Where does the buck stop?

With election fever high on everyone’s mind, many mail and message boxes are being flooded with information, memes, and videos. Probably only one other fever can compete with this one, and that is cricket fever, which the ongoing IPL is providing enough of. Elections and IPL — who would have thought that they bear an uncanny similarity?

Every day, one hears about career politicians shifting parties and running down the party from which they have just moved. How do they even face the embarrassment of having to deal with their earlier videos and statements dug up and thrown at their faces? But then one cannot be in politics if one weren’t to develop a buffalo’s hide, with absolutely no offence meant for the buffalo, which likely lives by a straight set of rules and is not programmed to transgress.

When the IPL was first introduced, it all seemed quite strange to see cricketers being bought and sold for huge sums of money, just like at cattle auctions — again, no offence to the said four-footed animals.

For someone who has supported a team, it is confusing to find the cricketer who wore purple in the last season wearing orange in this season and the player in blue last year wearing red now. A quick check will reveal that the player shifted teams because he was offered a better deal by a competing team. Just like what is happening with politicians, with elections around the corner.  

If the players can keep shifting teams, with quite a few of them not belonging to your state, what is this unswerving loyalty to a team about? The players are careerists just like the politicians whom you have to choose from, the only difference being that you don’t hear cricketers running down their opponents. They gracefully shake hands at the end of each game, reminding one of their sporting spirit.

But when it comes to politicians, it is always a blame game. When Rajiv Gandhi ran a negative campaign in the newspapers, the party lost. Even for those who might have wanted to vote for Congress, those ads seemed distasteful. But with the steady decline in the level of political discourse, one is witnessing terrible mudslinging in campaign speeches. In sports, the umpire or referee has the power to instill discipline, from which today’s Election Commission could learn a lesson to ensure a level playing field for all parties.

At such a time, it would be in order to recall a US President called Harry S Truman, who flipped the notion of passing the buck when he had a sign placed on his desk at the White House Office that read, “The Buck Stops Here.” President Truman saw this sign in a federal reformatory in Oklahoma and asked for something similar to be made for his office. Measuring approximately 2-1/2” x 13” in size, the reverse side said, “I’m from Missouri.” The sign is said to have surfaced at different times on his desk, well into his administration.  

The words take me back to my corporate workplace, where I was impressed at the orientation when a senior member said accepting blame is an act of responsibility and the sign of a good leader.

This again rewinds back to other US presidents and a term that became synonymous with some of them. The term comes from the coating on a non-stick pan called Teflon, which prevents food from sticking to it.  

The term Teflon President was coined in 1983 by a Democrat from Colorado, Rep. Pat Schroeder, after she stood up on the floor of the House to denounce the actions of then-President Ronald Reagan. She said, “He has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency; he sees to it that nothing sticks to him.” Schroeder claims that the term came to her when she was frying eggs in a non-stick pan.  

Though the term is mostly remembered with reference to Reagan, there were others who followed, like Clinton and Obama, who were also termed Teflonish. 

Closer home, when one sees the recent exposes—the corruption of electoral bonds, the involvement of crony capitalists in important decisions pertaining to the country’s assets, the misuse of the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI to harass opposition parties, the forcing of defections, and the use of deflection—one can speculate that the term Teflon PM can also apply to our own leader. 

Rep. Schroeder might have intended the term to be disparaging but appears to have discovered a new political phenomenon: “the willingness of the voters to excuse in some politicians shortcomings that they wouldn’t accept in most others.” 

(The author is an independent writer)