God,
I love this election.
I am serious here. If George Bush must win, as I think he ultimately
will (although, given what seems to be the incredible, unprecedented
clusterfuck that is the Florida election, this prediction seems
much more precarious than it was one day ago), best that he should
win like this: Without a mandate from the people. The vote of
the people, however narrowly, went to Gore; neither Bush nor the
GOP will be able to walk into office on the 20th of January saying
that the American people gave a vote of confidence to its platform.
This Bush administration will not be one of the people, by the
people, and for the people; it will be one of, by and for the
Electoral College, an institution that the vast majority of Americans
were only dimly aware of and understand haltingly at best.
The GOP majority in the house and senate are likewise shaved to
razor-thin majorities: Nine seats in the house and possibly no
seats in the Senate (where the GOP will remain in control thanks
to the fact that presumptive VP Cheney will cast tie-breaking
ballots). This is not a congress that will feel it has a mandate
to splotz down the wackier portions of the GOP agenda; to do so
will risk total loss of the congress to the Democrats in 2002.
As for the Democrats, well, they're not really in a position to
do much of anything, either, now are they. Their power is in opposition
-- the ability to stop the political process rather than initiate
it.
What
does this mean? You got it: Gridlock. Which is exactly what you
want in a situation like this. Look, folks: No one knows what
the fuck is going on anymore. If everyone's squabbling over
who gets to drive, shouldn't the vehicle be in park? For
the next two years at least, not much of anything is going to
get done that isn't effectively wholly and completely straight
down the middle of the road. No wacky crap from the left or right
-- not from the left because they have no procedural power, not
from the right because they have no popular base of power. It's
the Eggshell Era. During the election, Bush bragged about how
he worked to bring both sides together to get things done. Well,
that's good, because now he's not going to have a choice.
But
this is good. Personally, of course, I think it's good
because I don't want Bush as President, so the less effective
power he has the better. But in the larger sense that I don't
think the majority of the American people, whether they voted
for Bush or Gore, want the boat rocked at all. Notwithstanding
the current electoral angst, we're happy, prosperous and optimistic;
we can debate all we want as to who gets the credit for that,
but the point is that almost all of us don't want anything to
mess with the good thing we've got going. That's the mandate
in this election: Don't Touch Anything. If the only thing that
gets done in the next two years is that nothing gets terribly
screwed up, that's going to be fine with almost all of us.
***
The
question now becomes who do you feel sorry for more: Gore
or Bush? I'm going with Bush. Gore is likely to lose, even though
he carried the popular vote, but Bush is likely to win,
even though more Americans voted for the other guy -- he effectively
walks into office with a vote of "no confidence." Which is not
how you want to begin your run leading the most powerful nation
in the entire history of the world. Bush will start his
run as a lame duck President.
I
was (and, oh, trust me, am) doubtful of Bush's competence
to be President under the most advantageous of situations for
him, which would have been him and his policies clearing the table
in terms of popular and electoral votes, a congress stuffed with
GOP lackeys, and a wide open path to the White House. I am wholly
unconvinced he has what it takes to deal with a dumbstruck populace,
a paper-thin congressional majority, and an opposition party that
feels, not wholly unreasonably, that this presidential election
was taken from it based on an electoral asterisk. Are the Democrats
going to be hostile? Oh, my, yes -- and they'll be able
to get away with it for a while.
Bush
is going to get fried. His vaunted bipartisan pragmaticism is
based on a strong party base and a weak governorship in one of
the least governed states in the country -- a state whose legislature
meets only a few months every couple of years. The federal
government, for better or worse, meets a lot more often than that.
And Bush has no popular base as President. He's screwed.
Also,
it's important that an American President is perceived worldwise
as in power and in control. If the US freaks out, the world freaks
out in sympathetic resonance. That's what you get when you're
the superpower of the world. But Bush's foreign relation problems
are bound to be juiced by the perception that he's not in control
of his own country. It's going to be another strike against him.
On this matter, at least, I fall squarely for Bush: If ever there
is to be an administration where the adage "politics stops at
the water's edge"is true, it's going to have to be this one.
Let
me make this clear: I would not wish Bush ill as President. If
Bush can handle all of this and still manage to be an adequate
President, well, then, God bless him. Right now, though, I feel
sorry for the man. This is a Monkey's Paw Presidency. Bush may
get what he wanted, but I can't help but feeling that he may have
cause to regret the nature in which it was achieved.
***
As
for this whole Electoral College thing, I'm going to refer
to last night's episode of "The West Wing" which featured an unusually
resonant comment, given our present circumstances, by its President
Bartlett. He noted that for all our talk about being a democracy,
what we really are is a republic; the people don't vote
directly, they vote for people to vote for them. And this is true.
We're not a direct democracy, nor have we ever been, and that
includes our Presidential elections.
Is
this a bad thing? No. In a direct democracy, sheer numbers rule
the day, and sheer numbers aren't in the best interests of minorities,
whatever those minorites might be. The way we slice up our county,
in terms of states, districts and so on at least attempts
to recognize the idea that the interests of, say, gay men in South
Florida, aren't going to be served by, say, Mormons in Utah, whose
own interests are not likely to be well-served by the eight million
inhabitants of New York City. We are not a homogenous nation and
we weren't even in the 1700s when anyone who could vote was white,
male, and owned land.
There's another matter that people tend to forget, which is that
the founders didn't actually design our Constitutional power-sharing
arrangements with the people in mind; they created it with the
states in mind. Recall that the founders were trying to bind together
13 disparate colonies in a single unified country. They had to
bend over backwards to ensure that each of these colonies felt
that it was a good deal to surrender its own sovereignty to join
the union. The Electoral College is an artifact of that; a way
to ensure that states were adequately represented in the
election of their nation's chief executive. As for the people,
well, hell. Most states didn't even bother with direct
election of presidential electors for decades.
In
Presidential elections, states are still paramount, and all things
considered, it's not a bad way for things to run. States themselves
are disparate entities, but the citizens within them are all bound
under the same laws and the same general political situation.
It makes far more sense for states and their people to speak,
thus recognizing the differences in outlook and interests of these
incredibly important political entities, than to open the Presidential
election to the popular vote and have minorities of any sort lose
their chance to make a difference.
Now,
I'm not a strict constitutionalist, and I never have been, but
I do strongly feel that you don't futz with the Constitution unless
there's a compelling reason to do so. This Presidential election
does not reach that level. Yes, a lot of people are going to be
disappointed that Gore, the winner of the popular vote, won't
be President -- Hell, I'm disappointed, you know. Like,
a lot. But, and this is important: If Bush wins, he wins
Constitutionally. He did what was required of him. I'm disappointed,
but I don't feel cheated. Nor should anyone else that actually
bothers to understand their political system. I mean, come on,
people. All of this was covered in the eighth grade. You can't
hold Dubya responsible if you haven't been paying attention.
The
day after we received this column, John fired another column
off to us. Rather than take this one down after only one day,
we're going to leave it up a little longer and tell you to go
read his latest
column.
John
Scalzi can be reached at
jmsdk200@scalzi.com
To
find out more about John Scalzi, visit his website at http://www.scalzi.com
