The presidential election of the year 2000 will be remembered in a number of important ways. It was; 1) the closest in the nations history, 2) the first to be challenged in court up to the U. S. Supreme Court, 3) the largest plurality of votes for a losing candidate and 4) a beautiful example of the creativity and political genius of the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when they established the Electoral College as the mechanism for electing the President. Beyond that, however, the election demonstrated in a way that was made graphic by the Red / Blue map showing the electorate divided into two nations, as discussed by Terry Teachout in the January issue of Commentary Magazine, two cultures as discussed by Gertrude Himmelfarb in the same issue, or perhaps both.
First, as to the value of the Electoral College. In spite of the comment from the newly elected and Constitutional Scholar Hillary Rodham Clinton who opined a mere three days after the election that the Electoral College should be done away with, the Electoral College did exactly what it was supposed to do, namely pick the candidate who has , in fact, the superior mandate to govern. It was never intended that the elected candidate would necessarily be the candidate who won a national popular vote.
During the Constitutional convention of 1787, the question of how to elect the National Executive was discussed many times. The issue was first addressed on May 29th when Edmund Randolph presented the “Virginia Plan”. This plan included as resolution number seven that the National Executive be chosen by the National Legislature, namely Congress. The issue wasn’t finally resolved until September 4th when the Electoral College as we know it today was agreed to, except as later modified by the 12th amendment. During the intervening three months the direct election of the National Executive by popular vote was formally moved two times and in neither case did the motion get more than two (State) votes.
The reasons the Convention did not accept the popular election of the President are as relevant today as they were then. Prior to the approval of the Electoral College the method the Convention kept coming back to in its deliberations, the default position as it were, was the election of the National Executive by the National Legislature. One reason was to reduce, but not completely eliminate the natural advantage States large in population, and wealth had by virtue of their size. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina expressed this concern most directly when Madison, in his notes of the Convention, recorded him as saying that “ The most populous States by combining in favor of the same individual will be able to carry their points”.
However, the rejection of election of the President by a national popular vote was more fundamentally based on a distrust of direct or pure democracy, based on an understanding of history and human nature. Madison in Federalist 10 expressed his concern about “faction”, and concluded that a pure democracy “can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction”. Also in Federalist 10 he wrote “The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.” Later, during the ratification process in the States Madison in letters to Washington and Jefferson expressed his concern that opposition to the Constitution was led by “ignorant and jealous men” in contrast to “men of property and education” who supported the Constitution.
The question for us is whether these concerns are as valid today as they were then, or have we “outgrown” them. In the intervening years we have moved in the direction of, but have by no means yet established, a direct democracy. Senators are now elected by a popular vote as are most presidential electors. We have instant national polls on every conceivable topics. In 1992 Ross Perot, a Presidential candidate proposed an “electronic town hall” where presumably he, as President, would take a major issue each week to the country and thereby get the responses of “the owners of the country-the people”. This information, sorted by Congressional districts could give marching orders to Congress with “no ifs, ands and buts” as to what the people want.
In the recent presidential election what finally happened is what had been feared and what has not happened for over a hundred years since the now well known election of 1876 in which the candidates were Samuel Tilden, and Rutherford B. Hayes; namely that the candidate who clearly and unambiguously won the popular vote lost the election, and to make matters worse by only three electoral votes. In contrast, now President George Bush won the popular vote in 30 out 0f 50 States (60%) and in 2433 out of 3111 counties (78%). The question then is who in fact had, and indeed has, the strongest mandate to govern this large geographically, economically, ethnically, and culturally diverse country; the elected George Bush or the loser Al Gore.
To examine this issue we need to consider in more depth the red / blue nation discussed in Commentary in January by Terry Teachout and described pictorially so beautifully in the now famous maps published in USA Today and Newsweek among other places. Gore’s support came almost exclusively from States in the Northeast, North Central and Western regions. This doesn’t really tell the story, however, since he got his votes primarily in large and medium size cities in these regions. Inspection of the “County map’ in Newsweek shows that without Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Des Moines and Philadelphia, he would likely have lost all these States. According to the official election results posted by the New York State board of Elections Gore came out of New York City with 1,628,427 votes compared to Bush’s 373,625 votes. This means that outside the confines of this one city Gore’s national vote plurality instead of being 500 thousand votes would morph into a 750 thousand vote national plurality for Bush. The prediction of Charles Pinkney in 1787 , mentioned earlier, that several large States could combine to carry a candidate to victory has been reduced to one large city by itself since New York City alone gave Gore over a million vote plurality out of 100 million votes cast in the country. The four large cities of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles gave Gore over a three million vote plurality, and one racial group alone, namely Blacks who represent approximately thirteen percent of the population gave Gore over a seven million vote plurality.
National exit polls based on 13,131 respondents and published by CNN provide further information on the cultural and political divide. Gore received votes primarily from individuals who either hadn’t graduated from high school or who had post-graduate degrees, (i.e. college professors for example). In contrast, Bush’s vote came primarily from individuals who had attended or graduated from college. Gore’s vote came primarily from individuals earning less than fifty thousand dollars a year with Bush voters primarily earning more than fifty thousand dollars. Of Bush voters, 53% were married. Of Gore voters, 57% were not married. Of Gore voters who were married most did not have children. So much for “soccer moms” being democratic voters.
It is interesting that upper class and working class individuals voted more for Gore, and upper-middle and middle class individuals voted more for Bush. Individuals who attended religious services at least weekly voted more for Bush while individuals who seldom or never attended voted more for Gore. This helps to dramatize at least in part the cultural divide noted by Gertrude Himmelfarb. A few points of reference are desirable in exploring this issue. We have a “Christian Right”, but we also have a “Christian Left”. There is a secular left and right. The “Christian Right” is alleged to be terribly narrow-minded, and intolerant to Catholics, Jews, and other religions. According to John McCain it is an evil influence and poses a significant threat to our freedoms. This wildly overstates the case. Of course, the “Christian Right” is not a monolith, and opinions vary. Bob Jones University represents a rather extreme part of the “Christian Right”. Its views, posted apparently at one time on its web site accused the Catholic and Mormon churches of being cults. It also apparently considered the Pope to be the anti-Christ. On the other hand, there has been, at least until recently, one web site that held to the view that outside the true (i.e. Catholic) church there is no salvation. Few Protestants today share the view of Bob Jones University on Catholicism, and few Catholics share the view that Protestants are damned to go to hell. As a matter of fact, the influential Catholic League of New York, headed by William Donohue, recently issued its 1999 report on anti-Catholicism in the United States. The “Christian Right” was not even mentioned, nor was Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. All those mentioned for their anti-Catholicism were on the secular left, without exception. Bill Bennett, in his 1999 Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, summarized abortion rates for 1996 by State. There were eleven States and the District of Columbia that had abortion rates above the national average. All except Florida gave their electoral votes to Gore.
One of the seminal books of the 20th Century is The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset, a Spanish republican from the days before Franco. Written in 1932 ,the English translation of this book is still so popular that it is still protected by copyright. In Gasset’s view, humanity can split into two classes of individuals; those who make great demands on themselves and those who demand nothing special of themselves except to live for the moment. More recently others have used the terms hound dogs and setters to describe more or less the same two classes. Gasset goes on to say there was a preponderance of the latter in the European culture of his time, he referred to them as “the masses”, and considered them to be “vulgar”. In contrast, those who demanded much of themselves and who were the individuals who had built and maintained Western civilization and culture he referred as the “minority” because they indeed were, in his view decidedly in the minority. In his view the masses crush everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. It is not hard to understand that when Madison referred to the opponents of the Constitution as “ignorant and jealous men” and those who supported the Constitution as men with “the wealth, abilities and respectabilities of the State” he had a similar divide in mind. Jefferson and Adams did as well when they agreed “that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds for this are virtue and talents”.
In addition to the cultural divide there is also a political divide, generally thought of in terms of the two major political parties; the democratic and republican parties. Democrats are usually considered to be liberals and Republicans are generally considered to be conservative. Of course, to believe this is to attend the mad-hatter’s tea party where things are not really what they seem. The simple fact is that most Democrats are not in the true meaning of the word liberals nor are most Republicans conservative in the true meaning of that word. True, or classical liberalism derives from the ideas of John Locke and the English revolution, Adam Smith, David Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment, and the French philosophe’s, especially Voltaire and Rousseau. They stood for freedom and the protection of life, liberty and property. Our country was, indeed, founded on these ideas. In a recent article in The Independent Review, James Buchanan, 1986 Nobel Laureate in economics summarized the political policy stances of classical liberalism as follows; support for limited government, constitutional democracy, free trade, private property, rule of law, open franchise and federalism. The Democratic Party today stands for a large federal government, an expanded federal bureaucracy, enhanced federal regulation of business, high and progressive rates of taxation and income redistribution. There is little left of a liberal political philosophy in these ideas.
Liberalism, as it is generally understood today,
lost its way in the middle of the 19th century through the ideas of Marx
and the rise of socialism. Friedrich Hayek, another Nobel Laureate
in economics described the time between the Revolution of 1848 and 1948
as the century of socialism. However it is now abundantly clear that
socialism failed spectactularly. What has taken its place is the rise of
the Welfare State in which the social justice goals of socialism are sought
through taxation, income redistribution and government regulation rather
than through government ownership of the means of production and distribution.
These are, in the main, the goals of the democratic party today.
No one has expressed better both the idealism and yet the unintended consequences
of this quest for social justice than the late Lionel Trilling, a man of
the left when he said: “Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once
we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to
go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately
of our coercion.”
On the other hand to call the Republican Party “conservative”
raises the question, what is it trying to conserve? Certainly not
the Welfare State established in the New Deal by Roosevelt in 1933 and
which the Republican party is at least trying to roll back. Hayek,
in contrast, more accurately defines the political divide today as between
those who favor individualism and those who favor collectivism.
Perhaps the most significant divide today, however, is between those who, in the main, pay the taxes, and those who, in the main, are wards of or employees of the government, or are dependent on the government for important services. It is clear that such individuals have vested interests to vote for a government that promises to maintain or expand these services and/or employment. Currently it would be fair to surmise that a strong majority of these people reside in the “Blue Nation’ that voted heavily for Al Gore . What isn’t so clear is what percentage of the population of people dependent absolutely on the government it would take before the road to an ever expansive government bureaucracy would be fore-ordained and impossible to resist.