Source. NY Times.

LONG before I came to the United States, I was fascinated by the American electoral process. I grew up in Pakistan in the 1980s, during the brutally repressive military dictatorship of President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, when fear crushed hope.

Finding old copies of Time magazine in my school library, I learned about primaries and presidential debates — something almost unimaginable in Pakistan at the time. I had a favorite board game where the players’ mission was to become the American president. I watched snippets of news, of the Bush-Dukakis race in 1988 and the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates four years later, that we got on our only TV channel. I missed a lot of the nuances, but I developed a deep admiration for the idea that a campaign had to present a vision that people cared about. You had to talk about a better future, and there was a strong undercurrent of hope.

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