Kerry’s credo

Super Tuesday was so obviously destined to be his that John Kerry must read the smaller developments on that day to determine how to go about his bid to be the president of the US. On the day he sealed the Democratic nomination an electoral experiment was conducted. Electronic voting was introduced in the primaries, presumably as a trial for wider application in American elections. Reports indicate that the innovation was quite a success, but it failed at a few places and ballot papers had to be used. Help, as always, is at hand. India has already notched up such long, varied experience in the deployment of electronic voting machines, it is so confidently striding towards a general election in which all votes shall be cast on EVMs, that the solution is obvious. The US could consider outsourcing its electronic voting work to the subcontinent. Call it comparative advantage.

Comparative advantage, alas, is almost a taboo phrase in the Kerry campaign. As the primaries have proceeded, Kerry has sharpened his rhetoric against the migration of jobs overseas. Outsourcing of a spectrum of services, from high-expertise software writing to basic backroom operations like clearing bills and fielding consumer inquiries, has helped the US register a strong economic turnaround. But neo-protectionists, among them Democrats like Kerry, spurn the commonsensical theories of David Ricardo and Adam Smith and say that jobs must not be exported. In their reckoning, CEOs of companies that outsource services — to the economic advantage, mind you, of both the US and the country whose relatively cheaper manpower is being utilised — must be christened the new “Benedict Arnolds”.

The case that this spirit of protectionism threatens the tenets of fair and free trade that underpin so much of the global economy has been well made. However, it also undermines Kerry’s well-constructed claim to being a proponent of muscular multilateralism. On Tuesday, he affirmed that under his leadership the US would “rejoin the community of nations”, a clear assault on George W. Bush’s unilateralist inclinations. In crafting foreign policy and strengthening environmental protocols, therefore, he promises hope. But his multilateralism would be a hollow shell if on the economy he recommends unilateralist protectionism. Election time makes for shrill rhetoric, but virulent attacks on outsourcing will break the faith the rest of the world places in his promises of multilateralism.