By Choi Yearn-hong
The president wields enormous power in the United States and South Korea. Such presidential power is considered a mandate from heaven. But there is no such thing as a mandate from heaven in a democratic society.
There should be only presidents of humility in attitude, listening to the voice of the voters. Good presidents should be conscious of being marginal presidents. Oftentimes, the winner gets 1 to 5 percent more or less votes than the loser. Nevertheless, the winner takes all.
In this kind of winner-takes-all scenario, presidential power can be arrogant, corrupt, and bound to fail. A mandate from heaven was the legitimacy of a king's rule in ancient times.
Strangely, once elected, the president completely and quickly tends to forget the marginal win on a slim majority vote, and wields enormous power without any consideration of the voters who did not vote for him or her. That is not fair. This requires a serious discussion in modern presidential politics.
President Barack Obama pushed his massive stimulus bill and did not get any Republican support from the House of Representatives at all, and got only three votes out of 41 Senate Republicans. He then advocated a ``mandate from heaven'' theory ― that he got elected in the 2008 presidential election.
It is true that he won the last presidential election with a sizeable margin of victory over Sen. John McCain from the electoral college votes, not from popular votes.
I am questioning the winner-takes-all tradition of presidential power. Maybe I am an idealistic political scientist or poet who cares about the minority rights against the majority rule principle in a democratic society.
President Obama proposed bipartisan politics modeled after Abraham Lincoln. However, he pushed his own ideas without giving due consideration to Republican ideas and proposals.
The Republican Party congressmen and women and senators opined that the Obama bill would not seriously stimulate the economy and attacked it as being armed with a protectionist trade wall.
In a democratic society, negotiation is basically sought between the ruling and opposition party or parties, so that the middle of the road can and should be adopted at the end of the process. That, regrettably, is not the case of the Obama stimulus plan.
South Korean politics is not much different in this sense, but very different from American politics in another sense ― violence is romanticized by the opposition parties in Korean politics. President Lee Myung-bak has been attacked for his non-negotiable positions on bills proposed in the National Assembly.
His predecessors were not much different from Lee, or could be worse than Lee in the sense that they totally neglected the conservative Korean people's wishes and hopes in dealing with the North Korean regime from 1997 to 2007.
President Kim Dae-jung won the office of president with 400,000 votes more than the opposition candidate Lee Hoi-chang in the 1997 election, and President Roh Moo-hyun won with 500,000 votes over Lee in the 2002 election.
However, they did not consider the interest of those voters who opposed them and voted for Lee Hoi-chang. Their pro-North Korean regime policy did not make sense because it was one-sided ― not balanced at all. They never looked back at the marginal victories over the opposition candidate.
Their Blue House eloquently demonstrated the arrogance of power. I thought they cruelly ignored and neglected the half of the Korean voters who did not agree with their policies and programs. They accepted their presidential power as a mandate from heaven and wielded their power as old kings in ancient regimes.
The silent majority in Korea was noticeably quiet under the 10-year rule of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. They did not protest their so-called appeasement policy toward North Korea in the streets at night with candle-lit vigils and did not violently attack the then ruling party agenda in the National Assembly.
They were quiet and patiently waited for the next presidential election. However, the situation was gravely different when Lee Myung-back was elected to the office of president; the opposition party and NGOs went on candle-lit street demonstrations in the night for three months over a ridiculous mad cow disease scare under anti-American slogans.
They seemingly didn't accept the legitimacy of the Lee Myung-bak administration and wanted to shut down his government immediately. Expressing their discontent, they have used violence even inside the National Assembly under the name of democracy.
Majority rule and minority rights should be balanced and compatible, not excluding one from the other. The ruling party and the opposition party, or parties, should meet, negotiate when they do not agree with each other in setting the national policy agendas, and find a happy medium.
If negotiations are unsuccessful, then majority rule should prevail. Then, the opposition party should wait for the next presidential elections. Violence should be forbidden in every case in a democratic society, because law and order do not pardon violence.
The U.S. Congress is the legislative chamber for debates and for compromise. The South Korean National Assembly should be the same kind of chamber. The U.S. NGOs are working silently and peacefully in the political process. They are not privileged to use violence.
South Korean NGOs are not working silently and peacefully. They are accustomed to act with violence. That makes a contrasting comparative in politics between the United States and South Korea.
When will I see the president listening to the opposition voice and accommodate the opposition platform in his or her presidential agenda setting? The president should be able to show the mind of humility toward the voters who did not cast their votes to him or her and the opposition party members who oppose their president's view.
``Mandate from heaven'' is a phrase of illusion or hallucination. When the president sees the marginal victory on his or her way to the presidential office, he or she will be most admirable and respectable.
If not, they will shine with the arrogance of power ― and give a dismal performance. There is no such a thing as a mandate from heaven. There should be only the mind of humility and service to the general public, and malice to none.
Dr. Choi is a political scientist who recently retired from a long teaching career in the United States and Korea. He can be reached at janechoi@cox.net