New United States Ambassador Tom Udall. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
How not to despair at the glaring fragility of democracy in the United States?
Since the 2020 election, Republicans at the state level have leveraged off Donald Trump's "big lie" – the bogus contention that only election fraud enabled his defeat – to introduce more than 400 bills designed to restrict voter access across the country. These efforts include the purging of electoral rolls, restrictions to postal voting, tougher ID requirements and, in one case, making it a crime to provide bottled water to citizens waiting in queues to vote.
But changes to who gets to vote and how are only part of the Republican Party's strategy. Another key focus is on who counts and certifies the votes once they are cast. As the New York Times reported earlier this month, "in races for state- and county-level offices with direct oversight of elections, Republican candidates coming out of the Stop the Steal movement are running competitive campaigns, in which they enjoy a first-mover advantage in electoral contests that few partisans from either party thought much about before last November". According to Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan official who held firm against Trump's unfounded claims of fraud in that state in 2020, this represents a "five-alarm fire". "We may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in 2024," she told The Times.
The sense of relief that accompanied Biden's defeat of Trump in November 2020 was short-lived. Taken together with the January 6 insurrection, the GOP's shockingly brazen anti-democratic turn made it clear in short order that hopes for a return to democratic normality were naive and misplaced. It's a reality the President himself acknowledges. Recounting interactions with world leaders to whom he offered assurances that "America is back", Biden noted the most common retort was: "Yes, but for how long?"
It's a fair question, and one that extends beyond whether Trump himself manages to survive myriad investigations into his public and private actions to run again in 2024. Efforts by the Republican Party to restrict voting access and control the outcome of elections are about much more than tending to Trump's bruised ego. This is about the party's very survival in the face of what they perceive as hostile demographic trends that will see White Americans in the minority by 2045. Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian of the civil rights movement, poses a question that gets to the very heart of it: "If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?"
The health of American democracy is important to us here in New Zealand. In a world with a surging China and an increasingly belligerent cast of autocratic actors standing in opposition to liberal democracy, our own values and security, as well as those of our allies, are underwritten by American strength whether we like to acknowledge it or not.
That's why our alliance with the US matters as much today as it ever has. It's also why I was so delighted with President Biden's choice for Ambassador, former Senator Tom Udall, who I was delighted to sit down with the other day.
The Udall family embodies some of the best American political traditions.
Ambassador Udall's grandfather, Levi Udall, served on the Arizona Supreme Court and, in 1948, authored the opinion that gave American Indians the right to vote in that state.
The ambassador's father, Stewart Udall, was a pioneer in conservation and environmental policy, serving as Secretary of the Interior under John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. Under his leadership between 1961 and 1968, the Interior Department aggressively promoted an expansion of federal public lands and assisted with the enactment of major laws for clean air and water.
After his retirement from Government service, Stewart Udall spearheaded successful efforts to secure compensation for Navajo citizens who had been exposed to radiation from the first uranium mines. Meanwhile, his brother (and the Ambassador's uncle) Mo Udall was a liberal icon who served three decades in Congress and guided 184 bills affecting Native American interests into law.
Tom Udall has built on his family's proud legacy as Attorney General of New Mexico, and later as one of the state's two US Senators.
Like his grandfather, father and uncle before him, Udall worked tirelessly on environmental issues and to right some of the historic wrongs inflicted against America's Native peoples.
US Presidents treat some diplomatic postings like rewards for past service, and that sometimes extends to the Wellington-based gig. But Tom Udall is no such case in point. He is a man of substantive accomplishment whose public life to date, notably in the area of indigenous rights, makes him the most well-qualified and compelling figure to occupy the post in some time.
• Shane Te Pou (Ngāi Tūhoe) is a company director at Mega Ltd, a commentator and blogger and a former Labour Party activist.