Vendit and All~Letter From America - Alistair Cooke It's a nine ring circus and you'll never be bored This is long, but worth the read, IMO....
news.bbc.co.uk
Monday, 4 December, 2000, 11:15 GMT
It's a nine ring circus and you'll never be bored
When I arrived on these shores for a second time, no longer as a visiting student but as a resident young, green, foreign correspondent - I went down to Baltimore, Maryland at the invitation of a great man, immensely famous in his day, but since his day was the 1920s and 30s he is quite forgotten.
His name is Henry L Mencken, better known as HL Mencken, son of an immigrant German cigar merchant.
He was the most influential American journalist of the 20th Century and I had the good fortune to know him because in the last of my two student years I'd been studying the American language from the books as she was being spoken and written about not least by Mr Mencken who was the living authority, having, at the end, written four incomparable volumes on the history and range of the English language as it had developed and changed in 300 years.
When I told Mencken that I was to be the second string to both the Washington and New York correspondents of an august British paper I carried away two remarks of his, one of which was a reassurance, the other a precious guideline which gave me a new pride in the word reporter.
"First," said Mencken, "in your time here as a correspondent you'll be appalled, delighted, outraged, charmed, disgusted but generally tickled pink at the antics of this lively democracy.
"But I'll tell you something: It's a nine ring circus and you'll never be bored."
Well in that he was right.
What I call his guideline was - I didn't realise it at the time - has remained a guiding light to me throughout my career.
"To the extent," Mencken pronounced, "that you're a Conservative reporter or a Liberal reporter, a Republican or Democratic reporter or a Socialist reporter, you are no reporter at all."
Later I translated Mencken's warning into a simple credo: The test of a good political reporter is, you don't know how he votes.
Well it's been a testing time indeed for a reporter because whereas in some countries the electoral stalemate might have been solved by a body - a commission, a judge, some disinterested person above the battle - so far no such saint has put in an appearance here.
Suits filed in county courts and then before the Florida Supreme Court, more suits - some now in a district court.
Every time you saw a new lawyer appear on television and noted the telltale initial in brackets - D for Democrat, R for Republican - you knew almost exactly what he was going to say.
Things were getting so tangled, so confusing and on the streets so bad tempered that it was a relief to hear that an appeal had been made to the supreme court - the United States Supreme Court.
But then thoughtful people began to ask: "What had the Supreme Court to do with it?"
The Supreme Court exists to interpret the Constitution if it sees a case in which the rights of an individual - not a state, not a corporation, not a family, not an act of Congress as such - only if an individual has been denied some Constitutional right.
Almost at once a very high-toned controversy got underway between constitutional scholars wondering if the Supreme Court had any right to step in here at all and other scholars and politicians reminding everybody that the Constitution clearly lays down that disputed elections shall be decided by the House of Representatives - each state having one vote.
"Ouch!" cries the most populous - California - knowing it gets only the same representation as the least populous, Wyoming.
By that rule the House would likely vote in automatic party fashion. So you know right away that the party prevailing in the House, which is now Republicans 222, Democrats 211, would vote in - guess who.
The general sense of disorder and legal mystery is compounded by the hundreds of young television reporters on 50-odd stations assigned to, as far as they're concerned, the story of a lifetime.
They end most brief reports by the reminder that this situation is unprecedented, unique in American history, heading to a Constitutional crisis and so on.
Well it's not unprecedented, it's not unique, it's so astonishingly close to the presidential election of 1876 that I believe, on hearing about it, you'll find yourself echoing that great sage Yogi Berra, the philosopher-baseball catcher: "It's déjà vu all over again."
Let me then this precedent unfold. 1876, the Civil War has been over for a decade, the country is in, believe me, an unprecedented turmoil.
Whole regions of the South and one entire state, governed by the blacks, who were then called negros, or carpet baggers from the North.
The railroad robber barons are stealing money from everybody who uses what somebody called "their confounded damned useful convenience".
Politics in both parties is rife with strife and corroded by corruption.
The marvel is that when the 1876 election year came around each party produced a candidate noted for - of all things - integrity and good manners.
The Republicans at their convention picked the governor of the Midwestern state of Ohio, cradle state of many presidents.
The Democrats chose the governor of New York, Samuel Tilden, a likeable man but also greatly recently admired by Republicans as well as his own party for having broken the power, but not taken away the swag, of the infamous Boss Tweed who controlled the Democratic Party.
Just over eight million people voted. Result? Tilden won by a popular majority of a quarter of a million - handsome indeed.
So how about the electoral college? Ah, the electors - well the time has come to try and say what was in the mind of the men who wrote the Constitution and invented the electors.
I think I should say right away an unpleasant fact which is barely if ever mentioned in American school books - the founders were not interested in founding a democracy.
In 17 weeks of debate the word was mentioned only once by George Washington quoting the scornful words of Governor Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts colony: "As a form of government, democracy among civil nations is accounted the meanest and the worst."
"Leading," George Washington reminded the founding fathers, "to factions" by which he meant political parties - another nasty innovation they did not mean to institute.
A republic - that's what they were after. And the presidency would be elected by influential men, which meant men of property.
And even though the vote was extended to many more men it would be well not to have the president elected "by direct vote of the people" - of the demos - too much risk there of electing a popular demagogue.
So they invented what they called the electoral college as what someone called "a refining chamber" - filter away the noise of the mob, the voice of demagoguery and find a civil responsible candidate.
Each state would choose as many electors as it had congressmen plus its two senators. Thus Vermont has three, California, today, 52 plus two senators.
These electors would be chosen by the legislature of each state. They must not be men in any public office.
A month or so after the election they would appear in their state capitals, write out their votes - which traditionally followed the popular vote in their own state but was not actually binding - and send them on to Washington.
After travelling over rutted 18th Century roads they'd get all the votes back to Washington by mid-December. Now they would be opened and tallied.
We have the same deadline today thought the internet could take care of it in 30 seconds.
In 1876 this is how it came out. For Governor Tilden of New York: 185 electoral votes. For Governor Hayes of Ohio: 184.
Now I read from a famous historian's account: "Hayes of course considered himself defeated but his supporters alleged irregularities - some said fraud, even crime - in three states: South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida. These abominations ought to be looked into.
"There was no provision in our Constitution for, and no legislation provided for, a settlement of such a dispute. There was much public excitement and threats of violence but the people behaved with remarkable moderation.
"Finally Congress passed an Act providing for a commission. The commission looked into the disputed points" and indeed beyond, and found that "incompetence, ignorance, fraud and corruption were rampant in many states."
The commission decided not to go any farther than the three disputed states.
They emerged and voting in Congress on strictly party lines voted Hayes to have 185 and the popular, victorious Tilden only 184.
Whereupon without pride or foolish boast Governor Hayes "reluctantly assumed the presidency" and Governor Tilden, bearing no recriminations or ill-feeling, retired to his house on Gramercy Park in New York City.
Let us hope and pray it will happen again in just that worthy fashion. |
