Elections and the Governing of America

First Quarter 2001

The sometimes fascinating, sometimes troubling, long, drawn-out, overtime period of the 2000 presidential election forced Americans to learn much that we had forgotten or never learned about our electoral system. It was as if we were walking through the Smithsonian museum, looking at old and forgotten relics, only to discover that they are the functioning elements of the world in which we live. Surely the history-making drama was a constructive civics lesson.

At the same time, however, the delayed conclusion to the election exposed grievous weaknesses in our civic consciousness and in the connection between elections and the governing process. Despite everything we learned, we, "the people," may be as out of touch with political reality today as we were with the Electoral College before November 7. What are the signs of this grievous weakness?

Missing the Real Purpose of Elections?

The purpose of elections is to allow citizens to choose representatives to govern. Yet the long presidential campaign and the extended post-election dispute showed just how much our electoral process has been reduced to something like a professional sport's season. The goal of an election now appears to be mostly about who wins. Different investors have huge stakes in the "horses" they enter or back in the race. Governing in the public interest may or may not follow the election, but what does that matter?

For weeks after November 7, tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by the media, the campaigns (mostly on attorneys), election officials, and the courts, trying to win or to decide who won. During that time, the old Congress and president could not even finish work on last year's budget appropriations bills, which should have been signed into law by October. Not many of those who have commented on the governing prospects of the new Congress and president are optimistic about avoiding gridlock and bitter conflicts.

Perhaps even more significant for the future of our republic is the fact that almost no thought was given nor money paid to try to figure out why half (probably 48 percent) of those eligible to vote November 7 did not do so. Talk about wasted "votes"! Our new president is supposed to represent all Americans. Yet the winner won less than half of the votes cast by only half of the eligible electorate. In other words, only one quarter of the eligible voters elected the president and not all of them voted enthusiastically for him.

If we have a crisis in our electoral system, it is not because some punch-card voting machines are less than perfect or because the Electoral College can choose a president who failed to win the national popular vote. Those may be defects in our system that should be changed. But they are minor compared to all the pre-discarded or ignored "votes" of those who never entered the voting booth to participate in the sport.

What do elections mean when representatives, including the president, are chosen by so few voters? How strong can democratic government be when the outcome of elections and post-election governance is determined less by voters than by the relatively few who fund the campaigns, bet on the horses, and employ interest-group lobbyists year round. Some of our states and counties may need new voting machines, but much more serious than that is the need for changes in the electoral system to engage more voters, to connect citizens more closely with their representatives, and to lead to more accountable government. What we need is more focus on governing for the public good and less on high-priced horse races.

Cultural and Political Divides

Al Gore and George W. Bush both ran campaigns so close to the middle of American politics that a voter might have imagined that either man would have been equally able to represent all Americans. Why, then, did both men persist in the expensive, drawn-out fight to the judicial finish after November 8 rather than concede to the other for the good of the country? Will the United States win or lose as a result of such litigiousness?

Both Bush and Gore realized that they could not win by running strong to their conservative (Bush's) or liberal (Gore's) extreme wings as Barry Goldwater (1964) and George McGovern (1968) tried to do. Yet their move toward the center did not necessarily mean (or convince the voters) that the two candidates were alike in their moderation. Pro-life voters did not mistake Gore for a moderate. Pro-welfare-state liberals did not mistake Bush for a moderate. Thus, in many ways the "centrist" campaigns of the two presidential candidates were tactical maneuvers, designed to gain a victory from a minimum number of voters. But such tactics contributed to the heightening of tensions, because neither man was able to convince the public that he could really represent all of them.

If this pattern continues, elections will increasingly have less and less to do with genuine public debate over different policy agendas. Instead, campaigns will focus more and more on perfecting the art of winning in order for the victor to gain the spoils (rather than the responsibility) of the office. This trend will push social, economic, political, and cultural differences further underground or onto talk shows, leaving citizens with an ever weakening sense of how politics and government are related to the rest of their lives. This is part of what causes the popular feeling of alienation from government and disinterest in public debates and election campaigns. If elections do not give citizens a strong sense of being represented, then the outcome of elections will not give them confidence in government.

Alienation from government was exposed particularly by the Black vote. African-Americans voted 80-90 percent Democrat, an extreme greater than any other divide in the country. Splits between men and women, between urban and suburban, between white and Hispanic, between old and young came nowhere near that percentage. Why is it that Clinton's and Gore's strong approval rating among Blacks has not, after eight years, translated into Black confidence in American government generally, but only in Democrats? Is it comparable to the strong support of pro-lifers for Republicans but not for government generally, because the pro-lifers cannot trust a government that continues to uphold abortion? If so, what is it about the existing laws and patterns of governance that leave so many African-Americans alienated from public life despite increasing rates of Black employment, growing numbers of Blacks in elected offices, and the popularity of President Clinton? If Gore had become president, would Blacks have gained so much? With a Bush presidency, will Blacks lose so much?

Surely, these cultural divides and alienations are among the most important questions that we Americans must answer. Yet they are questions about representation and governance, not about horse races.

Out of Touch With the World?

Finally, we must ask: After a two-year long election campaign, have Americans gained any better insight into the shrinking world in which we bear responsibilities? Unfortunately, throughout the post-election disputes over the outcome in Florida, American parochialism and ignorance continued to be on display. For all our talk about America being the greatest democracy in the world and wanting every vote to count, the major media gave almost no comparative attention to elections and electoral systems in other democracies. Hour after hour of media time was focused on how to read chad leaves. By contrast, only a few minutes were given to the Canadian election. Yet we would all have been enriched by commentary on why Canada's entire election campaign took only five weeks—just FIVE WEEKS—the amount of time our candidates spent just protesting and contesting the Florida vote?

Imagine what we might learn about other voting systems, other campaign-finance systems, and other electoral systems and forms of democratic representation, if only we would take time to find out. Think of the educational enrichment if CNN, Fox, CBS, and other broadcasters had taken 10 minutes a day, out of the hundreds of hours dedicated to the Florida count, to interview officials, politicians, and voters in other countries to gain some comparative perspective on our system and to learn more about our neighbors around the world?

This is just one more sign of our myopia, if not blindness, with regard to most of what happens beyond our borders when it does not concern our immediate security or economic prosperity. This too is dangerous, because the short term is not the long term. During the relatively brief period of contention over the Florida count, for example, major developments with significant long-term impact were hardly noticed. (1) A meeting in The Hague of officials from almost every country in the world failed to conclude an important global environmental agreement; (2) U.S. savings rates fell to their lowest level ever recorded; (3) U.S. trade deficits remained huge; (4) violence and instability in Israel/Palestine increased dramatically; and (5) states in the European Union held a major summit on the structure and future direction of their union.

What does all of this mean? Where do we expect and want our leaders—our new president and Congress—to lead us? With the counting and recounting behind us, and after a new president is finally inaugurated, it will be tragic if the outcome is nothing more than continuing gridlock and infighting in Washington? It's time for citizens to wake up. Election campaigns should direct our attention to the governing of the United States and to its conduct in the world. Sports seasons come and go. Games are won and lost. But American elections should amount to more than a horse race.

—The Editors