Mandate, anyone? —
“Pelosi characterized the Democrats’ winning control of the House of Representatives as a clear mandate from the American people” (San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 8, 2006).
Yeah, sure.
For many years, this journal has been satirizing the superstition that whenever one party wins a national election, it receives some kind of “mandate” from the American people. Our founder, R.W. Bradford, made hash of this idea in his classic essay, “The New Civic Religion” (February 1993, reprinted, as a warning, in our 2006 pre-election issue). I followed with “Politics vs. Ideology: How Elections Are Won” (February 2005). The fact is that very few American elections involve large swings of the electorate. Most are decided by narrow margins. This results from the nature of a free society, in which people are encouraged to develop multiple identities and exercise their choice about multiple issues.
If America were rigidly divided between partisans of Bush and deplorers of Bush, the November election would have thrown 70% of congressional seats to the Democrats, instead of the paltry 55% they won. The reality is that a deplorer of Bush may be an evangelical Christian who is loath to vote against a party that has sometimes identified itself with evangelical Christian ideas; a gay business owner who dislikes Bush’s opinions about gay marriage but is much more concerned about whether his boyfriend will have to pay inheritance taxes if the Democrats bring back the death duties; or a working mother who feels serious class antagonism toward rich-bitch Nancy Pelosi.
Whoever the deplorer may be, he or she has many competing identities. The total mass of he’s and she’s is very unlikely to land, all at once, on the helpless stomach of either party.
Just before Pelosi gave her silly speech, I participated in a press conference, arranged by Matt Lauer of the “Today” show, in which an able Republican pollster and an able Democratic pollster told what they had learned about the election of 2006. There was no question about the election producing a “mandate.” The great majority of seats that were lost by Republicans were lost by very small percentages. And supposedly single-issue voters did not respond particularly well to single issues. In the last national election, 78% of white evangelical voters supported the Republicans; in this election, 71% did so. The decline was small, and well within the normal range of opinion shifts in the general population. Was it the Mark Foley affair that did it? Was it the rest of the “morals issue”? Or was it disgust with the war, which evangelicals probably feel as strongly as other people? Perhaps it was concern with the budget. Perhaps it was . . . you fill in the blank. Use as many words as you want, to cover all of Americans’ competing concerns.
No, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid do not have a mandate. What they do have is the politician’s normal penchant for lying.
What the Democratic leaders exhibit, besides, is a peculiarly unfortunate — though veracious — way of presenting themselves. Pelosi acts like a spoiled child, which she is. Reid acts like the peevish grandpop who takes the young ‘uns out to the barn an’ whups ‘em. These people are a satirist’s delight. It is certain that they will make the Democratic Party look like something that Daffy Duck would scorn to join.
It is entirely possible that one of the best things that ever happened to the Republican Party was the election of Ought Six. During the next two years, the Democrats will never miss a chance to make fools of themselves, and the GOP will enjoy the best excuse in the world to purge its incompetent leadership. (Jeeze . . . Denny Hastert? How the hell did he get in? And I’ve never seen any plausible evidence of the alleged Satanic brilliancy of Karl Rove.) The Republicans have the opportunity to recur to the conservative principles (which are often libertarian principles) that have tended to win them elections, and abandon the country-club “conservatism” of the Bushians (which is ordinarily a short-term success and a long-term disaster). Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership will create a paradise of mirth for people like me, as they try to live up to their illusory “mandate.”
The only problem is . . . you can do a lot of harm, even if you don’t have a mandate. Watch for the new congressional leadership to (1) try to keep Bush from extricating himself (and therefore, incidentally, the rest of the country) from Iraq; (2) do its best to raise taxes, especially by bringing back the accursed death tax; (3) work to make voters and welfare clients out of as many of the Democrats’ presumed supporters, the illegal immigrants, as it possibly can; (4) make sure that appointees to judgeships and regulatory commissions will deprive Americans of as much liberty and fairness as even the editors of the New York Times could dream of doing.
Whether the Democrats will (5) scheme to impeach Bush and hound his chief advisers into prison remains to be seen. But whatever the winning party does, it will certainly claim that it is irresistibly prompted by its “mandate.”
— Stephen Cox
The LP and the booboisie —
Loretta Nall, the
Libertarian Party’s candidate for governor of Alabama, ran a
write-in campaign because the party couldn’t get the 40,000
signatures required to get on the ballot.
Nall, a young woman who is liberally endowed, got media
coverage by distributing T-shirts carrying pictures of herself,
with cleavage visible, above pictures of her opponents.
The slogan said, “More of these BOOBS!! And less of these
BOOBS!!”
She was also quoted as saying, regarding what she considered
favorable public reception of her plan to withdraw the
Alabama National Guard from the war in Iraq, “When people
in Alabama get tired of kicking the ass of brown people, it’s
time to get out.”
At press time, the number of write-in votes was unavailable,
but it is probable that Nall lost.
— Stephen Cox
| Tim Slagle is a comedian living in Chicago. His website is timslagle.com |
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Gridlocked days are here again —
The recent election holds much optimism for those of us on the side of limited government. It seems that the electorate rejected Republicans for abandoning their commitment to that idea. The new century found Republicans supporting record deficits and the infamous Alaskan “Bridge to Nowhere.” Speaker Dennis Hastert claimed the FBI had no right to search William Jefferson’s office, and kept silent during the Cunningham and Foley scandals.
These and other incidents convinced most Americans that there was very little difference between Republicans and Democrats. Enter Rahm Emanuel with his merry band of pro-life, pro-gun, fiscally responsible Democrats, and conservative voters found little reason to go out to the polls.
However, the Democrats are about to make a big mistake: they will believe the nation has moved leftward and act accordingly. In truth, since most of the liberal Republicans were replaced with conservative Democrats, there is a good chance that Congress will be more conservative in January than it is today.
America certainly is conservative, if the election results are an indication. Amendments against gay marriage passed in eight states, protections for property rights passed in seven, and affirmative action lost in one. In truth, the Democrats won a slimmer majority in the House than the Republicans hold today, and they won back roughly the same portion of the Senate they had in 2001. I’m dying to see what happens when incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi tries to raise taxes.
The GOP made a similar mistake in ‘94. Thinking the nation had moved right, Gingrich tried to implement the Contract with America immediately, and the Republicans paid dearly for it in ‘96. I can’t foresee Democrats getting anything passed other than the minimum-wage increase. They might get immigrant amnesty too, although the unions won’t like it much.
Gridlock has always been my favorite condition of Congress, and that’s exactly how it’s going to stay for the next two years. Sometimes, democracy works.
— Tim Slagle
| Bettina Bien Greaves is co-compiler of “Mises: An Annotated Bibliography” |
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Losing battles, winning wars —
The Libertarian Party may win an occasional political election, but there is no way on God’s green earth that it can win big time. Nor can any extremist political party. Political wins will always go to parties that reflect mainstream thinking. Two major political parties, like the Republicans and Democrats in the United States today, may emphasize different issues, but they become and remain major political parties only because they are within the mainstream of public opinion.
The most important thing the Libertarian Party could possibly accomplish is to help shift the mainstream by nominating candidates for public office who will present the Libertarian position while campaigning. They should talk, debate, argue, and maybe even kiss babies if that is called for. But they shouldn’t worry when they don’t win. Socialist Norman Thomas ran for the presidency six times, in every election from 1928 to 1948. He didn’t win, but his socialist ideas did.
The Libertarian Party should stick to its principles. No compromising! Only in that way can it hope to have any real influence. As Ludwig von Mises wrote: “He who wants to improve conditions must propagate a new mentality, not merely a new institution.”
— Bettina Bien Greaves
| Andrew Ferguson is managing editor of Liberty. |
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Sometimes you get the bar —
As politics and alcohol go hand in hand, it is only natural that political events inspire quite a few drinking games. These range from the complex (every time a Kennedy’s liver threatens to go on strike, take a number of shots inversely proportional to his rank in committee . . . oh, you get the idea) to the simple (think about politics and, man, you need a drink).
The complex games require a group of people dedicated to following the game until they’re too smashed to care, and are thus perfect for State of the Union addresses: “OK, that’s two nukyulars, one ownership society, and one patronizing callout to the military amputee . . . six shots, everyone!” But on Election Day, simplicity is to be preferred: just as you’re alone in the booth, so should you be alone in the bottle.
My simple scheme for November 7 was this: every time a hateful incumbent was ousted, I took a drink. I started when Sen. Mike DeWine crashed to defeat in Ohio, taking with him his panoptical ideas for building a better surveillance state. Then I toasted Pennsylvania voters for ridding themselves of Sen. Rick Santorum and his thirst for holy war in Iran.
I’d built up a pretty good buzz off the losses in the Northeast, relishing especially those of prescription drug bill author Nancy Johnson in Connecticut and dim bulb Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, when the results started pouring in from the red states. By the time I’d caught up with them (and moreover, by the time they’d caught up with me), it was almost the end of the night, and the Dems had taken the House and were threatening the Senate.
After six years of expensive, invasive one-party dominance, divided government was finally back. I prepared a final cheerful libation, something to send me to a gentle sleep with pleasant dreams of government gridlock — then made the mistake of flipping on C-Span at the exact moment that Nancy Pelosi was giving Harry Reid the sort of introduction usually reserved for carpenters riding donkeys. It occurred to me that, come 2009, this pair might be penning bills for a Great Society true-believer president to sign into law.
That thought was like black coffee, fresh air, and a cold shower combined, and it taught me an important lesson: next election, I’ll only drink when a hateful incumbent is returned to office. The effect on the country will be the same, but at least I won’t go to bed sober.
— Andrew Ferguson
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