DAY 12: America Held Hostage:
[Finally some reasonable commentary]
November 18, 2000
JOURNAL
May the Best Man Lose
By FRANK RICH
The Gods of Bloviation have spoken. It's
the Florida Fiasco. It's thisclose to a
Constitutional Crisis. Maybe, declared ABC's
Cokie Roberts last Sunday, it's "the most
partisan time that we have seen in our lives."
Or, as the Dean of D.C., David Broder,
sermonized, "This nation has rarely appeared
more divided than it does right now."
Oh, please. A more partisan time than the impeachment of less than two
years ago? A more divided America than that of Vietnam or even the
Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings? Then why has just about
everybody except Al Gore, George W. Bush and their fiercest partisans
had so much fun?
Whatever else may be the legacy of the Clinton years, one thing is
certain: The disconnect lives on. The apocalyptic shrillness generated by
the Washington establishment, and amplified 24/7 by TV's latest media
thon, is utterly askew from the mood in the country. As the talking heads
were shocked by polls revealing that Americans didn't want Bill Clinton
sent packing at the height of Monicagate, so they were taken aback by
polls revealing that the benighted citizenry has the patience to wait out a
deadlocked election.
The reason for this national equanimity is obvious. Collectively Mr. Gore
and Mr. Bush have succeeded in uniting the country in exactly one
bipartisan belief — that neither of them deserves to be president. The
election result, a tie, was the perfect, indeed patriotic outcome to the
cynical, scripted campaign they both ran: Let them both lose. And now,
thanks to the political, legal and media histrionics of the post-election
campaign, our unspoken wish has come true. Both will lose — no matter
who is the nominal winner.
Even were the entire country able to conduct a "re-vote" of the election,
it's hard to imagine vastly different results. Since Nov. 7, both candidates
have only ratified the voters' judgment that neither man is deserving of a
mandate or capable of rising above his considerable limitations.
Mr. Gore's public protestation that what he is "focused on" is "not the
contest, but our democracy" offers yet further confirmation of his
unctuous disingenuousness. (And who but Mr. Gore would ostentatiously
pay a visit to the movie "Men of Honor" when trying to prove he is one?)
Mr. Bush, who chose to start a transition while ballots were still being
counted and then hid for days behind the heavily pomaded visage of
Daddy's old consigliere James Baker, is still the entitled rich kid who
relies on family retainers and old-boy connections to carry him through a
crisis. But as Mr. Gore's touch-football photo op didn't turn him into a
Kennedy, neither did Mr. Bush's facial bandage transform him into John
McCain. These guys are interim leaders for an interim age, and all the
recounts in the world are not going to alter either's DNA.
This is why voter turnout was what the election expert Curtis Gans
characterized as "very low," despite the buckets of money spent and the
widespread expectation of a historic photo finish in which every vote
might count. As late as Election Eve, Harvard's Vanishing Voter measure
of "voter involvement" in the election stood at 50 percent, with 48
percent deeming the race "boring."
The only antidote to the boredom was the merciful departure of the
candidates from center stage. Once they did exit, on Election Night,
America tuned in. The TV audience for the returns jumped 63 percent
from four years ago — even clearing the crucial cultural threshold of
outnumbering the audience for the final episode of "Survivor." Within
days, the Vanishing Voter involvement index skyrocketed to 73 percent,
with only 17 percent declaring themselves bored. "This is better than the
Subway Series," one New York voter told The Washington Post — and
he's right. What makes it better is that the election now has become an
extra-inning sports event being played by ever-changing rules more
complicated than those of championship bridge. At last we have the
Olympics competition we were deprived of in the fall, being played out in
real time.
Like a post-season sports competition, the post-election is not a fierce
partisan civil war so much as a nearly substance-free battle over the
single, non-ideological issue of who will win and who will lose. What else
is at stake here? Not a civil rights debate, or the prosecution of a war, or
the prosecution of a president, or even the ascendancy of liberalism or
conservatism. In the gridlocked, divided Congress at hand, Mr. Bush
isn't going to be able to bring off a mammoth tax cut or appoint a new
Justice Thomas; Mr. Gore won't be able to bloat entitlements. If this is a
partisan fight deeply dividing a nation, as our pundits purport, it's all form
and no content. Instead of the Blue vs. the Gray, we have a
scorched-earth war between two prescription-drug plans.
Another cliché of the moment has it that, whatever else is happening, we
are at least witnessing a fine civics lesson that will benefit the nation's
callow youth. Well, everyone now knows what the Electoral College is,
but beyond that lies P.R. and legal wrangling more redolent of a
class-action lawsuit than the Continental Congress. When the
Republicans start championing federal authority and the Democrats the
autonomy of the states, it's clear that there are no principles at stake
beyond those of Vince Lombardi.
For all the self-congratulatory talk about our civics lesson, the one real
civic crisis to emerge from Decision 2000 is played down on TV: the
erroneous manipulation of the public by false and premature predictions
on Election Night. The stampede to award Mr. Bush Florida — and the
presidency — began on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel at 2:16
a.m. and was uncannily echoed by all the other networks in the ensuing
four minutes. Thanks to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, we now know
how the Fox call setting off this avalanche was engineered in part by John
Ellis, a Bush first cousin in charge of the we-report-you-decide network's
prediction desk. Billy Tauzin, a Republican from Louisiana, is calling for
Congressional hearings on the entire panoply of network behavior of
Nov. 7. This could be the best Congressional circus of its genre since
Charles Van Doren starred in the game-show investigations of the 50's.
It may certainly prove more scintillating than what appears to be the
election's litigious endgame. Tedium is the great leveler in America's news
epics, and in the past 48 hours you could feel the nation putting itself to
sleep by counting Florida judges. By Wednesday night MSNBC was so
desperate to find partisan clowns other than the omnipresent
camera-hog-without-portfolio Alan Simpson that it dug up former
Senator Dennis DeConcini, a long-departed Arizona Democrat, and the
cryogenically preserved Steve Forbes. By Thursday my local NBC
affiliate was trying to hold viewers with stories like "Learn why Cher
refused to take part in Jesse Jackson's protest!" and by yesterday
MSNBC had added what soon proved to be a gratuitous
absentee-ballot countdown clock, a perfect segue into today's real sports
event in Tallahassee, the Florida-Florida State game.
This is going to play out on television for the entire next four years," said
NBC's Tim Russert. Not when the ratings tank. Unlike the impeachment
mediathon, this one lacks the crucial crowd-pleasing element of sex.
Whatever the election's outcome, the result is likely to be the same
anyway. If Mr. Bush wins, especially without taking the popular vote, the
Democrats will delegitimize the election in any way they can, taking
particular delight in pursuing that Sunshine State Evita, Katherine Harris
— a political gift who will keep on giving. Should Mr. Gore win, that old
band of Vincent Foster conspiracy theorists will reunite to target Palm
Beach County Commissioner Carol Roberts and the rest of her chad-
counters; Dan Burton will lead the investigation into what The Wall Street
Journal has already labeled an attempted Democratic coup d'état. Two
years from now, the party that controls the White House is likely to lose
untold seats in Congress as well, frustrating the "winning" president's
ability to govern even further. If an economic downturn is thrown into the
mix, the president who presides over it may find himself and his party
consigned to long- term political oblivion.
This is one year when it's probably better to be a sore loser than a sore
winner. But such is the narrow vision of both contenders that they may be
the last people in America to figure that out.
nytimes.com |
