Tag: Nelson Mandela

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national politics & policies political challengers

The Mandela Effect

Joe Biden, Nelson Mandela,

People have been known to plagiarize college term papers. Even a few political speeches have been surreptitiously copied and brazenly re-orated without proper attribution. But you can’t plagiarize getting arrested, can you?

Not really. What you can do is lie about being arrested — just make it up out of whole cloth. 

That may be what former Vice-President and once-upon-a-time Democratic Party presidential front-runner Joe Biden has been doing in recent days “as he confronts challenging political headwinds,” following fourth and fifth place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively — though he came in (a distant) second in Nevada over the weekend.

“I had the great honor of meeting [Nelson Mandela],” Biden told a South Carolina crowd last week. “I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see [Mandela] on Robbens Island.”

“No, I was never arrested,” U.N. Ambassador at that time, Andrew Young, now 87, told The New York Times, “and I don’t think he was, either.” 

Back in 1977, Mr. Biden was Senator Biden from Delaware. Methinks the arrest of a U.S. Senator by a foreign government might spark at least a single news story. Be informed: “A check of available news accounts by The New York Times turned up no references to an arrest.”

The Times also notes that Biden “did not mention it in his 2007 memoir when writing about a 1970s trip to South Africa.”

Plagiarism sunk Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign. This time out, the politician’s gaffes, bouts of bizarre truculence, and age-related physical failings have hampered his quest. Add to all that, now, the apparent fact that Joe can’t even get arrested.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. The upshot of the Biden candidacy may amount to nothing more than an increased interest in “the Mandela Effect.”

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Joe Biden, Nelson Mandela,

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Video: Paul Jacob on Nelson Mandela and Peaceful Change

This was recorded a few weeks ago, before the death of Nelson Mandela:

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ballot access national politics & policies

Mandela’s PR

Few have known the political prestige and power held personally by Nelson Mandela, who passed away yesterday in his 96th year.

Mandela’s behavior as the first black president of a multi-racial South African electorate (1994–1999) reminds me of George Washington’s approach to power. Washington showed restraint in stepping down from his position after two terms, steering clear of any sort of pseudo-monarchy.

In terms of uniting a disparate population, Nelson had a much tougher task than George. Mandela met the task by promoting an election system called proportional representation — PR, for short.

During Apartheid, elections for the whites-only legislature had been winner take all. Mandela and the ANC knew (upon his release from 27 years of imprisonment) that with voting rights for the large black majority they would win big. Less than one percent of the country’s 700 districts contained white majorities.

So Mandela opted for a PR election system where even a tiny segment of the vote could gain representation in the National Assembly.

At GlobalAdvocacy.com, Andrew Reynolds emphasizes

the importance of South Africa’s choice of a List PR system for these first elections. Many observers claimed that a PR system, as an integral part of other power-sharing mechanisms in the new constitution, was crucial to creating the atmosphere of inclusiveness and reconciliation which has so far encouraged the decline of the worst political violence, and made post-apartheid South Africa a beacon of hope and stability to the rest of troubled Africa.

A group I work with, the Center for Voting and Democracy — or FairVote, for short — works on election reforms we in the USA could use to create greater participation and competition and, ultimately, better representation. In honor of Nelson Mandela, I’m going to make a contribution today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.