The 2012 Presidential Election

Today we celebrate in the United States the peaceful transfer of power that we so take for granted, but is the longtime fabric of our country. The American electorate freely decides whether the person who is president and is commander in chief of the military will have the opportunity to serve as president again or whether they will cash in the incumbent in favor of the challenger. And as much as I would like to see the reelection of President Obama, the process we go through, regardless of outcome today, is to me the most important thing. Working in one of the former Russian republics back in 2008, a young resident joked with me about our upcoming election. She said she preferred the system of her country where the people knew who would win the election, against the uncertainty in the United State of not knowing who would win. But the genius of our democratic system is that we take as a given that the outcome of an election is uncertain, and because this is what we expect, there is no uncertainty or instability, at least apart from the rich fodder for our political cartoonists ;-)