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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (8778)	12/12/2000 9:23:58 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 10042

washingtonpost.com Self-Inflicted Wound By Robert J. Samuelson Tuesday, December 12, 2000; Page A47 Until recently I had regarded the prolonged contest for the presidency as the ideal news story. It was a daily melodrama that repeatedly plumbed new depths of human pettiness. If the spectacle reflected poorly on everyone, it was engrossing and entertaining. Better yet, it did not involve any small or large tragedy. People weren't dying, children weren't starving. Sooner or later, someone would win. The loser and his supporters would experience disappointment, not genuine suffering. The country would move on. The adverse impact on American society, I thought, would be modest. But things have changed. The central question is no longer who gains the White House but how this brawl affects public opinion. The latest twists and turns--the Florida Supreme Court's 4 to 3 decision ordering new recounts and the U.S. Supreme Court's 5 to 4 stay of the recounts--are several twists and turns too many. I do not say this because the rulings favor either Bush or Gore. Given my large reservations about both, I am indifferent to which prevails. But the struggle has now risen to a level of intensity and absurdity that threatens lasting damage. People talk about a "constitutional crisis" or a cloud over the "legitimacy" of the next president. Perhaps these unsavory possibilities will occur; I don't know. Regardless, what I fear is something less identifiable and more corrosive--a spreading contempt for national leaders of both parties; a growing belief that no one in a position of power (including a judge or Supreme Court justice) can rise above partisan and personal preferences to defend some larger concept of national interest. Almost everyone who has touched this struggle has been cheapened by it. No one will ever regard Warren Christopher or James Baker (both ex-secretaries of state) as wise men. They are merely aging political gunslingers. The narrowness of the decisions by the Florida and U.S. Supreme courts leave the impression that, despite the high-minded legal justifications, the rulings simply veil individual or party choice. Of course, intense political partisans on both sides now regard the other as having tried to "steal" the election through legal or administrative maneuvers. Although one side will win, both will retain bitter memories. But the larger problem is the effect on mild partisans and independents. They may well conclude that their opinion of the nation's political leaders, however low, was too high. This struggle mainly involves personal ambition. Few great principles separate Bush and Gore. Each has a tax plan, a Medicare drug plan, an education plan. The differences involve details which are bound--given the closeness of the new Congress--to be narrowed. But both Bush and Gore want to be the nation's CEO, and each would grasp at any legal device to reach his goal. To many Americans, the very relentlessness of their personal pursuit--to the exclusion of larger interests--proves that neither deserves to be president. From the start, the close Florida vote required a political solution. The problem was not simply to determine who won but to arrive at the result through a process--some sort of evenhanded recount--that supporters of the loser would regard as fair. What ballots were to be counted? By what standard? The decisive arena was public opinion. If Bush had won the popular vote nationally, his moral claim to Florida would have been stronger. If Gore had shown voting fraud (not just uncertain ballots), his demand for large-scale recounts would have been stronger. Some process had to reassure average Americans. It was always an illusion to think that the courts could satisfy public opinion. The adversarial system meant the courts were bound to favor one side or the other. The recount procedure had to come from a negotiation between the Bush and Gore camps; and both would have had to bless the procedure, which the courts could have implemented. This might have happened in the first week after the election. It would have represented high politics: resolving social conflicts through compromise. It didn't happen. Gore made a feint in this direction, mostly as a public relations gesture. Bush rejected it. Having missed their opportunity, Bush and Gore transformed the dispute into a national crisis. The Supreme Court may end the fight, but it cannot provide a resolution. Doubts and resentments will remain. This wound is self-inflicted. It is a triumph of low politics: winning at all costs. No one can know the ultimate consequences. It is said that Americans have much patience and common sense, that they have a deep faith in democratic values and that the system has weathered far graver lapses. Here, we're told, lie the real defenses against the frailties of human nature and the demons of ambition. All true. But it is also true that the system requires popular respect, and this has been needlessly wasted. © 2000 The Washington Post Company