Those whom the gods would destroy, they first drive to madness. If we’re not there yet, we must be getting pretty close. Weeks ago, almost all the respondents in my informal poll, more than anything else, just wanted this election to be over. The optimist sitting on my shoulder says when Florida absentee ballots are counted tomorrow, we will have elected a new president. The pessimist, sitting in the pit of my stomach, knows better. He thinks Florida will go at least another week and when it’s nailed down, Warren Christopher and James Baker will take their show on the road to Oregon, Wisconsin or New Mexico.
The optimist, however, will not be silenced. There are silver linings here, he insists, and he’s right. For one thing, we’re getting a civics lesson, we all finally understand what the electoral college is and how it works. For another thing, 100 million Americans turned out to vote, which is only about half of those eligible, but it’s not bad for America. The pessimist quickly replies that this year’s high turnout was not because people wanted to vote for Candidate A, so much as they wanted to vote against Candidate B. I suspect he too, may be right.
A few weeks ago, I was going through the obituaries for former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. One said he was popular not because he represented Canadians as they were, but because he represented Canadians as they aspired to be. It’s a notion worth considering in these days of electoral limbo.
If voters see their elected officials as extensions of themselves, then in 1960, voters decided they’d rather be Jack Kennedy than Dick Nixon, even though Nixon had better credentials. Eight years later we decided we might want to be Nixon after all. But being Dick Nixon proved to be so upsetting to the body politic, we decided instead to be Jimmy Carter. Would America rather be Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale? That’s a no-brainer, even a lefty can tell you that. In 1988, no one really wanted to be George Bush, but most of us thought it beat being Mike Dukakis.
Now theory stubs its toe. Did America really choose, in 1992, to be Bill Clinton? On the face of it, the answer would seem to be no. But think about it; to be eligible to vote, Americans have to be 18. To be 18 is to be an adult, at least chronologically. To be an adult is to have responsibilities, to recognize that your actions have consequences. In 1992, it was abundantly clear, even before the primaries were over, that to be Bill Clinton is to live without consequences. I think somewhere, deep down, all adults want to be the person who lives without consequences. This is not to say most of us would use that power pester the office interns or lie to the nation. But everyone has something they’d like to walk away from. Who was it that crashed the office computer network while trying to get a high score on Tetris? Who sent that urgent, one-of-a-kind shipment to London, England instead of London, Ontario? You get the picture.
In 1996, no one wanted to be Bob Dole – even Bob Dole didn’t want to be Bob Dole, you know it, I know it, the American people know it.
According to the pessimist, last week we turned out in relatively high numbers to vote against the candidate we didn’t want to be and the upshot is that we cannot decide who it is we do want to be. The frat boy or the brownnose? The son of a wealthy and powerful family or… the son of a wealthy and powerful family?
Whoever wins, the optimist observes, probably won’t be around for more than one term.
Who Are We Now?
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first drive to madness. If we’re not there yet, we must be getting pretty close. Weeks ago, almost all the respondents in my informal poll, more than anything else, just wanted this election to be over. The optimist sitting on my shoulder says when Florida absentee ballots are counted tomorrow, we will have elected a new president. The pessimist, sitting in the pit of my stomach, knows better. He thinks Florida will go at least another week and when it’s nailed down, Warren Christopher and James Baker will take their show on the road to Oregon, Wisconsin or New Mexico.
The optimist, however, will not be silenced. There are silver linings here, he insists, and he’s right. For one thing, we’re getting a civics lesson, we all finally understand what the electoral college is and how it works. For another thing, 100 million Americans turned out to vote, which is only about half of those eligible, but it’s not bad for America. The pessimist quickly replies that this year’s high turnout was not because people wanted to vote for Candidate A, so much as they wanted to vote against Candidate B. I suspect he too, may be right.
A few weeks ago, I was going through the obituaries for former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. One said he was popular not because he represented Canadians as they were, but because he represented Canadians as they aspired to be. It’s a notion worth considering in these days of electoral limbo.
If voters see their elected officials as extensions of themselves, then in 1960, voters decided they’d rather be Jack Kennedy than Dick Nixon, even though Nixon had better credentials. Eight years later we decided we might want to be Nixon after all. But being Dick Nixon proved to be so upsetting to the body politic, we decided instead to be Jimmy Carter. Would America rather be Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale? That’s a no-brainer, even a lefty can tell you that. In 1988, no one really wanted to be George Bush, but most of us thought it beat being Mike Dukakis.
Now theory stubs its toe. Did America really choose, in 1992, to be Bill Clinton? On the face of it, the answer would seem to be no. But think about it; to be eligible to vote, Americans have to be 18. To be 18 is to be an adult, at least chronologically. To be an adult is to have responsibilities, to recognize that your actions have consequences. In 1992, it was abundantly clear, even before the primaries were over, that to be Bill Clinton is to live without consequences. I think somewhere, deep down, all adults want to be the person who lives without consequences. This is not to say most of us would use that power pester the office interns or lie to the nation. But everyone has something they’d like to walk away from. Who was it that crashed the office computer network while trying to get a high score on Tetris? Who sent that urgent, one-of-a-kind shipment to London, England instead of London, Ontario? You get the picture.
In 1996, no one wanted to be Bob Dole – even Bob Dole didn’t want to be Bob Dole, you know it, I know it, the American people know it.
According to the pessimist, last week we turned out in relatively high numbers to vote against the candidate we didn’t want to be and the upshot is that we cannot decide who it is we do want to be. The frat boy or the brownnose? The son of a wealthy and powerful family or… the son of a wealthy and powerful family?
Whoever wins, the optimist observes, probably won’t be around for more than one term.