November 22, 2000

President will need full political capabilities

The closeness of the Nov. 7 election, from the razor-thin margins upon which the race for the White House will be decided on down the ballot to legislative races in many states, reveals a nation fundamentally divided about its political course.

Over the last several months, Texas Gov. George Bush and Vice President Al Gore offered the nation two distinctly differing views of the role of government. At risk of oversimplifying, Bush argued for a smaller, less intrusive government, while Gore argued for a more activist government with an expanded role in Americans' day-to-day lives. Roughly half the nation's voters selected each vision.

The nation is culturally divided as well. In the most urbanized areas of the nation &endash; the coastal cities &endash; went overwhelmingly for Gore, the candidate of "choice," homosexual rights and ACLUist hostility to faith in the public square. The South, much of the Midwest and the rural West went mostly for Bush, the candidate who opposes abortion and embraces the role of faith in the public square.

Come January, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Dennis Hastert will somehow have to find governing majorities in their respective chambers not only with slight parliamentary majorities at their disposal &endash; a situation in which every member possesses leverage to get what he wants &endash; but also against the political backdrop of a nation essentially divided on the big issues of the day.

It is not a crisis, but it does pose serious governing challenges to the next president and congressional leaders. The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot muses that Congress, lacking clear direction from the electorate, will be a miserable place to serve during these next two years. He's probably right. For whether the issue is Social Security, Medicare, tax cuts or environmental policy, a member can be fairly well assured that he'll make half his constituency mad when he casts a vote.

The challenge is not insurmountable. Clinton first was elected with a 43 percent plurality of the popular vote, and he spun that into a mandate for a short time. Yet the infamous one-vote margin by which his tax increase passed Congress and the buzz-saw that Hillarycare encountered revealed the weakness of his political mandate.

Cynics suggest that the wisest possible political move for the two presidential aspirants under the circumstances would be to concede and let the other guy walk into political quicksand.

We are more optimistic than that. The shrill rhetoric surrounding the Florida recount underscores the nation's political divisions. Yet America has a history of putting the most partisan of fights aside in order to move on with governance. Once the presidential election is settled, we expect the historical pattern to hold. Nevertheless, the new president and congressional leaders will need all of their political talents in order to avoid gridlock.