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Election Blues

There\'s a dull witticism abroad: If in fact the election was stolen, the thief should be indicted for a misdemeanor rather than a felony. That follows from the value of that which was stolen -- i.e., the government.
[additional-authors]
December 7, 2000

There’s a dull witticism abroad: If in fact the election was stolen, the thief should be indicted for a misdemeanor rather than a felony. That follows from the value of that which was stolen — i.e., the government.

Alas, that’s not true. Yes, the Congress is divided nearly down the middle, with Republicans holding a nine-seat majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate (presuming a Bush victory) divided 50-50. Yes, there’s a cloud over the presidency that is likely to linger for quite some time, absent some galvanizing national crisis.

But now come the hard parts:

  1. Assume legislative gridlock. But do not assume that in consequence of the gridlock, nothing major will happen. As the late political scientist Herman Finer once wrote, “politics has slain its thousands — administration its tens of thousands.”

    Very much of what government does it does not by way of law-making but by way of rule- and regulation-making, and still more, perhaps, by way of personnel appointments.

    The visible managers of the federal government may be reasonable middle-of-the-roaders, but all those “faceless bureaucrats” we so love to excoriate do, indeed, make policy.

    The “little” things that are their daily agendas, those things to which so few of us can or do pay attention — Medicaid regulations, for example — add up to major differences in the lives of many Americans, and especially those Americans most dependent on government for their basic needs.

    And then, of course, there are the “big” things, such as the environment and foreign policy, where the president’s people have substantial scope for policy-making largely untethered by the legislative process.

  2. But doesn’t the composition of Congress create the possibility of a genuine bipartisanship, a move towards the center?

    Be wary of such talk. It may happen, but it will not necessarily be a good thing, not at all.

    Ralph Nader notwithstanding, the reason we have two political parties is that there are significant and sometimes even profound differences between the two. Congress cannot simply decide, at last, to do “what’s good for America,” since neither the American people nor the members of Congress are of one mind regarding what’s good for America.

    The sad truth is that there are more conservative Democrats than there are liberal Republicans, and it is therefore easier to put together a congressional majority behind conservative policies than it is to pass progressive legislation.

    But because such policies will be backed by people from both parties, they will have the appearance of consensual compromise. Not so.

    Take, for example, the food stamp and child health care programs, both of which must be reauthorized by Congress in 2002. It is entirely possible that, in concert with conservative Democrats, the Republican majority will successfully argue that these programs should be transformed from entitlements into block grants to the states, thereby dramatically reducing the aid that reaches the people for whom the programs are ostensibly intended.

    Formally, such a “reform” will be done in the name of bipartisan compromise. In fact, it will be a victory for the newly emboldened Republican party, now in control of all three branches of government for the first time in 50 years.

    Better, then, to highlight the differences and engage in vigorous debate than to hide behind the soporific slogan of bipartisanship.

  3. The good news of this election — yes, there really is good news — is that suddenly there are 13 women in the Senate of the United States: 10 Democrats, three Republicans.

    It’s not possible to know just where the “tipping point” is, that magic number following which the dam really bursts, but we seem to be getting there — getting, that is, to the time when women will finally share routinely in the leadership of the nation.

  4. The bad news of this election, the brutally sobering news, is that the man who surely received the most votes — not only in the nation but also in Florida — ran such a wretched campaign that in the end, the best thing one could say of him is that he was not George W. Bush.

    And, given George W. Bush, that is not much of a compliment.

  5. A Bush presidency, if that is how (as now seems likely) this mess is finally resolved, poses a variety of threats. Perhaps the most sinister is that Bush is seriously lazy, and that while he is busy taking it easy, Tom DeLay and Dick Armey and Trent Lott will have considerable running room.

    The folks most threatened by that prospect are the working poor, the most significant left-behind sector in America today. The Children’s Health Insurance Program, for example, makes an enormous difference to such people, yet it is precisely the kind of program that is likely to suffer at the hands of a (Republican) single-party government.

    Only a handful of states are likely on their own, without continuing and expanded funding from the federal government, to persist in searching out the families eligible for participation.

    And the translation of the sterile budget figures into the lives and welfare of millions of children in our nation is quite direct. Indeed, the budget figures should never be read as mere numbers. They are the practical expression of the values we cherish.

    And the great irony of American politics today is precisely that the party that broadcasts its commitment to family values at every turn quite regularly turns its back against the families it professes to value.

Leonard Fein is a Boston based writer.

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