Despite Flaws, Our Democracy Still Gives Hope

Two days from now the greatest country in the world will elect Bill Clinton or Bob Dole as President. Alex Khan thinks this is a big deal, even if many Americans don’t.

“I’m excited. I can hardly wait to vote,” said the 32-year-old finance officer at Foothills Lincoln Mercury Mazda.

The 1996 election will be Alex Khan’s first opportunity to vote for president of the United States. “I became an American citizen on January 10,” he said.

“I never thought I would be emotional by what some people might think were little things. But when the judge asked me to take the oath for becoming an American citizen, I got all teary-eyed. In other parts of the world I think everyone has a dream, in some ways, of coming to America, and here I am.”

A strange part of America for Alex Khan is the incessant gloom and negativity that surrounds politics.

“It’s the one thing that bothers me here,” said the young man who remembers when the military overthrew and executed the president of Pakistan.

Khan grew up on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Politics there were not just dirty, they were murderous, scandalous, and rigged.

“I was very young when Watergate occurred in this country,” Khan recalled, of the time in 1974 when he and his father were listening to short-wave radio and trying to get news of events around the world.

“I remember we were all amazed that in America, a president was forced to resign because he did something unethical. To us, this was a tremendous sign that the American system truly worked. Where I grew up, everybody looked up to America as the champion of democracy.”

So it has been a bit of a shock for Khan to see all the negative advertising, hear all the bashing of the presidential candidates, and endure the proclamations of people that they are fed up and aren’t going to vote.

The gift of democracy, of being able to choose a political course peacefully, is one that Khan values because of what he has seen and experienced elsewhere.

As a child, he lived in Pakistan when president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown, then executed by the military.

At 20, Khan took up arms against the Russian Army in Afghanistan. For nearly four years he fought in the guerrilla war against Russian troops occupying his family’s homeland.

Though he hears the protestations about the media being biased, he remembers huddling with family and friends every night at 9 p.m. hoping to pick up a thread of news from the British Broadcasting Corp. or the Voice of America.

“There is so much that is taken for granted in this country about politics,” he said. “Even now, we are sitting here talking about where the money comes from in American politics. We talk about it, read about it, debate whether it is right or wrong. Hey, in other countries the president’s plane would be blown up rather than let people talk about this stuff.”

Alex Khan arrived at Eastern Washington University in 1988, without a job, with little money, and only one friend in the area.

“I was frightened,” he remembered. “All I know about this country came from the TV show ‘Miami Vice.’ You step out your door, and you’re dead.”

His mother told him before he left to be sure he was home by 7 p.m. with the door locked. “I couldn’t tell her my first job as a security guard didn’t start until 11 p.m.,” he recalled with a laugh.

He made $3.80 an hour working nights guarding the campus. He had never made that much money in his life back in Pakistan.

“Then I started meeting people here who genuinely care, people who are willing to help you,” he said. “My image of America changed.”

He went to school.

He got a job selling cars. He moved up to being a finance officer.

Less than a decade later, Alex Khan’s life in America is good and getting better. “Every single year, my living standards have gone up, up, up,” he said.

“In America, if you have a desire to work, the United States gives you a chance.”

People around his work often ask Alex Khan why he is so happy.

“I’m in a country where I can make good money,” he replies when people ask.

“I have a nice house. I have a job that lets me care for my family. My wife is expecting a baby.

“And, in this country, we make our political choices and the system doesn’t get off track. I’m having a hard time waiting for Election Day.”

, DataTimes