Posted on 12/04/2001 3:23:28 PM PST by Jeff Smith
Believe it or not, the 35-day recount process may have been a blessing in disguise for the country and for the Republican Party. The seemingly interminable lawyer-ing, counting and arguing actually stopped the country from unconsciously shifting to our post-election tradition of rushing to rally around the winner and forced us collectively to take stock of where we stand. We were not treated to instant analysis and instant applause of "the Bush magic" or "the Gore Magic" but a rather sobering and realistic explanation of the challenges that the new administration would be facing.
There was time for the country to digest that in the Congress power could hardly be more evenly divided. The United States Senate is divided 50-50 for only the second time in American history. The House is narrowly Republican for the fourth time in a row (the first such string since 1924), but the Republicans have been unable to build beyond their 1994 mandate (and indeed it has shrunk a little with each of the three subsequent elections despite some Democrats switching to the Republican party).
The Presidency has been won by the candidate with fewer popular votes for the first time since 1876 and both parties have a great deal of thinking to do about their respective failures to build a solid majority. The Democrats took peace and prosperity and a nationally known Vice President and were unable to attract rural and suburban white America. The Republicans took a candidate whose record and personal appeal to Hispanic and African American voters was the most attractive in modern times, yet could only get 33% of the Latino vote andh 8% of the African American vote.
It is clear that America is closely divided. The encouraging thing is that we are not yet deeply divided. The distinction is crucial. Many Americans have a favorite party and deeply held beliefs, and therefore may find it hard to vote for the other party. However, most Americans do not find themselves actually alienated from their fellow Americans or truly fearful if the other party wins power. Unlike the tragedies of Bosnia, Northern Ireland or Rwanda, competition for power in America remains largely an acceptable debate between people who can work together once the election is over.
Despite the dangerous and destructive efforts of some demagogues to de-legitimize the Bush Presidency, most Americans are prepared to work with the new President elect and his team. Having said that, the vast majority of those Americans expect the new team to govern on behalf of the entire country, and they approved, decisively, of President-elect Bush's assertion that he would be President of all Americans, and would reach out to work with everyone who was willing to participate.
The burden for working together will fall disproportionately on Republicans. The country now sees a Republican President, a Republican Speaker of the House and with Vice President Cheney's vote, a Republican Senate (the latter burden being enhanced by the Republican Senators' continuing insistence that they are the majority). The country will place the burden for governing and the burden for getting things done directly on Republican shoulders. The Democrats will carry almost no responsibility for getting things done. The public will hope for some cooperation from Democrats but not demand it of them as long as they are not grotesquely obstructionist.
This shift in the burden of governing and getting things done will be difficult for some of my former colleagues to understand at first. After all, they just spent eight years opposing the Clinton-Gore Administration. Their initial instinct may well be to posture for the party's activist base and to enthusiastically oppose the Bush Administration's moves to be practical and get things done. Nothing could be more self-destructive for the Republican Party.
We are going through a change in objective realities as big as the shift from playing football to baseball. In one case you suit up in heavy equipment and prepare to physically hit each other while blocking and tackling. In the other case you go on the field with very light equipment and prepare on offense to hit a ball individually and to defend as a team collectively. Unless you are Deion Sanders or Bo Jackson, someone who was used to one system would find it disorienting and frustrating to suddenly have to shift to the other. Yet that is precisely where we are today. An opposition party that correctly fought Clinton's policies and dishonesties now has to shift decisively to seek better solutions, passable legislation, and practical methods of achieving results.
What we did from 1993 through 2000 was right for its time and its circumstance. What we must do from 2001 forward has to be responsive to the new circumstances and the new realities. I believe these can be reduced to one strategic reality and four strategies for implementation.
Like it or not, the strategic reality is that the country now expects the Republicans to get things done, and strategies have to be built that will meet that expectation. Republicans have to look at election results, legislative processes, and executive opportunities, and fashion a system and a set of habits for REAL ACHIEVEMENT. Any Republican who believes that merely "opposing" or "criticizing" is an adequate strategy has to be told that they are following a recipe for electoral disaster in 2002 and 2004.
The Republican Party can win within this new reality if they will simply implement four main areas of strategic effort for the next few years:
Republicans have to get up every day cheerfully determined to find ways to get things done. From the budget, to key legislation, to moving appointments through the Senate, to holding productive, useful hearings in the Congress and arranging positive, useful events in the Executive Branch, the Bush Team and their congressional allies simply have to be optimistic, enthusiastic and positive about getting things done. Beating the Democrats cannot be the objective. In fact, governing and getting things done will turn out to be the only way for Republicans to beat the Democrats.
The single most important strategy is an historic imperative. Republicans must focus the necessary time and energy to create a common community with Americans of color. The gap between Republicans and every minority group of color is an historic divide that must be bridged if the country is to be governed, and it must be bridged if Republicans are to become a stable, governing majority. This is both a moral and a practical imperative. Political expedients will not work because the gap is historic rather than political. Outreach, field organizers and good advertising could solve a political problem. This historic challenge requires building a common community in which minority Americans participate directly in personnel, in policy, and in scheduling because the fact is that in the 2000 election, Bush's proposals were more popular than the Republican Party itself was acceptable.
A national poll of 1,608 adults conducted by the Joint Committee for Political and Economic Studies between September 15 and October 9, 2000, showed that a plurality of black voters supported Bush's Social Security plan, 45% to 42%. (Blacks under the age of 50 gave it 55% support.) On School Vouchers, Bush received stronger support amongst black Americans than the general population: 57% of African-Americans viewed Bush's proposal favorably, compared to 49% of the general population. 79% of black households that have children supported his school choice plan. Yet, in the exact same poll, when asked for whom they would vote, the same respondents said they would vote for a Democrat over a Republican for Congress by 84% to 7%, and for Al Gore over George W. Bush by 74% to 9%. The actual election results were an even more shocking 90% to 8% victory for Gore over Bush. How is it possible that Bush could perform so well on the issues and lose so badly in the voting booth?
The reason is very straightforward. For most Americans of color the Republican Party is not an acceptable and worthy vehicle for their hopes. The result is that African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans may agree on specific issues with the Republican candidate, but they simply cannot bring themselves to vote for the Republican on Election Day.
President-elect Bush deserves high marks for the steps he has already taken in this area, especially with his convention in Philadelphia and with his choice of nominees. And while symbolism and unspoken messages are much more important in this area than Republicans fully understand, the rest of the entire executive branch team and all his Congressional, state and local allies will have to show equal seriousness and equal commitment in time, resources, staffing and schedules if minority Americans are to truly believe they can build a common community with Republicans.
Another major strategy that Republicans must focus on is to use technology to modernize government and solve public policy problems. Technology is replacing ideology as the most powerful force for change in America and therefore in government. Consider how you take for granted the speed and accuracy of an ATM. This is a computer where you place a piece of plastic at any hour of the day which accesses your account any where in the country and gives you cash. Yet, most of us get impatient if the transaction takes more than 20 seconds! Consider the automated gas pump that you use with a credit card without even getting a receipt because you are so confidant that it is accurate. Then remember the picture of the Florida vote counters looking in puzzlement at semi-punched pieces of paper. The e-customer is going to become the e-patient and the e-voter. We will learn to expect from government the same speed, accuracy, convenience, and availability we are beginning to expect in other areas of our lives. The party which learns to use the new technologies to create better services at lower cost (including learning, defense and health) will be able to offer the voters better health, better education and better defense while cutting taxes. This replacement of ideology by technology as the driving force of change is a development so new that very few politicians, and none of the think tanks or reporters, have really begun to explore it. It could be the biggest advantage Republicans have in offering better goods and services. For example, President-elect Bush's proposed personal Social Security account is really based on the simple fact that we now have the computational power to allow every American to own and manage their own savings account with their name and account number on it, something which was literally impossible in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's time. This allows the party to avoid arguing Social Security on a potentially risky ideological level, but to argue on a technological level that makes the old argument irrelevant.
Lastly, Republicans must learn to explain really big reforms in personal language that relates to the target audience in their personal lives. Tip O' Neil had it partly right when he said, "all politics is local." All politics is, in fact, personal. President-elect Bush showed enormous courage in insisting on campaigning for a personal Social Security savings account. He explained it well enough that the American people favored it 59-37 in exit polling on Election Day. (Another amazing number you when compare it to the results of the African American vote.) Yet the average young voter saw this proposal as a political-governmental issue rather than a personal-self interest issue. Very few young people had translated the ideas into a larger retirement income for themselves, greater wealth for themselves in terms of dollars and cents, and personally better lives. The result was that Governor Bush did not reap the reward of a decisive majority among younger voters that his courageous position ought to have earned him. Democrats find it easy to explain issues in personal and emotional terms. Republicans prefer to discuss issues at a public policy level. Passing great reforms in a narrowly divided Congress will require enlisting the country's support through much more persuasive appeals to the legitimate self interest in people's personal lives (note the emotional nature of the Democrats' language in the patients' bill of rights debate for example). Republicans simply must master this art if they are to govern effectively.
A Bush Administration and a Republican Party which constantly remembers the strategic reality that it simply must govern, and which seeks to govern by following these four strategies will have a very real opportunity to both achieve great things for our country and be rewarded by the voters for their effort. Conversely, if they do not grasp the reality of shifting from an obstructionist party to a creative party thirstily seeking results, the next two elections could be disastrous.
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