Clinton (left) and Reagan
John Rapley, Contributor
ON TUESDAY, Americans will go to the polls to elect a new President and Congress, not to mention a vast number of state and local officials. But it is the presidential campaign which is winning most of the attention, in no small part because it has become one of the closest races in recent history.
Although it seems that good economic times dull the interest of most people, in many respects Americans should see this as a very important election. At stake may be the future role of the Federal Govern-ment in the American polity.
Since the 1950s, Republicans have tried to reverse the tide against centralisation that was started under the Democratic presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. They have favoured state autonomy over a strong Federal Government.
Democrats, on the other hand, have generally looked to the Federal Government, which tends to be less conservative than state ones, to advance their liberal and reformist causes.
Power heights
The rise in the powers of the Federal Government arguably reached its height in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the civil rights movement, President Johnson's Great Society programme, and the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on abortion tipped the balance to the liberals. All the while, Republican efforts to reverse the tide generally ran into strong opposition from a Congress dominated by Democrats.
However, things started to change after 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the Presidency for the Republicans. His Supreme Court appointments started a trend in judicial rulings that shifted powers back to the states. This conservative tide arguably reached its peak in the 1994 elections, when Republicans swept both houses of Congress and began implementing a legislative package that severely eroded the powers of the Federal Government.
Even though the Republicans suffered modest electoral setbacks in 1996 and 1998, by and large they won the war over the definition of the Federal Government's future role. President Bill Clinton, to salvage what in 1994 looked like a doomed Presidency, co-opted much of the Republican agenda and helped pushed the Democratic Party to the right. The result has been a streamlined Federal Government and a growing shift of authority back to the states.
Contrasting candidates
This year's Republican candidate, George W. Bush, has proposed a massive tax cut that would, if implemented, eviscerate the Federal Government and restore it to its older role as a guardian of national defence.
In contrast, the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, has drawn a line in the sand. While maintaining that he will not increase the size of the Federal Govern-ment, he wants to retain a central role for it in the provision of social security, education and medical insurance, among other things.
So while the Democrats are looking to this election to continue a wave towards them that started in 1996, in other respects the election might yet shape up to be their Waterloo. After a decade of retreats in the face of a right-wing onslaught, they are refusing to back up any further and are fighting to defend what is left of their agenda: no more erosion of the Federal Government, no further rightward shift in the Supreme Court.
Whoever wins the Presidential election will probably nominate several new justices to the Court, either stopping the conservative tide on the bench as Mr. Gore wants to do, or tipping it over decidedly to the right as Mr. Bush is likely to do.
Close race
As things stand, the race is too close to call. Either house of Congress and the Presidency could all go either way, so we could have anything from a Republican sweep to a Demo-cratic sweep, with several possible combinations in between. Given the booming economy and the consequent optimistic outlook of most Americans, it is a bit of a mystery to many observers that incumbents are not doing better than they are. In particular, many pundits are at a loss to explain why Al Gore is not coasting to an easy victory.
But I think the reasons are not that mysterious. Al Gore has inherited several problems, not of his own making, which are complicating his run for the presidency. To begin with, conservative voters mainly Republican but also some independents appear highly mobilised this year. This is because of their personal disgust with outgoing President Bill Clinton, and the seedier practices with which they have come to associate his term of office. This brush has tainted Al Gore, try as he may to run from the president, and has hobbled his campaign somewhat. Linked to a President who, shall we say, enjoys an inappropriate relationship with the truth, Mr. Gore has been hounded for embellishing a few stories he has told on the campaign trail. He has neither lied nor distorted central facts. However, sensitivity to his boss's manipulations has held Mr. Gore to a standard of truthfulness which has forced him at times to restrain himself on the campaign trail. Unfortunately, this has further cemented his apparently undeserved reputation for being staid.
On the other hand, if the right is ready to turn out, the same, so far, cannot be said for the left. Disappointed by the rightward shift of their party during the Clinton years, many Democrats may not bother voting, and some have left to support the more left-wing Green Party candidacy of Ralph Nader. So while the Republicans have united around Mr. Bush, the Democrats continue to bleed on their left flank. But Mr. Gore's attempts to stanch the bleeding with some populist rhetoric may have lost him some support in the middle. It has also played into Mr. Bush's sunny campaign theme as the feel-good candidate who will end the bickering in Washington.
Dilemma
Mr. Gore also faces a dilemma. Within the Democratic Party, there is a core constituency who remain enamoured of Mr. Clinton. Mr. Gore's efforts to distance himself from Mr. Clinton to attract swing voters has not enthused them. But calls in some quarters of the Democratic Party to bring Mr. Clinton into the campaign are met with an understandable reluctance from the Gore camp, since polls suggest the President would mobilise Democrats at the expense of independent voters, without whom Mr. Gore cannot win the election. Nor do Mr. Clinton's partisans do Mr. Gore any favours by suggesting that were the President running, he would be trouncing Mr. Bush.
Polls suggest that, if anything, the Democrats might well do worse in this scenario. With the Clinton shadow threatening to turn this election into a referendum on "Clintonism," Mr. Gore, who wanted to run as his own man, is finding that the referendum is not favouring him.
The races for Congress are so close that the Presidential election may well determine their outcome, at least in the House of Representatives. Democrats retain an outside chance of winning back control of the Senate, and a very good chance of retaking the House of Representatives. But if they are to do so, they will need a strong turnout on election day, which would depend on the voters coming out to support Mr. Gore.
Recent polls suggest Mr. Bush has a slight lead in the presidential campaign. How-ever, he has not accumulated enough of the Presidential college votes to make a victory look secure. A strong Demo-cratic turnout could scuttle his chances at victory.
Regardless of the outcome, the next session of Congress may be one in which either victor faces a rough ride implementing his agenda. Whoever wins either house of Congress, their lead will likely be narrow. Given that there are conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, and further that this may not be a kind year for conservative Republicans, the result may be a Congress with no clear ideological leaning. It will thus be difficult to unite behind either a liberal agenda or a conservative one. Add to that the strong possibility that a recession will develop in the U.S. in the next year or so, and that the vast budget surpluses both Presidential candidates are relying on to make good on their promises are unlikely to materialise they depend on ridiculously optimistic projections, and the outgoing Con-gress looks set to commit a third of the projected surplus to spending and tax cuts already and the coming years will not be kind to the victor of Tuesday's race.
No difference
As for the rest of us, what should we look for? Ralph Nader has based his campaign on the claim that there is not much to choose between the two candidates. As he puts it, the only difference between Messrs. Bush and Gore is the velocity with which their knees touch the floor when a corporation knocks at the door. Mr. Nader may overstate the similarities on domestic matters just a bit. Nevertheless, when it comes to foreign policy, I think he may not be far off the truth. However, while in large measure the Clinton administration was a friend of the Third World in rhetoric only, I believe that Mr. Gore not only has a more enlightened attitude towards the Caribbean than does Mr. Bush, but may be more willing to spend political capital on it than was his predecessor. I, like many of us, will be rooting for the Democrat.
John Rapley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, University of the West Indies and a regular Gleaner columnist.
