-Caveat Lector-
http://www.ardemgaz.com/today/edi/wedit122.html
The hollow crisis; How another generation did it
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Wednesday, November 22, 2000
HAVE YOU noticed it, too--the almost complete absence of political issues in the
news for the past two weeks? That
is, any issue except the desire for office, in this case the highest office in
the land.
What ever happened to all those questions that were supposed to be paramount,
crucial, decisive, and all-important
only 15 days ago?
You remember: the fate of Social Security and Medicare, how to provide
prescription drugs for the elderly, the equity
(or inequity) of the death/estate tax, the readiness of the armed forces, the
state of American education and its
discontents .... and all those other issues that were so earnestly if not
precisely debated during the campaign just
unconcluded.
Important as we were told all those great issues were, they seemed to have
vanished from the news, and from public
interest. Were the presidential debates just a dream, a show, a front? The only
kind of politics that remains visible is
the bare skeleton of politics: the struggle for power and patronage and the
presidency itself. The great question of the
day becomes: Is the fix in?
What a pity. Because if there were issues of over-riding importance facing the
country, perhaps they could be
compromised, and the country could get on with the business of governing itself.
That's the way it was done in 1877, when one party got the White House and the
other got its platform enacted. Well,
it wasn't quite that simple, as C. Vann Woodward pointed out in his classic
analysis of that great compromise, Reunion
and Reaction. His book, first published in 1951, is still highly readable--as
much detective story as a classic of
American history.
The Arkansas-born historian had to put all the pieces of the puzzle together to
explain how Rutherford B. Hayes was
finally named president as the result of a complex deal, and Samuel J. Tilden
wasn't. It wasn't just a matter of ending
Reconstruction in exchange for letting the Republicans have the next president.
(The federal occupation of the South
was already evaporating even under General and President Grant.)
That year, the Democrats also insisted on having one of their own in the new
president's Cabinet as a consolation
prize, and in a position that commanded bountiful patronage itself: postmaster general.
But the principal concession obtained was federal support for a Southern rail
route across the continent, the Texas and
Pacific. Beyond all the specifics of the deal, it tied the fortunes of the
emerging and recovering South to the industrial
interests of the North for years to come--at the expense of the political rights
of the Southern Negro. The Union held,
but at a great price.
The unheralded and largely secret Compromise of 1877 proved far more durable
than celebrated solutions like the
Compromise of 1850, which lasted only a few years. Indeed, it could be argued
that the Compromise of 1877 lasted
until 1957, when federal troops were dispatched to Little Rock, and a Second and
more lasting Reconstruction began.
But before all the details were hammered out in '77, the impasse of that year
bore some uncanny resemblances to this
year's stalled election. To quote C. Vann Woodward on who actually won the
election of 1876: "Speculation on the
possible results of a perfectly fair election and a fair canvass of returns are
inconclusive and highly hypothetical."
Sound familiar? There is nothing new under the American sun.
Already some are preparing to address the next president of the United States by
the title conferred upon Rutherford
B. Hayes in 1877: His Fraudulency. With one candidate's votes frozen by order of
a state Supreme Court
uncontaminated by Republicans, the card counters on Florida's Gold Coast now
know just how many votes they need
to find. And those all too punchable cards may already be sitting in neat little
piles ready to go. It doesn't take a Ouija
board to tell whose names will be on those ballots by the time they're
resurrected. Hizzoner Richard J. Daley's body
lies a-moulderin' in the grave, but his spirit goes marching on. A
presidentialized election is being served up Chicago
style.
THE COUNTRY has not yet duplicated the impasse that faced Americans at the end
of 1876, when the House and
Senate couldn't agree on how to count the disputed electoral votes. But already
fanciful scenarios are in the air, and
public confidence in the process erodes day by day. Vote totals become suspect,
and the partisan affiliations of judges
are noted as pointedly as they have been on Arkansas ballots.
There is even talk of competing slates of electors being chosen from Florida,
just as they were in 1876. To quote
Professor Woodward on the dreary scene in the nation's capital back in 1876, the
hundredth year of American
independence:
The year drew toward its close with no prospect of a break in the deadlock
between the two Houses and the two
parties. On December 13 both .... announced equally firm claims to the
presidency for their candidates. Debates
became angrier on Capitol Hill and members began to arm themselves. Scenes on
the floors of the two Houses
reminded old-timers of the days of 1860-61. It had been less than twelve years
since the country was at war and
memories of those days were always present in this crisis.
Happily, a second Civil War was averted, in large part because the first had
left Americans with no taste for another.
And so the presidency could be filled by balancing the great political demands
and economic interests of the day.
BUT THERE are no sweeping issues separating the two presidential contenders this
year--only a thousand or so votes
being shuffled like playing cards. The presidential election of 2000 has become
a legal wrangle instead of a political
debate subject to compromise.
No political solution seems in sight, for no great political questions loom. The
historical analogy with 1877 can be
pushed only so far, for this year there seem no momentous issues to compromise.
Back in 1876, one statesman who still remembered the old republic said he feared
American politics had been
permanently "Mexicanized"--but Mexicanization would be a step up this year.
Forget Mike Huckabee's less than tactful description of the electoral process in
Arkansas; this year's presidential
election would befit a banana republic writ large.
At this point, only an act of patriotism and supreme self-abnegation on the part
of one of the candidates might elevate
us all. Unlikely as it seems, George W. Bush's finest hour, and a place in the
grateful hearts of his countrymen, could
soon be upon him. Strange, the kind of opportunities for greatness that life
gives us.
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