Volume 2 number 11, November 2000 Stranger Than Fiction Well, what do you know? An election in which it is absolutely, positively, incontrovertably Obvious with a capital "O" that Your Vote Counts. Wow. Imagine that. A presidential election decided by less than 300 votes (or so—the official tally is not yet announced as of this writing). Naderites everywhere discovered that voting one’s conscience really does run the risk of getting a conservative in office. Democrats and Republicans who stayed home in bed on election day, or went to the movies, or worked, or just forgot, now are whacking themselves on the head, wishing they’d gone to the polls. Unregistered citizens are wondering if maybe they shouldn’t have given up on elections just yet. And despite all the amazement and gawping, the overriding emotion, rather than horror or embarrassment or "nail-biting" nervousness (an exceedingly overused phrase during the election-night coverage), seems to be that of amusement. Laughter is the sound I most often hear in connection with discussions about this election. Laughter at a good joke on the voters, laughter at the bombast and glowering of party muckety-mucks, laughter at the thought of the poor schmuck who loses the presidency, laughter at the sad sack who wins the presidency, outright guffawing at the incredulous media. Face it, everybody: the U.S. looks pretty funny right now. France is wondering why, in the words of one citoyen, the Americans always elect idiots to public office; Zimbabwe is observing that all that observation of election procedures by the representatives of the pure and superior American system is perhaps not quite so pure or superior after all; and Britain is relishing their monarchy. We’ve come down a notch in the eyes of the world, and about time, too, the general consensus seems to say. The squabbling of party lawyers is not pretty, and most people I know seem to think that somebody should concede, quick. Gore and Bush simply can’t win, no matter if they win or lose. The next prez will be dealing with an evenly split Senate and a more closely balanced House. Everyone will know that the guy in the White House just barely made it there, and no matter who gets the Oval Office, half of the nation will think he stole it. His Fraudulency will reign again. The party that gets in will probably be ousted from Congress in 2002, and will almost certainly lose in the 2004 presidential elections. Weak presidents are not good for their party or for their country. The only advantage I see for the party that wins this election is that they will get to nominate Supreme Court Justices—if the justices actually retire. And nomination does not mean that the prospective judge will actually make it to the supreme bench. In fact, confirmation will be pretty dang difficult—but we might get party-neutral judges as a result. However, the advantage for democracy is significant: the populace forcibly reminded that voting really is worthwhile; the corruption of party machinery dressed up in a clown suit and kicked in the slats; and elected officials everywhere soon to be reminded that Winning Isn’t Everything. This is the kind of election that horse racers can only dream of: a real race, with a hair’s breadth between the champion and the second-place finisher, and all the difference in the world between the two. Yet the closeness of the final score reveals not only a split in the American psyche, but also a similarity of extremes. Third parties may flourish after this election. After all, a little variety might be fun. The entire population of the world has discovered that American politics can be entertaining, so why not? Most of this race was pretty damn dull, if you ask me, but hoo! the last day! wowee! Nobody would have believed it if this had been a novel. Lacks versimilitude. | ||
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