REFLECTIONS ON THE 2004 CAMPAIGN
As I am writing this, the campaign is over and the American people are voting. It will not be possible for me to comment extensively on the results, for at this writing they are not known. I will do so on next week’s program. For now, I want to reflect on this extensive, expensive and long campaign. Several thoughts:
• First, a comment about the participation and passion evident in this election campaign. For years, leaders have complained about the growing complacency and apathy of the American electorate. Generally speaking, Americans have seemed bored when it comes to campaigns and the low voter turnout has demonstrated that boredom. Not 2004!! Voter turnout is projected to be the highest in at least 12 years, perhaps even 36 years and could reach nearly 130 million voters! In addition, both parties have raised large amounts of small donations, often over the Internet. Further, there is a significant get-out-the-vote campaign to help Americans know where and how to vote. All indications are that 2004 has reawakened the electorate. Is this an aberration, or a new trend? At this point we obviously do not know. There are some hopeful signs, but as yet uncertain ones. Money has poured into this election in new ways—despite recent efforts to regulate it in new ways. More small donors have contributed than in recent memory. This is good for democracy. The Internet has been the source of vicious blogs and half-baked rumors, but it has often been a worthy watchdog on the mainstream media, a direct route to the candidates’ records and official Web sites and a means of instantly checking their half-truths and evasions through nonpartisan outlets like FactCheck.org. This is good for democracy. Online networking groups like Meetup.org used new technology to breathe life into the oldest American tradition—the town hall meeting. People are connecting over the Internet in ways not known in recent elections. This is good for democracy. It also seems that the full importance of the electoral process is much more appreciated now, writer Todd Purdum argues, “than it was before the disputed 2000 recount began and before 9/11 awakened the nation to underappreciated dangers and the power of unforeseen events to shape political destiny.” Almost every voter has understood that this election does matter, that the stakes are high and that the choices are real. This is good for democracy. Whether this election is the beginning of a resurgence of a larger civic culture and a more productive citizenry is impossible to answer. But there is no doubt that the American electorate is more engaged than it has been in recent memory and that is good for democracy.
See Purdum’s article in the New York Times (31 October 2004).
• Second, this election has demonstrated once again the importance of the Electoral College. If the US president were chosen by a pure popular vote, this campaign would have been very different. But the Electoral College framed this campaign. It is almost shocking that neither candidate spent any measurable time in the states where most Americans live. Neither candidate spent any time in California or New York, for example. Instead, they spent almost all of their significant time and money in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and then a cluster of smaller states—Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, New Mexico, etc. The Electoral College framed these campaigns: The problems of factory workers in Ohio, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain (the proposed site for a nuclear waste repository), Florida’s hurricane victims, and Michigan’s auto workers. There was little discussion this year of an urban agenda, or of higher fuel economy standards. Until the very end, Social Security reform was totally ignored. This year as well, voting blocs throughout the nation were almost totally ignored—blacks in the South, Democrats in the Plains and Rockies, Republicans in New England. Instead, this year there was an overemphasis on protectionist talk because it appealed to the Midwest voter, but neither candidate sought to appease the voter on both coasts whose jobs are more dependent on free trade. This year both candidates ignored gun control and environmental issues (important in the East) and land use policies (important in the West). These realities drive some to conclude that we need to abolish the Electoral College. There is now doubt that this is compelling when one examines the strategies of where the candidates campaigned and where they spent their money. But perhaps Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania are actually good cross-sections of the country, representing all major interests and concerns. In a future program, I want to address the value of the Electoral College, but there is no doubt that this campaign was determined by its strictures.
See a helpful article by John Tierney, in the New York Times (31 October 2004).
• Third, there is a growing perception that this campaign demonstrates that often our elections are unfair. Matt Bai has argued that “roughly half the country will emerge from [this election and campaign] suspecting that it was stolen.” Republicans and Democrats alike have already put the nation on notice that they will not accept anything short of a resounding defeat as the final word on this election. This suggests that the 2000 election was anything but an aberration, but rather a redefinition of the presidential campaign itself. This is a new reality of presidential campaigns. In 1960, for example, there is little doubt that JFK was elected by fraudulent voting in Illinois, largely due to the Daley organization in Chicago. That state gave JFK the electoral majority he needed. Nixon did not challenge the Illinois vote because he believed that would harm the democratic process. That is obviously not the position of the two major parties today. Bai suggests that “the voting process, once presumed to be a reliable, if fallible, arbiter of the public will, is increasingly seen, even by many more sophisticated voters, as a tainted instrument of partisan conspiracy.” He goes on, “No longer content to accept that the process might not give us the results we prefer, we have taken to impeaching the integrity of everything associated with the process itself.” The media have played their role too, by trading short-term measures of success—ratings, ad space—for the long-term trust of their audience. Although there has been almost unprecedented involvement of the citizenry in this election and, as I argued in the first part of this perspective, that is good for democracy, this perceived lack of trust in the system could undermine this positive development.
See Bai’s article in the New York Times Magazine (31 October 2004), pp. 17-21.
• Fourth, this campaign has given the American voters their most distinct choice in recent elections. Bush and Kerry represented two totally different worldviews. In many ways, the foreign policy difference between the two candidates has been one of freedom vs. internationalism. When Bush talked about the world he hoped to create, he talked first about spreading freedom. As David Brooks has suggested, “What he is really talking about is a decentralized world. Individuals would be free to live as they chose, in their own nations, carving out their own destinies.” Free people would be able to live in basic harmony. There would not need to be any central authority governing their intentions. When Kerry talked about the world he hoped to create, he talked first about alliances and multilateral cooperation. As Brooks shows, “People from different nations would gather to work out differences and manage problems.” Kerry believed that nations will sometimes be able to set aside their rivalries and work cooperatively to thwart the sorts of global threats posed by a Saddam Hussein, or genocide like the one in Sudan. Their different visions of the world also separated Bush and Kerry on the domestic front. It was a conflict between two value systems. One was based on a presumption of a world in which individuals and nations should be self-reliant and free to develop their own capacities—forming voluntary associations when they want—without being overly coerced by national or global entities. The other was based on the presumption of a crowded world, which emphasizes no individual or nation can go off and do as it pleases, but should work instead within governing institutions that establish norms and provide security. That is why Kerry compared terrorism to domestic organized crime, gambling and prostitution. In his mind there should exist an effective body of international law. It is a law enforcement problem when some groups (e.g., terrorists) violate that law. Both nationally and internationally their visions could not have been more different: Bush, the conservative, conceived of a flexible, organic, spontaneous order, while Kerry, the liberal, conceived of a more rationalized, planned and managed order. The American people have had two very different visions presented to them—and presumably they have chosen which one they want to pursue.
See Brooks’s editorial in the New York Times (12 October 2004).
• Fifth, this election campaign has ignored some of the more fundamental issues facing the United States. In many ways, this election has demonstrated the unwillingness of our leaders to be brutally candid with the public, because doing so would be politically suicidal. Listen to Robert Samuelson: “Both [Kerry and Bush] have avoided some of the nation’s most obvious problems: the coming spending explosion to pay baby boomers’ retirement benefits (mainly Social Security and Medicare); the relentless advance of health costs that is squeezing wages and other government spending; the rising tide of immigration and the associated social problems; Americans’ uncontrolled thirst for insecure foreign oil, and the perils of letting Iran and North Korea go nuclear.” Both candidates had policies on these issues, but presented them in platitudes that said what people wanted to hear. Both said they want to be independent of Middle Eastern oil. Both said they would not raise eligibility ages or cut benefits on Social Security or Medicare. Both had immigration proposals, but neither actually would control immigration. Neither candidate’s proposal would control health care spending. Neither wanted to propose unappetizing policies, so neither proposed them, for fear of the electorate’s backlash. Perhaps this proves the axiom that in “politics honesty is bounded by practicality.” Elections are about visions and ideas presented in broad terms. Voters then delegate the detailed decisions to elected leaders. Voters must make “gut judgments about which candidates’ views and values coincide most with their own.” In the end, voters must decide whom they trust more. But that does not often suffice. The American electorate must allow honest discussion of clear problems, something that did not occur this election. This suggests that some of our largest problems “will progressively worsen until they get so bad that we are forced to deal with them. Or they deal harshly with us.”
See Samuelson’s article in the Washington Post (1 November 2004).
• Finally, this election must be viewed as under the sovereignty of God. Whatever the outcome, as Christians, we must affirm that God is in control. Romans 13:1-7 and Daniel 4:17 and 25 make this clear. Our God is in control of His world and He is moving it towards His grand purposes, which are usually redemptive in purpose and scope. Rarely, do we as humans see the big picture of all God is doing. That is why we must trust His sovereignty, His goodness and His providence. May we do so now, whatever the exact results of this election, both nationally and locally.
Back to top
|
