If America Can Elect a Reality-TV Star as President, Surely Ukraine Can Elect a Popular Comedian -The iPINIONS Journal

Donald Trump proved that any buffoon can get elected leader of any country. Therefore, if you’re still looking for the results of democratic elections to make normative sense, the joke’s on you.

This is why, even though laughable, the results of Sunday’s presidential election in Ukraine evoked more affirmation than consternation.

Ukraine entered uncharted political waters on Sunday after an exit poll showed a comedian with no political experience and few detailed policies had easily won enough votes [with 73 percent] to become the next president of a country at war.

The apparent landslide victory of Volodymyr Zelensky, 41, is a bitter blow for incumbent Petro Poroshenko who tried to rally Ukrainians around the flag by casting himself as a bulwark against Russian aggression and a champion of Ukrainian identity.

(Reuters, April 21, 2019)

Perhaps it’s worth noting that Trump only played a glorified version of himself on TV. By contrast, Zelensky played a president before daring to run to become one in real life.

Arguably, this made him far more qualified than Trump. But the election of both affirmed the Byronic proverb that truth is stranger than fiction.

Indeed, Zelensky’s election might seem like a case of life imitating art. Except that there was nothing artistic about his signature TV show, Servant of the People. It was pure farce.

No doubt Ukrainians are thinking things can’t get any worse than they were with presidents like Viktor Yanukovych and Petro Poroshenko. But Americans thought things couldn’t get any worse than they were with presidents like Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush. Then along came Donald J. Trump …

Apropos of which, Zelensky’s triumph is just the latest manifestation of politics in the dystopian world Trump has wrought. And, like Trump, Zelensky has demonstrated that, in this world (of resigned disillusion and dysfunction), people elect presidents who either make them laugh or appeal to their fears … or both.

Meanwhile, norm-busting results like those in Ukraine are making a mockery of American-style democracy. Even worse, they are making Chinese-style totalitarianism seem like a truly viable alternative. And no less a person than Trump is dimwittedly championing this alternative.

Case in point, former President Barack Obama exhorted Egyptians, during the Arab Spring, to oust President Hosni Mubarak – who wielded dictatorial powers for nearly 30 years. Yet Trump induced them, during President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s recent visit to the White House, to grant Sisi constitutional authority to wield those same dictatorial powers. Egyptians meekly obliged during a three-day referendum that ended on Monday.

But forget Mubarak, because Sisi – who can now rule for life – will wield powers that will make even Chinese President Xi Jinping green with envy.

In any event, many reputable pundits are citing Ronald Reagan, the B-Movie actor, as the precedent for both Trump and Zelensky. But they should know better.

After all, Reagan spent years honing his political skills as president of the Screen Actors Guild. He then served two terms as governor of California, the biggest state in the Union. Not to mention that he ran and lost twice before his third presidential campaign got him elected president of the United States.

Clearly, compared with these two jokers, Reagan was an ace politician.

That said, Ukrainian politicians have provided so much soap-opera drama since independence in 1991, voters can be forgiven for electing Zelensky just for comic relief.

As it happens, I wrote commentaries on many of the twists and turns that have dogged Ukrainian politics. The following lists titles to just a few of them:

“Alas, Most Ukrainians Believe in Constant Change, If Not in Complete Chaos,” March 4, 2010
“The Rise and Fall of Ukraine’s Yulia Tymoshenko,” October 14, 2014
“Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Turns ‘Red,’” February 25, 2014
“A Ukraine Divided against Itself Is the Only Way It Will Stand,” May 6, 2014
“Ukraine’s Never-Ending Europe Spring,” December 3, 2014
“Russia to Ukraine: Be My Valentine or I Kill You!” February 14, 2015

But the irony is not lost on me that I started off mocking this soap opera in “My Favorite Ex-Communists: the Ukrainians,” July 25, 2006. It includes this pithy but now-prescient note:

Winston Churchill famously agreed that ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ In that vein, I agree that American democracy is the worst ever practiced, except for all other democracies that have been tried and found even more wanton. Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of America’s bad practices is that many new democracies are emulating them.

Sure enough, in electing this popular comedian as president, Ukraine is only emulating America’s election of a reality-TV star. And, if you don’t laugh as the world laughs at this dystopian farce, you’ll cry, and cry alone.