NATION – The greatest danger presented by the current fiasco in Florida is the sharp increase in the level of animosity between the two sides. The stringent polarization of each party’s constituents is dividing the country right down the middle; driving a wedge in the fabric of America that, if not blunted, could adversely effect the electoral process for a very long time to come.
Chaos will prevail if the loser of every election drags the outcome into court in an attempt to overturn the original result. How will the eventual winner govern if half the electorate believes the election results illegitimate and the winner declared by the courts a usurper of undeserved authority?
The level of rhetoric and free flow of exaggeration and hyperbole currently coming out of Florida is truly alarming.
“She’s acting like some kind of Russian Commissar,” said one top Gore operative about the Florida Secretary of State when she said the counties that wished to submit recount results after the legally mandated deadline would have to justify having those late results considered. The Secretary was simply quoting Florida election law but because her pronouncement did not serve the Gore camp’s needs they immediately launched an attack designed to malign the Secretary’s character and diminish her in the eye of public opinion.
When a Gore operative announced his candidate’s intent to fight all the way to the Florida Supreme Court to get the late recount results accepted a Bush aid accused the Gore campaign of “trying to take the election out of the hands of the voters and steal it in the courts.”
So polarized and partisan has the situation in Florida become that a democrat Palm Beach County election official who just eight weeks ago denied a recount to a republican State Assembly candidate who had lost an election by only 11 votes now literally screams her demands for a pro-Gore recount in that same county.
So called “negative campaigning” has always been a part of American politics. In the era of Abraham Lincoln a candidate running against an opponent who happened to be an actor obliterated that opponent by running a full page ad in the newspaper accusing him of being a “Thespian.”
Wholly fabricated stories of one’s opponents engaging in acts of adultery or gambling indiscretions or of simply being insane were commonplace in elections during the eighteen-hundreds. In those times, however, the “dirty tricks” were intended only to sway the voters. The politicians didn’t actually believe their opponents crazy or evil. Once the elections were over they were over and the members of the political parties typically worked together in the U.S. Congress and in State Legislatures in the best interests of the American public.
As recently as the 1960s true statesmen like Democratic House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen fought each other tooth and nail over political differences on the floor of the house but maintained a high level of respect for one another personally.
Dirksen eventually moved on to the Senate where he served as Minority Leader until his death in 1969 but still, the two men always remained friends. They were easily capable of stringently arguing their party's philosophies without impugning the character or integrity of one another. After the floor debates they would often retire to the congressional lounge and enjoy a fine cigar and a bottle of brandy and inquire as to the well-being of one another’s families with genuine concern. They differed only in political philosophy. They did not consider the other stupid, evil or insane and viewed each other as the opposition, not the enemy.
The deterioration of the American political process into its current abyss of distrust, animosity, negativism and sometimes open, unapologetic, partisan hatred probably began in the fifties with McCarthyism but was temporarily blunted by the innocuous presidency of Eisenhower and the country’s brief flirtation with Camelot under Kennedy. It took the cultural and political turmoil of the late sixties and early seventies to poison the political landscape as profoundly as we see it today in Florida.
The first seeds of distrust were sown during the Viet Nam war. Walter Cronkite told us Johnson and McNamara had lied to us and the political rhetoric to maintain the war effort began to escalate; each new revelation of untruth diminishing the teller in the eyes of the opposition until he could no longer be viewed with any respect at all.
Then, cast directly into this morass of distrust and incredibility, came Watergate. One could argue the political indiscretions of Richard Nixon were a direct result of the election fraud perpetrated by Chicago Mayor Richard Daily in stealing Cook County, and, therefore (so the legend goes), the presidency for JFK in 1960. After suffering that rather ignominious defeat it is not surprising Nixon would have adopted an “anything goes” attitude the next time around.
The man currently commanding the Gore Campaign’s “vote enhancing” offensive in Florida, by-the-way, is none other than the son of that infamous vote-stealing chicago Mayor. Son Bob Daily has appearently learned well at his father’s knee.
The severity of animosity that developed between the two political parties during the year-and-a-half of the Watergate prosecution has never healed. It did, however, set the new standard; the opposition is evil so, therefore, any tactic is acceptable.
Since Watergate the two parties have indulged in an almost continuous tit-for-tat “We’ll get your guy if we can” battle of destruction, divisiveness, distrust and demonazation of one another. The Democrats went after Republican Supreme Court nominees Bork and Thomas, defeating the first and greatly diminishing the second. The Republicans brought down House Speaker Jim Wright and the Democrats retaliated with the destruction of Newt Gingrich. The Democrats assailed Reagan with a two-year long, $40 million “special prosecution” over Iran-Contra and the Republicans retaliated with the equally expensive and drawn out Kenneth Star prosecution and eventual impeachment of Clinton.
In each of these instances there existed some indication and evidence of wrong-doing. The savageness of the attacks, however, and the attempts not simply to remove from office but to utterly destroy the target of the attacks went far beyond the level justified by the offenses.
Each side’s absolute belief in the righteousness of their position and the automatic assumption of evil in anyone who opposed that self righteousness allows both sides to utterly disregard the humanity of the opposition and engage in the “politics of destruction” that have become so prevalent today.
Up until this debacle in Florida these politics of destruction had been primarily contained inside the Washington Beltway. Fought hand-to-hand among the politicians themselves, it mostly affected only the combatants and had little impact on the lives of Americans in general. But two weeks ago in Florida’s Miami/Dade and Palm Beach counties the political guerrilla warfare spilled out into the daylight and into the lives of us all. It now appears whomever becomes the next president of the United States will be determined not by the people but by which side has the best lawyers, who can best demonize the opposition and its supporters and who can best keep its partisan party workers in line regardless of any sense of fair play or concern for right or wrong or for even the law. The partisan struggle has now degenerated to jungle politics–survival of the strongest–and the American people be damned.
One can only hope the Florida conflagration will be the last. That, finally, we will realize how out-of-hand it has all become. That we all begin to recognize how badly is the need for campaign finance reform; how imperative is the need to bury the politics of destruction and reign in the political assassins and the media hacks that feed on and therefore perpetuate this all’s fair, no-holds-barred, win at any cost mentality.
The situation in Florida is a national disaster. It is also a wake-up call. Are you listing? Are you ready to start supporting candidates who champion campaign finance reform, eschew negative campaigning and are committed to acting in your best interest rather than in the interest of political expediency? If not, then Florida represents not the end of the politics of destruction but simply their escalation to a new level of political homicide.