A presidential election without a mandate or a known winner
By WALTER R. MEARS
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Winning the White House is its own mandate, no matter the margin. But in the incredible presidential election of 2000, there was neither early Wednesday for George W. Bush or Al Gore. The voters renewed Republican control of Congress, but with a political lineup that will make it hard to lead the House and Senate on any clear course.
Gore conceded the election to Bush after the television networks projected the governor the winner in Florida, the pivotal state after a hair-breadth national count -- and then called back to rescind his concession as the GOP edge narrowed to about 1,200 votes.
"This race is too close to call," William Daley, the Gore chairman, told the vice president's supporters, standing in the rain in Nashville, shortly before 4 a.m. EST.
Nothing like it had happened in modern American politics. A recount in Florida was automatic, since Bush was less than 0.5 percentage point ahead of Gore. That meant Americans did not know who their next president will be, and didn't know when they will know.
With 97 million votes cast nationally, Bush and Gore were almost dead even, at 48 percent apiece.
The new Congress will be at least as narrowly controlled as the lame-duck Republican House and Senate that haven't yet finished their work for the election year.
All election night, Gore and Bush battled tantalizingly toward the 270 electoral votes needed to elect a president. Florida, where there remain absentee ballots to be counted along with the looming recount, will determine which man gets there.
Minor candidates, notably Ralph Nader, who cut into Gore's column in assorted states, were getting the rest.
But Nader was short of his aim, the 5 percent national share that would have earned his Green Party federal campaign funds in 2004.
The narrow verdicts of the past 40 years were eclipsed by this one. In 1968, Richard M. Nixon barely beat Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey by 0.7 percent of the vote. In 1960, John F. Kennedy defeated Nixon by 0.1 percent of the vote. But in both those cases, the Electoral College outcome was clear.
Still, presidents lead, with or without commanding mandates from the voters. It is easier with a landslide than with a narrow margin, but President Clinton was elected twice with less than 50 percent of the popular vote, coming to office in 1992 with 43 percent of the vote, as Nixon did in 1968.
Republicans renewed their control of the Senate, although by a margin narrowed a seat or two from the current 54 to 46.
The close majority is in a Senate in which it takes 60 votes to get much done, the margin required to prevent or silence the kind of mini-filibusters that have become standard procedure for opponents of almost any measure.
In House elections, Republicans saw their majority dwindling, but the Democrats were well short of the 8 seats it would have taken to put them in control.
So the only clear signal was that the nation is almost evenly divided in its political preferences, and that means a replay of the slender control that kept the House in ferment as its GOP leaders tried to deal -- or cope -- with Clinton.
A majority of voters interviewed outside their polling places said it is better for the nation to have a president and a Congress of the same party. Only one in 10 voters said they had split their House and presidential ballots.
But no matter which party is in charge, pushing an ambitious agenda through a nearly split Congress will be a formidable, perhaps impossible task.
That may not bother some voters. A majority said they think government is doing too many things that would better be left to businesses and individuals. Most of those voters said they'd supported Bush. Four out of 10 said government should be doing more to solve problems, and they went heavily for Gore.
In those exit polls, conducted by Voter News Service, an organization made up of the AP and the television networks, nearly one in five voters said they hadn't made their choices until the final week of the campaign, and among them, Gore had a solid lead over Bush.
And four in 10 voters said they had reservations about the candidate they had supported.
Clinton, in New York to vote for his wife for the Senate, said he was no lamer a duck now than before the balloting on his successor. "I'll just keep quacking," he said. "I've got another 10 weeks to quack."
He may do, and hear, a lot of it starting in a week, when the old Congress reconvenes to deal with unfinished appropriations and tax measures stalled in stalemate -- and Clinton veto -- between the Republicans and the White House.
They'll have to come to terms, but that gridlock could be a preview of problems the new president will confront. One measure that got through before Congress recessed was a $7.1 million appropriation to finance a transition office for the president-elect.
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Walter R. Mears has reported on Washington and national politics for The Associated Press for more than 35 years. |
