The World is Watching: How America’s Election Choice Echoes Globally

By now, millions of Americans across the nation are voting in what many have claimed is its most consequential presidential election of a generation, perhaps in its history, it’s worth looking back four years ago to March 2020. 

The Coronavirus pandemic was just establishing a foothold. People across the globe were searching for answers, trying to get a handle on the magnitude of the health crisis, and looking for whatever assurances they could find. 

One leader gave them all they were looking for. In a televised address, he effectively assured citizens that fear itself was the only thing they had to fear. “It’s just a little flu or the sniffles,” he said, steadily pointing the finger at the press for inciting panic and stoking hysteria around COVID-19. In the process, he severely misled his nation and stood virtually isolated on the world stage.

By now, you’re probably recollecting how poorly and egregiously Donald Trump let down the American people who counted on him to level with and protect them as best he could. But here, the dishonest dealer was Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil.

Bolsonaro, referred to by some as “Little Trump” and by others as “The Trump of the Tropics,” was a populist president formed in the image of his northern hemisphere role model. Equally bombastic and detached from reality, he prioritized outrageous behavior and statements.

“As citizens here, we spent like four years where every week we’re going to hear something obnoxious from the president that is not related to the country in a specific way,” said George Maravilha, a resident of Florianópolis, Brazil. “He’s not talking about having more jobs for people or getting the economy. He was talking about some guy that he didn’t like, some commentary on his wife, things like that.”

George is my friend, and we discussed politics back in July, about a week after Kamala Harris announced her candidacy for president. We examined the United States’ political moment – the opportunity to rid itself of Trump. We compared our countries and how after just one term of Bolsonaro, Brazilians voted him out of office in favor of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

For Brazilians, Lula represented a swing to the left, but also a return to a sort of normal that existed before Bolsonaro became president. An avowed climate change denier, the former president denied the impact of fires in the Amazon. Then President Trump praised Bolsonaro for, “working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great job for the people of Brazil.”

George, however, remembers Bolsonaro for his outsized personality and shocking statements both as the country’s leader and in his previous political life. Bolsonaro’s racist, sexist and homophobic statements are legendary and cringe-worthy. Once, he said that to have a gay child was “equal to death.” When a female lawmaker called him a rapist, he said that he would not rape her because she did not “deserve to be raped.”

“That is not the thing you want to hear from the president,” George told me. He sees that as beneath the high office of the president but also as an embarrassing representation of Brazil before the global community.

George believes that a president is more than just a leader – they represent how the world sees a country and understands its people. “Like a 50% plus one [vote] aligns a certain way of thinking. That’s how you’re going to understand the country or the people in that country.” 

As the United States stands on the precipice of this most consequential election, George’s words serve as a piercing reminder of the global implications of America’s domestic choices.

On this day when America chooses who will lead our nation for the next four years, the world is watching intently. This election is not just about us – it’s a global statement of our values and a proclamation of who we are as a people. 

George has been closely following the American election cycle, and he desperately wants the country to make a choice that not only can Americans be proud of, but one the world can respect as well. It’s the choice of Americans, but one for the world.