Yuri Rogulev: "We all see that US political system is far from perfect"

Tommorow, first polling stations of the 58th presidential elections will open in the east of the United States. Under American electoral system, first, citizens will vote for candidates, then their votes will be sent to the Electoral College, and after that the electors will vote for one of the candidate. Candidate that will get 270 or more of their votes will be declared the winner and the new US president. On the eve of a key event in the political life of the United States, director of the Roosevelt Center for US Studies at the Moscow State University, Yuri Rogulev, discussed the results of election campaign and the prospects of post-election situation in America in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza.

- First of all, what should Russia expect from these elections?

- These election, of course, are important for both Russia and other countries, because we are not completely indifferent to what kind of government will be formed in the United States. We are talking about that, because presidential election basically mean the election of executive authority of the state, one of three branches of the government. Under the US Constitution, president heads the government, and the government initiates policy, determines its goals. Russian-American relations and overall international situation will largely depend on what will those goals be. On the other hand, Americans can elect anyone, and Russia should not have high hopes and coordinate its national goals based on these hopes, based on who will American citizens choose: we will have to work with any American president. In this sense, Russia can only hope that American people will choose the right person, reasonable president, which will create new conditions and will improve relations with the US.

- What do you think about this campaign? How will it be remembered?

- This campaign is different from previous ones in many ways. The main thing that makes these elections different, unfortunately, is that none of the candidates are popular among Americans. Antirating, the negative rating of candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, is very high, around 50%. Half of Americans don't like both of them. It means that Americans have to choose the lesser of two evils, and overall this situation is not optimistic for the US. Before the election, a significant part of the electorate was angry, dissatisfied. At the same time, I think that the elections themselves are unlikely to calm down the American society, and public dissent that exists today will only get worse. 

Another thing I remember, which is also pretty unfortunate, is that significant domestic and foreign policy issues moved into the background. Both candidates focused on their personal qualities, and the entire election campaign centered around problems voters just don't care about. This factor will also harm American political life. 

The third problem is that both democrats and pepublicans basically failed at these elections. These two parties are the institution that organizes the electoral process: they nominate candidates, hold election campaigns, mobilize the electorate. Right now we can see a split in the Democratic Party: Bernie Sanders, who called himself a socialist so they were forced to "drown" him, suddenly left them. All main candidates of the republicans have failed, and a man who is not related to this party in any way was nominated. So these elections will leave the Americans with many problems in political and other areas. 

- How much did America change during this campaign? How will it change after the elections?

- The fact that everything flows, everything changes, was known since the old times. Many political analysts called current state of American political parties a crisis even before this campaign. That is why unpredictability of the elections has expectedly increased, now there is an element of chance and the possibility that people far from politics will enter the political arena. We all witnessed that everything is far from perfect, even though many Americans thought otherwise, believing that their political system is perfect, compared to the outside world. Now we see that it's not. We'll see how the United States will resolve their internal problems after the elections.