama pulls an October Surprise out of the hat (an invasion of Libya, maybe?), it is possible that Romney will win by a nose. While incumbents have tremendous advantages, there is also a major handicap—their track-record, that which they have accomplished, is out there for all to see. (Unlike in India, where the Prime Minister blithely blames “the government” for all sorts of ills, leading the casual observer to bafflement and cognitive dissonance: so who exactly is the government if not you and your party, sir?) And quite honestly, for someone who rode into office on Hope and Change, Obama has managed precious little of either four years later. That famous Reagan taunt, “Are you better today than you were four years ago?” may well be the death-knell of the Obama candidacy. If Romney wins, I’m afraid Indian-Americans are ill-prepared, as they have pretty much put all their eggs in the Democratic basket. It has baffled me no end for a long time: Indians are the perfect Republicans, as a lot of the Republican creed—small government, hard work, private enterprise —appeals to Indians who have escaped the stultifying, dirigiste Big Government of India, which is pretty similar to the leftist and Democratic idea of the Nanny State (the bad part of it, that is with none of the good as seen in Europe’s welfare states). But Indian-Americans, and a lot of Indians, persist with the myth that Democrats are good for India and Indians and Indian-Americans. A lot of this goes back to propaganda about the alleged bonhomie between Kennedy and Nehru, and the photo that the US Information Service of the time managed to insinuate into many homes in India: of the two walking in the Rose Garden at the White House, and Kennedy apparently listening attentively to Nehru’s sage counsel as an elder statesman. Nice photography apart, this is contrary to the facts: Kennedy apparently despised Nehru, and thought him preachy and patronising. Kennedy himself never came to India, despite the quasi-royal visit by the beautiful Jacqueline and her sister, and the fact that John Kenneth Galbraith, a much-respected economist (and Kennedy’s professor at Harvard), was then the American Ambassador to India. But Kennedy did help India during the India-China war, and then there were all those shipments of PL-480 grains to feed a starving India, never mind much of that was grain Americans wouldn’t even have fed their livestock. On the other hand, there was the Nixon-Kissinger saga of 1971, when the latter sent a US Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal to intimidate Indira Gandhi over the Bangladesh War. So these two images have stuck in the Indian mind—Kennedy (Democrat) helped in 1962, and Nixon (Republican) did not in 1971. Therefore, Democrats good, Republicans bad. But that is a simplistic conclusion. It can be argued that in fact it is the Republicans who have made overtures to India. Taking recent history into account, Clinton, who was (and is) popular in India, did absolutely nothing for the country except that he snubbed Pakistan when he showed up in India. But he did do the India-Pakistan-equal-equal bracketing then too. On the other hand, Dubya Bush, who has been demonised in India, did declare that India would be an important part of his agenda, and he in fact wanted India to counterbalance China. In the Republicans’ world-view, China is their principal foe, and they would like to ally with India to contain China. On the other hand, Obama, as soon as he came to power, downgraded India, and spent much time singing Kumbaya with China (and Iran, and anybody else who despised him). In a notorious incident, he declared during his China visit that China should have a major role in the subcontinent—something that reminded us of a medieval Pope declaring the world to be divided between Spain and Portugal. So China is, in Obama’s view, the overlord of all of Asia, and particularly the Indian subcontinent? Democrats, despite their rhetoric, are secretly fascinated by dictators: thus they simply love all those starched, clipped-accented Pakistani military guys (and Chinese and Arab strongmen). These rumpled, pot-bellied, chicken-legged Indians in dhotis and Nehru jackets lecturing them about morals and whatnot simply doesn’t appeal to them. Republicans, on the other hand, have a rather more clear world-view. They recognise that they need allies to contain a rampaging China, and that a reverse string-of-pearls can be constructed with the help of Russia, Vietnam, Japan, India and Australia to ensure that China’s sabre-rattling in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Himalayas, etc., and meddling in Pakistan and Central Asia can be rendered less geo-strategically harmful. Despite Obama’s alleged “pivot” to Asia, he doesn’t seem to think that India is part of Asia—that is a typical Atlanticist perspective that bedevils East Coast types. Romney, on the other hand, is a bit muddled about his foreign policy priorities. Of course, he’s been known to flip-flop a lot, but so far he has been speaking mostly about Syria, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Knowing that there is wiser counsel among his tentative cabinet, I would suggest that an unknown Romney will be a better bet for India than the known Obama, who has demonstrated disinterest at best and disdain at worst. A Romney win would be the better outcome for India, by a whisker. As for Indian-Americans, they are natural Republicans, and the sooner they gravitate thither, the better for them.