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“You can fool some of the people
all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of
the people all the time.” –
Abraham Lincoln
“You can, however, tick everyone
off.” –
Morrison’s Corollary
Woe to George W. Bush. Like any candidate for
president of the United States, Gov. Bush had plans. Having won,
President-elect Bush has problems.
To begin with, he didn’t win sufficiently for
some people’s tastes. Several media outfits have taken to recounting Florida’s
ballots with the goal of figuratively unseating him; as this is written, at
least one newspaper has narrowed Bush’s win to 27 votes. You have to read
pretty deep to find that these protectors of the public’s right to know had to
perform some serious ju jitsu on logic to reach that conclusion, deeming that
ballots with two votes for president were obviously intended for Vice President
Gore.
President Bush will also spend the next four
years being reminded that he was edged out in the popular vote, which, though
meaningless, will be given great meaning. If the president were elected
at-large candidates would gear their campaigns accordingly, mining votes in
areas where they were most popular rather than tussling over so-called
“battleground” states. We don’t know who might have won a popular election
simply because no American presidential contest has ever been fought that way.
Bush will certainly get the Quayle treatment,
being portrayed as a buffoon at every misstep. But the new president’s biggest
challenge may well be the call for moderation and bipartisanship. Media pundits
and political opponents (if you’ll forgive the redundancy) cite the popular
vote, the controversy in Florida, and the closeness of the split between parties
in both houses of Congress as evidence that he must “share” power. What they
don’t provide are examples of successful presidents who have done so.
One can debate, but most lists of the nation’s
great presidents would be topped by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham
Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. These were very different men with very
different views of the role of government, yet they had in common the strength
of their convictions, boldness in leadership, and the ferocity of their
partisanship.
Washington, who has been called “the one
indispensable man,” helped forge this nation with force, then tempered it by
will. Jefferson, the first member of an opposing political party to capture the
presidency, was elected on the 36th vote of Congress after an
Electoral College tie. Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in the 11 states that
later formed the Confederacy, then fought the nation’s bloodiest war to force
them back when politics failed. Roosevelt not only led the country through
World War II and the Great Depression, but powered social programs through
Congress that very much shaped the society we have inherited today.
The dirty little secret is that nobody in
Washington believes in bipartisanship, least of all those screaming loudest for
it. Do you remember the media hue and cry for power sharing when the GOP took
control of the House and Senate in 1994? Me either. President Clinton’s
opponents were portrayed as insurgents, an unruly mob voted in, as one
commentator said, in a “temper tantrum” by the voting public.
If the new president has the gall to govern as
he promised he would, “ugly” won’t begin to describe the reaction. It’s going
to be hideous, folks, and it will take enormous resolve to overcome. Should
President Bush negotiate with his opponents? Absolutely. And compromise? When
it makes sense. But to share power in the manner that has been hyped is a
dead-lock cinch to please no one and accomplish nothing. In the end his
opponents will be unconverted, his friends frustrated, and his legacy a
disappointment. And yes, I’d have had the same advice for Al Gore, though with
admittedly less enthusiasm.
If sticking to his guns makes
George W. Bush a one-term president, so be it. It is a far better fate than
eight years with neither leadership nor direction.
© 1997- 2002 Brent Morrison
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