Gridlock and its discontents

It's fitting that our long national whine ends in Florida -- the home state of Elián fanatics, suburban sprawl, rednecks, self-obsessed geezers, and overseas military personnel who vote by absentee ballot

by Seth Gitell

You reap what you sow. The millions of uninformed voters, undecided until the end, have elected a president (we just don't know who yet) without a mandate, a president who will be forced to fight this election long after the ballots have been recounted.

You can't blame party activists for this ugly spectacle. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted in lockstep for their respective candidates: in the end, these voters knew that party labels matter. The vast swath of undecided voters -- those who whined on national television that they couldn't make out the difference between the two candidates' plans for Social Security -- have given us this: an election that won't be decided for days, with the very real possibility that Bush could win the electoral vote with Gore capturing the popular vote (by about a quarter-million votes).

But don't let this last blast of adrenaline fool you. Despite the last-minute, edge-of-your-seat excitement, the reality is that Campaign 2000 sucked, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. It will be days before we know who's won, and there'll be weeks of post-election recriminations after that. Already there is talk of litigation over 3500 disputed votes in Palm Beach. The losing party will strive to strip the winner's legitimacy. Either way, there will be no mandate. In other words, the winner will spend his first year in office defending his victory.

Even though many people, including me, have compared the 2000 election to the Kennedy-Nixon nail-biter of 1960, the true comparison is with the stultifying contests of the late 19th century -- contests that produced such do-nothing presidents as Rutherford B. Hayes (himself the product of a disputed election) and Benjamin Harrison (a president's grandson who won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote). For that, nearly everyone has been pinning blame on the candidates, Governor George W. Bush and Vice-President Al Gore. But that's not accurate. Let's put the blame where it belongs: on the lazy voting public.

Let's face it -- uninformed and undecided voters drove the battle plans of each campaign. Karl Rove of Team Bush and Bob Shrum of Team Gore built their campaigns around voters who were incapable of picking up on the subtleties of arguments about Bush's tax plan

or Gore's attempts at medical reform. These were the people -- the majority of voters -- who viewed the election as Christmas in November: tax cuts, prescription-drug subsidies, increased Social Security benefits, tuition tax credits, school vouchers, universal pre-school programs, more money for teachers. Since September, the Bush campaign has kept ruthlessly on message, declining interviews with journalists in favor of lighthearted appearances on entertainment shows like Letterman.

IT'S HARD to believe now, but there was a time when I actually looked forward to covering the presidential election. I used to work in Washington, where I pounded out stories about American foreign policy and the Middle East while other reporters raced around town chasing after Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp. After delving into the extraordinary foreign-policy failings of the Clinton White House -- the broken promises ("We have a war on terrorism"), the winks (giving the green light to trade with Iran while officially forbidding it), and the nods (providing billions in aid to Russia as it spread nuclear technology around the globe) -- I hoped that the next election season would put some of these issues on the table.

I thought that Campaign 2000 would surely entail a thorough examination of all the challenges that would face our next president -- in foreign policy and elsewhere. I hoped that the Republican candidate would enumerate the domestic and international failings of the Clinton administration. And Gore, the Democratic candidate, would be forced to defend them, or to alter his own position. Little did I realize that Gore's most remarkable move on that score would be to break with Clinton over the Elián González affair. With the fate of the election resting on Florida, that move doesn't look so dumb now.

Campaign 2000 will be remembered -- and studied by political strategists for years to come -- for the way both campaigns managed to avoid substantive discussion of the issues. Sure, there were dust-ups over Social Security and taxes. But these pseudo-mathematical "discussions," particularly during the debates, neutralized any hope of a national discourse. How could the public -- or anyone -- figure out who was right?

Of course, that was the point. Both candidates seemed to have taken Obfuscation 101 from Professor Bill Clinton. Clinton fooled a willing public -- on Middle East peace talks, on welfare reform, on his own battle against impeachment -- by taking advantage of the fact that people have short memories. When partisans of either side tried to make their case in the face of a strong opposing statement, they almost always seemed overly combative -- and as annoying as gnats. Political writer Joe Klein quoted a Gore aide saying as much in the November 6 issue of the New Yorker: "[P]eople don't respond to that. . . . The research showed they wanted the election to be about the future, not the past."

How ironic, then, that the only adrenaline rush of the entire campaign was provided by the revelation of Bush's decades-old drunken-driving arrest. It wasn't a serious "issue" by anyone's standard, but it turned out to be the only thing that got the country talking. Of course, the Bush DUI story -- which the Texas governor handled in a Clintonesque fashion -- represented the culmination of a decade of destructive personal politics.

ANOTHER REASON Campaign 2000 blew? The candidates pursued the presidency the same way General Mills markets a new breakfast cereal: figure out what the people want and tell them what they want to hear. Both parties spoon-fed focus-group-tested promises to demographic niche groups. The Democrats focused on specific programs that appealed to large voting blocs -- Social Security, prescription drugs, and Medicare. And the Republicans dressed up their candidate in cheap packaging: "compassionate conservatism." Both sides strove not to say anything more than what was absolutely necessary.

Each candidate knew he could depend on his party's base -- with a little more trouble for Gore, who faced a challenge on the left from Nader. That meant that uncommitted voters would decide -- and did decide -- the election. As a result, both the Democratic and the Republican campaigns explicitly targeted voters in Rust Belt states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri, as well as in Florida. If you didn't live in one of these states, you might have been able to get almost through the fall without realizing it was a presidential-election year. Think about it. How many campaign bumper stickers or lawn signs has anyone seen in these parts?

Like any successful marketing push, the campaigns worked desperately not to offend anyone. The Bush people got off to a great start by doing absolutely nothing. For months following his successful gubernatorial re-election bid in November 1998, when national GOP activists began talking about Bush as presidential timber, he remained holed up at the governor's mansion in Austin. Party activists, policy advisers, and major campaign donors trekked down to Texas to meet with "the governor" (as his aides never tired of calling him in a weak attempt to give stature to a shallow man). Rove, the campaign guru, devised the plan based on William McKinley's 1896 "front porch" strategy. He also crafted the governor's message, Bush would position himself as a leader -- after all, he had led one of America's largest states -- who could attract a diverse array of voters to the GOP. Bush's communications director, Karen Hughes, allowed tidbits of these meetings to leak out, but Bush himself remained silent.

Gore, meanwhile, stumbled. He couldn't seem to stay on message -- or to find one in the first place. Before moving his campaign to Nashville, Gore was still in strictly Beta Male mode. He traveled around the country promoting a "livability agenda" that focused on sprawl and suburban-planning issues. When that didn't catch on with the public, Gore moved into populist mode.

The bottom line? Both candidates were lacking in a certain . . . snap, crackle, and pop. As someone who followed their moves closely, I was convinced that the public would see right through them, as I did. And I found it hard to believe they'd be successful.

BUT THEY were. And we can thank the voters for that. Just when it looked as if things might get interesting -- in January and February, when Republican senator John McCain and former Democratic senator Bill Bradley were waging their campaigns of substance -- voters allowed themselves to be manipulated.

McCain electrified the electorate with his hundreds of town meetings and trounced Bush in New Hampshire. Bradley, meanwhile, gave Gore a run for his money with his steady concentration on health care and campaign-finance reform. But then came South Carolina, where Bush showed he was no "uniter"; in fact, he was a "divider." First, Bush went to the racist, anti-Catholic, paleo-conservative Bob Jones University. Then there were the mysterious phone calls that warned evangelical voters about Warren Rudman, a McCain ally. Other Bush pals, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, recorded anti-McCain phone messages. Bush's allies even accused McCain of abandoning veterans. In the end, GOP activists and religious conservatives united to destroy the most interesting candidate the Republicans had offered in at least two decades.

It's still a mystery why voters bought the lies and innuendo. But then, it's a mystery why we buy the new offerings from General Mills, Nabisco, and Kellogg's when we've already got about 150 cereals clogging our grocery aisles. The fact is, most people believe what they read and hear, even if it's a lie. I'd like to believe that had the voters been more informed and engaged, they wouldn't have made Bush the GOP presidential candidate. But most likely, South Carolina voters broke the way they did for regional reasons: the South wants rock-solid conservatives in the White House, not quixotic reformers, even if the rock-solid conservative in tow is a lightweight daddy's boy. Even that doesn't explain why Bush's disgraceful actions in South Carolina didn't become a major issue during the general campaign, as most reporters and political observers believed they would. Again, the culprit had to be an uninformed and disengaged electorate.

The cynicism merely intensified with the conventions. The Republican National Convention in Philadelphia set a high-water mark for disingenuousness with its touchy-feely trade show for a product it wasn't selling. Former Massachusetts state representative Andrew Card orchestrated a magnificent multicultural parade to show Americans that the Republicans were a different kind of political party and that George W. Bush was a "very different kind of conservative." The Republicans called upon an adorable Latina girl with a powerful voice to sing the national anthem, and coined corny slogans for each night of their convention -- "Leave no child behind," "Safe in our homes and the world," and "Prosperity with a purpose."

Never mind the corporate wingdings sponsored by Philip Morris and US Tobacco; never mind the convention seats reserved for big-money donors instead of party activists. Rather than becoming a party of ideas, a party that could go toe-to-toe with Clintonism, the Republicans turned back into what they always are in times of plenty -- the tax-cut/fat-cat party. Many observers, myself included, were appalled. But the GOP stage-managed its convention better than the most elaborate Broadway production, and the public didn't seem to see anything wrong with it. Bush's poll numbers rose.

The Democratic convention was just as bad. It didn't seem to register with the public that the Democratic Party nominated one of Hollywood's biggest critics to serve in its number-two spot just as Hollywood celebrities were preparing their big-donor bashes. Actually, it didn't seem to register with the moneybags in Hollywood, either. As LA celebrities warmed to Lieberman, the Connecticut senator quickly relinquished the policy stances that made him unique -- on affirmative action, school vouchers, Social Security reform. For all the perceived excitement in Los Angeles -- the kiss, Gore's strong convention speech -- a campaign that would speak to the nation, and not just to senior citizens on Social Security and middle-class families with college-age children, failed to materialize.

AT ANY point, the public could have changed all this. Voters -- those citizens who participate in focus groups and actually answer pollsters' phone calls -- could have stopped responding to the candidates' audacious pandering. But any hope that these people would demand a real campaign evaporated with the debates. During the first debate, in Boston, a combative Gore demonstrated control of the issues. Yet the public gave the win to Bush: apparently, a Simple Simon approach appealed to the voters. During the second debate, when Gore excoriated Bush for using his budget surplus in Texas on a tax cut for the wealthy as opposed to health care for poor children, I thought he'd scored a home run. But the public didn't see it that way. All the voters seemed to care about was that Gore's demeanor in this debate was entirely different.

It's hard to say what caused this disconnect. At the risk of sounding elitist -- I know, too late -- I'd say the voting public's reaction to the debates makes sense only if we assume that most voters know nothing about national issues. We live in a country where you can find detail-laden Web sites about the most arcane subject -- kung fu movies, '70s-era cartoon shows, obscure pop music. But in one recent NBC News report, prospective voters could more easily identify Colonel Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken than either of the two presidential candidates. And when you have a public more familiar with Colonel Sanders than Vice-President Gore, it becomes easier to understand why the public would give Bush (Clinton sans brains) more debate points than Gore (Clinton sans charm). Maybe the electoral college can vote for Colonel Sanders to break the deadlock.

The home stretch saw both candidates repeat poll-driven sound bites. By early November, Gore's campaign had become one big Social Security fetish. It made for a hilarious Saturday Night Live sketch, but not for such a great presidential-campaign effort. As late as the Friday before the election, Gore -- bereft of the pseudo-populist packaging he'd appropriated at convention time -- was falling back on the great battle to preserve Social Security. His campaign actually sent around an e- mail to be forwarded to "10 undecided voters" that focused exclusively on what the Gore camp sees as the defining question of our day: "What are Bush's plans for Social Security?"

The question of Social Security, to be sure, is complex and important. But what can be said about a campaign with no greater vision than keeping Social Security in a lock box? How is such a campaign supposed to excite the passions of broad masses of Americans or help to reinvigorate the system? The short answer is that it can't. But Gore had backed himself into a corner. In his steadfast refusal to campaign with Clinton, the vice-president made a very clear statement about his relationship with the president. By doing so, however, he removed himself from the larger issues -- defending the Clinton legacy or defending the policies of the administration that he himself was a part of for eight years.

The cautious, one-dimensional Bush, in turn, never articulated any idea that required more than one-, or two-, or (on rare occasions) three-syllable sound bites. When in doubt about a complex policy issue, Bush tried to split the difference by creating his own infantile mumbo-jumbo. Rather than restating the conservative position opposing affirmative action or boldly embracing affirmative action, for example, Bush split the difference by saying he supported "affirmative access."

There's an old adage that says, "When the people lead, the leaders will follow." In a perverse way, that's surely what happened in this election. In campaign 2000, a disengaged, uninformed, and uninterested public got the result it deserved. Remember that when the public starts bitching about the razor-thin election result.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com.