Nothing instills credibility like conceding defeat. As Al Gore
proved after his 2000 concession speech, there’s something lovable
about a loser.

This even applies to undemocratic rulers, who have a lot to lose
from winning elections. Consider two wannabe tyrants — Venezuela’s
Hugo Chavez and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — who emerged from
national elections this past week. The victory of Putin’s United
Russia party only underscored Putin’s illegitimacy, whereas
Chavez’s narrow defeat achieved just the opposite effect.

Losing the constitutional referendum allowed Chavez to win in
the world court of public opinion. Even skeptics took delight in
seeing that freedom isn’t totally dead in Chavez country. President
Bush said Venezuelans had made “a very strong vote for democracy,”
which is an important admission: it acknowledges they had the
freedom to choose it.

Had it passed, the constitutional referendum would have allowed
Chavez to serve as president for life, declare arbitrary and
indefinite states of emergency, ban human rights groups, and build
a society based on “socialist, anti-imperialist principles” —
traditional components in anti-American repression.

Chavez framed the election in nationalist terms. “Whoever votes
‘yes’ is voting for Chavez,” said Chavez, “and whoever votes ‘no’
is voting for George W. Bush.” By a (supposedly) narrow margin,
Venezuelans chose the latter. Like the Russians who inexplicably
chant “Rocky” at the end of Rocky IV, Venezuelans opted
for an American devil over a homegrown savior. Indeed, Chavez was
“humiliated by his own people,” said the Daily Telegraph.

Paradoxically, this humiliation has gained him newfound
respectability. “He proved his democratic credentials by accepting
an electoral defeat,” said Bart Jones, author of Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to
Perpetual Revolution. Losing gives Chavez something no
victory could have possibly bestowed: a sense of legitimacy. He
somehow would have seemed less authentic had he won, because
dictators always win. By admitting defeat, Chávez
proves that democracy still exists in Venezuela and thereby
mitigates concerns about his authoritarian designs. “There is no
dictatorship here,” he can now boast.

As Chavez’s defeat generated sighs of relief, Putin’s triumph
brought gasps of despair. The West reacted to Russia’s
parliamentary elections with heightened distrust of Russian
“managed democracy.”

Though Putin has ruled out serving a third presidential term, he
says the win gives him the “moral right” to serve indefinitely as
Russia’s de facto leader, as “father of the nation.” Putin is a
popular figure in Russia, which makes it even weirder that he would
rig the elections in his party’s favor.

Things happened in Russia that just don’t happen in normal
democracies. In Chechnya, voter turnout was a mind-boggling 99.5%
(578,039 out of 580,918 registered voters participated). Numbers
like these are unthinkable in America; such political absolutism is
typically only found in the lands of the unfree. Lilia Shibanova,
head of the only independent Russian vote-monitoring group,
said the high turnout numbers “only show that
electoral laws were violated.”

Western governments are similarly skeptical. “The election was
not fair and failed to meet standards for democratic elections,”
concluded the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
and the Council of Europe in a joint statement. A German government
spokesman said flatly, “Russia is not a democracy. The elections
were not free, not fair and not democratic.” The results, said the
Czech Foreign Ministry, “will always cast a shadow over the future
lineup of the Russian parliament.” Translation: the Russian
government is illegitimate. See what winning does for you?

Dimwitted despots are convinced that holding and winning an
election or two is all it takes to earn a pass from the West. But
if you look at the record, their subterfuges rarely succeed.

In October 2002, Iraq held an election. The ballot contained
only one question: “Do you agree with Saddam Hussein’s continued
rule?” Of the 11,445,636 eligible voters, every single one of them
voted “yes” — a minor improvement over the 1995 election, when the
Iraqi leader received a meager 99.96% of the vote. So sure of the
outcome were the Iraqi authorities, they declared the day a
national holiday even before all the votes were tallied.

The ploy failed — badly. White House press secretary Ari
Fleischer said it was “not a very serious vote, and nobody places
any credibility on it.” “It is not even worthy of our ridicule,”
added State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Sure it is, especially when you consider the explanations given
for Saddam’s landslide. “Someone who does not know the Iraqi people
will not believe this percentage, but it is real,” argued Izzat
Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council.
“Whether it looks that way to someone or not, we don’t have
opposition in Iraq.” Of course, this claim had the plausibility
rating of a Baghdad Bob horoscope.

“This is a unique manifestation of democracy, which is superior
to all other forms of democracy,” asserted Ibrahim.

There’s nothing unique about dictatorships masquerading as
democracies. When elections were held in North Korea in 1962, the
reigning Workers’ Party won by a 100% vote. Even in its less
menacing forms, this kind of nouveau riche democracy — where
everyone participates, as an act of national braggadocio (“Hey,
look at us!”), and everyone agrees — is the antithesis of
democracy. Dictators know they have to feign popular support to
maintain any sense of legitimacy. However, their mistake is in
overachieving; they fail by succeeding too much. They think the
greater the number of votes supporting them, the more conclusive
the evidence of democracy and therefore of their legitimacy. But
the truth is just the opposite.

Voter neglect is a sign of democratic health. Not caring about
politics doesn’t mean the system is broken; usually, it indicates
things are just fine.

A key ingredient in democracy is imperfection. Real existing
democracies don’t (and can’t) produce the sort of unanimity that
dictatorships can achieve through force and intimidation. As a
result, huge victories can dispel a ruler’s legitimacy more than a
narrow defeat ever could. The only thing worse than losing a rigged
election is winning one.

Some advice for dictators: Try losing. It will do wonders for
your image.