From the WSJ Opinion Archives
DISPATCH
Alien Nation
How to give foreigners a voice in American government.
The world is in a lather these days over the notion that America is behaving like the sole superpower. Some are in a snit over President Bush's hostility to the Kyoto treaty. Others over his determination to press ahead with national missile defense. And still others are upset over the prospect that he might not have America participate in the United Nations conference on racism. This has given Maureen Dowd of the New York Times such a case of the fantods that she likens the White House to the Planet of the Apes. Her colleague Thomas Friedman has taken to asserting that it's not entirely silly when the Europeans natter on about how America is a "rogue state."
As it happens, I've been wrestling for several decades with the question of how to deal the world in on the exercise of American power. The problem led me to publish in the 1970s three columns in The Asian Wall Street Journal arguing that constitutional reform was the way to approach the matter. My ideas have been set down variously as sophomoric, inane, treasonous and, most devastating of all, "typical." But they have always struck me as eminently reasonable, starting with the first one, "A Mandate at the Polls," published in 1978 when Jimmy Carter was suggesting he might indeed run for a second term.
The thought struck me that it was time the U.S. opened its presidential elections to everyone, everywhere. I conceded that at first blush the idea of allowing foreigners to vote might seem preposterous. Particularly since citizens of other countries don't pay American taxes, so enfranchising them might lead to the injustice of representation without taxation. At the same time, whatever America did, on matters large and small, was affecting people all over the globe to a degree that was unique. It seemed to me only logical that some way ought to be found to give the people affected by America's decisions a say in how America was governed.
And I savored the possibility that the reform could lead to an American election in which the voters of the Soviet Union cast their ballots in favor of a hard line against communism. Unfortunately, this idea went nowhere.
This column actually gained a good bit of circulation. The Boston Globe reprinted it with a hilarious cartoon, showing a perplexed American worker coming out of an factory, lunch pail under his arm. Waiting there with their hands out were the Saudi king and Mr. Brezhnev, along with Yasser Arafat, Menachem Begin and Mr. Carter himself. One could see the logic of it in a twinkling, but not even one of the 50 American states introduced a bill to amend the Constitution. The idea died of neglect.
Tricameralism had a particularly attractive added appeal. It held out the possibility of becoming an enormous engine in the spread of democracy. This is because a provision would have to be set by which the election of delegates to the third house of Congress would be open only to those countries that had a genuine, functioning democracy. This would defeat the so-called United Nations effect, which obtains at Turtle Bay, where delegates from all sorts of dictatorships, absolute monarchies and "people's republics" were posturing as though they had legitimate mandates.
Sad to say, my little essay on tricameralism got nowhere, either. Chastened, I gave up the constitutional-reform racket and took up the dodge of writing editorials. But as the ridicule rained down on Mr. Bush these past few weeks, I just couldn't help feeling wistful. Even if, as something tells me, the idea of letting Belgians, Brazilians, Chinese, Frenchmen, Indians, Israelis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and our many other friends and neighbors help run America isn't going to be an easier sell today than it ever was.
Which leads me to the thought that maybe we should pass something called the Disgruntled Officials Export Act. This would be a constitutional amendment to deal with all those U.S. officials who want to hamstring America with such lopsided legislation as the ABM Treaty and the Kyoto protocols and the United Nations Human Rights Commission and similar Trojan horses. The idea is that such disgruntled officials could register for exemption from the constitutional provision against holding a emoluments, offices and titles under any king, prince or foreign state. They could go off to test their ideas in the employ of other countries and be allowed to come home only when they regain their confidence in the notion that maybe the world is a better place when America stands alone.
Mr. Lipsky is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Wednesdays.
