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| HISTORY ON HOLD | |
 November 9, 2000  |
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Will the current election crisis deepen voter cynicism? Margaret Warner talks with four experts.
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MARGARET WARNER: With me are four writers and scholars. Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor at National Review magazine; he's written books on George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Wendy Kaminer is an associated scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a columnist for the The American Prospect magazine. Joining them are two professors from Yale Law School: Akhil Reed Amar, author of "The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction;" and Stephen Carter, whose books include "Civility" and "Integrity." Thank you all for being with us. |
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| Not just what's legal, but what's fair | |||||||||||
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Akhil Amar, several Americans, ordinary Americans, interviewed on television today said that they found this entire spectacle, the recounts, the demonstrations, the dueling press conferences somewhat disturbing, unsettling. Do you think this is healthy for the country or unhealthy?
There is an opportunity for both candidates to try to be big about things and to try to remember ultimately a sense of the fairness of the American people and to try to do not just what's technically legally required but what ultimately is in the best interests of the country, which sometimes might require certain forbearance on each side, certain sacrifice, concession, accommodation and attentiveness to a basic idea of fairness to both sides. MARGARET WARNER: How do you see it, Richard Brookhiser? Do you think this whole spectacle could undermine Americans' confidence in the system?
MARGARET WARNER: Wendy Kaminer, how do you see it in terms of what this is doing to the voters' faith in the legitimacy of the system, the electoral system?
MARGARET WARNER: Stephen Carter, actually healthy maybe for the country?
There are bigger things in a democracy than winning elections because there are bigger values at stake than elections alone. A democracy is an agreement by a group of people that we can be self-governing, that we can reason together, that there is the possibility of actual consensus, and I would like to see leadership taking us in that direction. |
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| The voters' rights | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Wendy Kaminer, it sounded to me earlier as if you feel differently on that point. You think it's better to pursue, go the judicial route, if that's necessary, is that right? WENDY KAMINER: Well, I don't think the campaigns should be involved in traveling down this judicial route. And I was sorry to see that the Gore campaign was becoming involved in the challenges to the ballots in Palm Beach County. Gore's rights haven't been violated here. Gore has no right to be president. The rights at issue are the voting rights of the residents in Palm Beach County. So it's really their case to pursue, not his case to pursue. It's their rights that are at issue.
RICHARD BROOKHISER: Well, you know, a recount is under way. We'll have a result from it at some point. And then that will decide the vote of Florida. Then whatever decision that is, and assuming, you know, that there's still Oregon and New Mexico recounting, that won't affect the vote, but assuming there are no challenges in Wisconsin or Iowa or in any other state, once these recounts are done, then we'll have a result. I'm a little worried that one effect of this might be people saying, "Oh, the Electoral College has produced this problem. Why don't we get rid of this 18th century relic?" And it seems to me that you have to consider one consequence of doing that, which is that, if we went to a direct election for the president, all the allegations of vote fraud that you're seeing now in Florida, in Wisconsin and in other places, they would be multiplied by factors you can't even imagine because, in an Electoral College system, if you want to steal an election, you have to concentrate your efforts in a few states. If it's one pot in which all the votes are thrown, then any stolen vote anywhere is potentially marginal, and there would be vastly increased incentives for vote fraud. MARGARET WARNER: Akhil Amar, that brings me back to you because you wrote an op-ed today, I think it was in The New York Times, saying in fact this showed that the electoral college was an anachronism. AKHIL REED AMAR: Yes, I do. I think there are some problems with the Electoral College. I think it's inconsistent with the basic idea, a modern democratic idea that we're all equal citizens, an idea of one person, one vote. I don't think that there's really ultimately any question at this point that at least at the national level. Vice President Gore did win more votes of people across the country. And even if that has no legal significance, it might have some significance as a matter of the American people's fundamental sense of fairness, and maybe one of the factors that both men should consider as they try to come up with some compromise solutions. If we did move to direct national election, I think there probably would be a sort of a federal presence and monitoring the ballot. Maybe you'd have a little bit less of ... the Mayor Daley situation that Rick Brookhiser mentioned earlier in 1960. So that doesn't scare me really, that there might be a federal marshal trying to monitor the fairness of voting. MARGARET WARNER: Stephen Carter,-- who was trying to speak? I don't mean to cut you off. RICHARD BROOKHISER: If you go to that argument, I mean to be consistent with that argument... MARGARET WARNER: Richard Brookhiser.
MARGARET WARNER: All right, let me get back to Stephen Carter. Mr. Carter, today Richard Dahlic, the historian, said he thought all of this, and particularly as it goes on, will just deepen voters' cynicism about the political process. What do you think of that? STEPHEN CARTER: Sadly, I think that's true. Others have spoken about the strength of our democracy and the fairness of the American people, and I want to believe in that. But we are in America deeply mired sometimes in almost a conspiratorial view of history, that if our side loses, it was never really quite fair and square. There's always a reason, there's always somebody to blame. That's a tendency in how we talk about things. And I would hate for this election to get caught up in that because then we could imagine that, in every election in the future, if there's any state that's close, let's have a big fight over what really happened there. I think that's a very genuine threat that we have to worry about. That doesn't mean people shouldn't insist on their voting rights. It just means we have to be very careful, especially in the media and particularly in the campaigns, and with the candidates themselves, in how we talk about what's going on. Again, we need to think about integrity and we need to think about how to be graceful. |
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| Rising to the occasion | |||||||||||
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STEPHEN CARTER: What I mean by grateful is that there is more to life in a democracy than simply insisting on winning, than simply insisting on power. It strikes me that whether it is Vice President Gore saying, "I will respect the recount, whatever the result is," or whether it's Governor Bush saying, "This is so close that I don't want to win this way," that one of them has to rise to this occasion and say, "Here is leadership, here's grace, this is greatness in a democracy." But I think it's unlikely either one is going to do that. WENDY KAMINER: I don't think there would be anything particularly grateful about either Gore or Bush making a decision about whether people should be able to pursue their rights. You know, again, it's not their rights that are at issue; it is the right of the people in Palm Beach County, in this case, to feel that their votes are counted, to feel that they had a fair election, that they did not have a misleading value -- misleading ballot. And it's not... You know, there would be nothing graceful, I think, about Vice President Gore saying that he didn't want this pursued because he wanted to graciously hand over the office to the president. What grace is there in his abdication of other people's rights? I think we need to focus on the voters and not the candidates. MARGARET WARNER: Akhil Amar, whose rights do you think are at issue here? AKHIL REED AMAR: Well, they're both, but of course the candidate can always choose not to pursue his efforts to get elected. John Ashcroft had some possible legal objections in Missouri that... technical legal arguments he could have made that votes for a dead person just aren't valid... MARGARET WARNER: You're talking about Senator Ashcroft who just was defeated by the deceased former governor.
Now, here's an analogy in this situation. There were some irregularities in the ballot, not every irregularity is technical fraud, is technically illegal. But even if it's not illegal, it may not be fair. People trudged to the polls, they took responsibility, they tried to do the right thing, and their votes weren't properly counted. Maybe there was no violation of legal right, but does Governor Bush want to basically say, "I won that election technically, even though most of the people who went to the polls actually voted against me and voted for the other fellow, or tried to at least, as best they could, after really taking responsibility and going to the polls?" MARGARET WARNER: All right, well, thank you all four very much. |
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AKHIL
REED AMAR: Well, it may be a touch of both. It's inevitable because
both of the candidates are strongly supported by a great many millions
of Americans. People trudged out to the polls all across the country
in record numbers to affirmatively cast their votes for people in whom
they believed. I think both candidates may have gotten more votes than
President Clinton got. So you can understand the enthusiasm and the
vigor of the supporters. 
RICHARD
BROOKHISER: Well, we have had more bitterly contested elections than
this one, admittedly not in some time. I mean, we had three back in
the 19th century, which were real hair-curlers and the country got through
it and it went on. In our lifetime, probably 1960 comes closest to this.
John Kennedy had a much bigger electoral margin, but the popular vote
was also razor-thin, and Richard Nixon went to his grave convinced that
the election had been stolen from him. Now, he didn't challenge it in
that case, and it was largely because Dwight Eisenhower, who was the
outgoing president, took him aside and read him the riot act and said,
"You're not going to do this. These are the first counts that came
in. We know about Mayor Daley in Chicago and Missouri and Texas and
all the rest of it, but you're not going to challenge those results."
And you know, John Kennedy succeeded. He had legitimacy, he presided
over the Cuban Missile Crisis without anyone calling his election into
question. 
WENDY
KAMINER: I actually think that you would do more to undermine the voters'
faith in the electoral system if you ignored protests that people's
rights were violated during the electoral process. I don't think that
the controversies and the protests that we're seeing now are unhealthy
for the country at all. I think they're a healthy sign of the democracy.
I think as long as people's protests remain legal, as long as they seek
redress, continue to seek redress through legal channels, I think it's
really more of a tribute to our democracy than a threat to it. There
are some very important rights at issue here -- I mean the core rights
of our country really, voting rights. And if people think that those
rights have somehow been taken away from them, we can certainly withstand
hearing their protests about it. And I think that... I'm happy in a
way to see people so politically engaged. You know, I'm not pleased,
no one is pleased by the mess of this election, but at least people
are engaged, at least there are people who care about the outcome of
the election and who care about the fairness of the process. 
STEPHEN
CARTER: Well, healthy may be a little bit strong. It's a very difficult
and in a way heartbreaking situation, I think, and one of things that
makes it heartbreaking is precisely that it's pretty clear at this point
that each of the candidates, both the Gore campaign and the Bush campaign,
have every intention of pushing this to the limit to do everything they
can to make sure that their side prevails. And it strikes me a little
in line of what my colleague Akhil Amar was saying a few minutes ago
- that one of the opportunities to show true leadership is to show a
certain grace or integrity that comes from saying, "I am not going
to insist on every legal right." And I'm not suggesting that it
has to be Gore rather than Bush who takes this view, but there has to
be a leader, among the people who claim they want to lead the American
people, who says, "Let me show you how to sacrifice in this situation.
Let me show you how to unify the country by doing something other than
making sure that my forces are out to do everything possible to make
sure that I win." 
MARGARET
WARNER: Richard Brookhiser, how do you see this? 
RICHARD
BROOKHISER: It's not just the Electoral College that's a problem. It's
also the Senate, it's also the House of Representatives. I mean you
never have a perfect match between the partisan breakdowns of representatives
in Congress and the partisan breakdowns of the votes that were cast
in congressional elections. You never have that. The only way to get
that is to go to a system like they have in the Knesset where everybody
votes, then they see what the percentages of the parties got are and
then they divvy out the seats on the basis of that. If you have any
sort of... really the argument against the Electoral College is ultimately
an argument against considering geography in any way in the voting.
MARGARET
WARNER: Now, what do you mean by be graceful? 
AKHIL
REED AMAR: And there were certain arguments he could have made, maybe
there were certain arguments people who voted for him could have made.
But he gracefully and graciously yesterday said that "The people
have really spoken, I'm not going to challenge this. They spoke with
clarity. I ask all of my supporters to accept what the people really
did."