I’m not interested in whining about Bush’s “legitimacy” as president. But a presidential election is held not just to select the head of the executive branch, but to broadly determine the political philosophy and policies the nation should adopt for the next four years. And on those counts, who won the election matters every time Bush attempts to shove another right-wing position down the throats of the American voters.
** Tranquilis, Jodi**, I am really, very happy to see that you admit that things went very badly in Florida (and other places). Yes, we all want to fix the system.
Wouldn’t it be helpful, though, to understand what went wrong afore we tried to fix it though?
And, wouldn’t it be helpful if we all admitted that not only did things go terribly wrong, but that one effect of those things going horribly wrong was that legitimate voters did not get their votes counted. That actual people went to the polls, attempted to vote correctly and their votes were either not allowed or not counted. Both the Civil rights folks and the bipartisan commission set up by Jeb have made that statement.
Carefull, now. Roughly half the nation is saying the same thing about left-wing positions. They hate the idea of having to listen to another Democrat in the White House as much as you hate the Republican. Half (roughly) of the Nation thinks Bush is just dandy.
I asked “Can give me a PRACTICAL REASON to attempt to prove at this late date that Gore should have won, other than to undermine the legitimacy of the presidency?”
. . . to which ELVIS replies:
Under the system of electing a president through the Electoral College, what “the majority of Americans wanted and chose” is NOT the overriding factor in deciding who becomes president. This is not news, nor is it innovative to the Bush Jr. administration. It is perfectly possible to win the majority of the popular vote and lose the presidency – it has happened before.
Whether Bush won by one vote or one thousand or one million in no way impacts his right, ability, and authority to pursue whatever presidential agenda he sees fit now that he is President. And people who disagree with his policies do not have to attack his right to hold that office in order to disagree with those policies.
Bush does NOT have a clear mandate to govern; this is proven by the very closeness of the election; that point does not become any more or less telling by attempting to prove that Gore should have won – a point that is very likely unprovable at this point in any event. Even IF Gore had won, with such a close election he would not have emerged with a clear popular mandate, either. Those are the breaks for BOTH the winner and the loser when the election is a close one.
My point.
Actually, I’ve seen little indication that Bush believes he has a mandate, as opposed to merely the de facto and de jure authority to govern that being sworn in as President obviously conveys. The one exception I can think of is tax cuts, where he can pretty safely claim a mandate since few people would argue that most taxpayers are not in favor of tax cuts of some form.
(My emphasis.) This merely begs the question, which was “can anyone give me a reason to keep beating this dead horse, other than to attack his legitimacy?” You have now flat-out admitted that the reason for the “pressure” is PRECISELY to attack the legitimacy of his presidency. You are free to continue to do so, just as I am free to consider it just so much boo-hooing and – worse – undermining of not just this president, love him or hate him, but of the office he occupies.
MINTY –
Surely we can agree that legitimacy and policy are not the same things. “Legitimacy” refers to his right to hold the office; “policy” to the goals he might choose to follow while holding it. I realize that some Democrats continue to choose to attack Bush’s legitimacy because they don’t agree with his policies – ELVIS just admitted as much – but I continue to consider that a pretty craven thing to do – concentrating on the “red herring” of legitimacy rather than the more difficult-to-tackle questions of policy. If we want to argue policy, fine with me – but “Gore should have won” is manifestly NOT an argument about policy.
No, actually, it doesn’t. Because Bush IS president and he DOESN’T have a popular mandate – just as Gore would have lacked a poplular mandate had he won such a close race. Whether Bush or Gore was the “real” winner will not, at this late date, change either of those facts. It will not change the fact that Bush is president, and it will not create for him a popular mandate where one obviously does not exist. Again, the only PRACTICAL reason I see for continuing to keep the issue of the “true” winner alive – as opposed to concentrating on election reform or Bush’s lack of a clear mandate – is to attack Bush’s legitimacy. This IMO is stupid: He’s the president. The end. Carping about how he shouldn’t be – again, probably unprovable anyway – just sounds like sour grapes and, worse than that, an underhanded way to attack his policies, as opposed to his right to hold the office. If you don’t like the man and oppose his policies, then be up front about that. There’s ample room for debate there, I’m sure. But don’t waste all our time by continuing to focus on a dead issue that is NOT going to change, no matter how long and hard people whine about it. It sounds like whining to many Republicans because it IS whining. And it sounds underhanded because it IS underhanded – as Elvis’s post makes clear. For many, outrage about the election is just so much smoke to obscure the fact that some people just don’t like the guy and will do anything they can to undermine his presidency. I don’t think it is smug or paranoid or unreasonable for Republicans to recognize that and respond accordingly.
I will also say, parenthetically, that I found it amusing that both ELVIS and MINTY would talk about Bush’s policies in terms of what he is “shoving down the throat of the American public” (throat or other orifice, apparently). This to me highlights that many people cannot even TALK about this issue without employing inflammatory rhetoric that obscures the main point which, again, IMO is this: There is no practical reason to continue to attempt to award the election to Gore except to say that Bush does not have the legitimate right to be president. It has nothing to do with a mandate; it has nothing to do with election reform; it has everything to do with undermining the presidency of an individual that you just happen to dislike. I don’t personally find that a very laudable goal, but to each their own.
Jodi, you’ve totally misconstrued my point about maintaining the questions about how Bush got into office. I thought I and others made it clear that the issue is the legitimacy of his policies more than his person or party affiliation. They are most definitely not the same thing. We did NOT, as a country, vote for a right-wing agenda in the Executive Branch, and the only way you can say we did is to essentially repeat “Our guy’s in, now quit whining”.
I don’t know where you got this concept that the President is equivalent to a monarch, but it couldn’t have been from the preamble to the Constitution. That’s where the fundamental principles of republican democracy are stated, what really matter here, not in the procedural details of the Electoral College, but you’re putting the emphasis on the latter instead. Why? Does it simply suit narrower purposes you happen to agree with?
If I’d been unclear, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I was. I think you’ve read what I’ve said the way you wanted to read it.
Mandate, schmandate, Jodi. What I’m talking about is the moral authority to govern under a particular agenda. As someone once put it:
No consent, no just powers.
It seems quite clear to me that, even putting aside the issues of the electoral college vs. majority rule, the American voters intended to reject the Bush agenda on election day. But, oops!, we screwed up and now we have the Accidental President, who is attempting to govern as if the voters’ consent has legitimized all aspects of his agenda. I beg to differ, and so do the press-sponsored studies of the ballots in Florida.
That’s why it matters to me. If anyone else wishes to discount “the consent of the governed,” that’s your business.
It’s my considered opinion that there could not have been a “legitimate” winner of the Presidential Election of 2000. A fair proportion of the Left today is claiming that Bush, with the “connivance” of the Supreme Court, “stole” the Presidency from Gore.
But consider what would have happened if the situation had been reversed – if the vote-counting had been allowed to continue and eventually shown a Gore majority. Isn’t it obvious that the Right would have said the same thing about Gore, with the idea that “voter intent” was read into disputable votes by county election boards with the support of the Democratic Florida Supreme Court? They are effectively saying that that is what he tried even after winning.
What Bush does have is a claim under the rule of law to the Presidency for four years, and a mandate to govern in a bipartisan manner – which he recognizes and gave lip service to in his “acceptance speech” when Gore finally conceded. He has not shown this in much of what he has done – but that’s playing power politics as usual: “Get as much as you can for your agenda, while the iron is hot.”
There are a number of interesting results coming from this election, not the least of which is that for the first time in history, we have an evenly divided Senate – and the deciding vote – and a position “one heartbeat away from the Presidency,” to coin a phrase – belongs to Dick Cheney, a rational, moderate conservative who dearly loves his wife and daughter – and the woman his daughter fell in love with. That fact has got to stick in the craw of every Christian Coalition member. (I noted over on Fathom that John the ex-Cyberian, affectionately remembered by many longtime posters here :eek: , was asking “who should replace Mr. Cheney when he resigns due to this heart condition” – which I have grave doubts would cause him to resign unless pressured into it by the Far Right.)
The man is president. He institutes policies as president. The only way that those policies can be illegitimated by attacking the election is through him. “The president is not legitimate, ergo his policies are not legitimate” is the obvious reasoning. His policies were not elected. No policy ever is.
The legitimacy of a policy may be attacked as a matter of law or a matter of opinion. Take, say, increased isolationism. You could say “Bush’s increased isolationism takes the form of prohibiting any export [a totally made up example]. This is illegal and therefore the policy is not legitimate.” Or you could say “I think increased isolationism is stupid and counterproductive and therefore in my opinion it is not a legitimate strategy.” But you cannot say “Increased isolationism is an illegitimate policy because of the election.” It is only illegitimate in so far as the election is concerned if the person propounding the policy is illegatimate, and HIS illegitimacy then taints all his policies. To try to say “we are attacking his policies, not his right to hold the office, through attacking the election” seems to me to be so patently false that I am astonished to see anyone propound it. You can only attack his policies by attacking him, at least insofar as the election is concerned. The policies were not elected; the man was.
Ah, baloney. In one sense, we, as a country, voted in such a way that the election results were so close that neither candidate could EVER claim that “we, as a country” elected him. That’s what I said: No mandate. But in another sense, “we, as a country” certainly DID elect him – and thereby sign up for his agenda – which, like a policy, is never elected or “voted for,” by the way. He IS the president in the wake of a legal election, and he is the president because a LOT of people DID vote for him – your posts implying the contrary notwithstanding. So either we accept the fact he is president and get over it, or we continue to attack his legitimacy – with no practical good to come of it, and perhaps serious damage to be done to the office of the presidency because of it. But since no good comes of the incessant and pointless complaining, many people will inevitably label it whining.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure the Constitution stands for the whole “no-monarch” thing, but thanks for clearing that up. :rolleyes:
Sigh. We do not run elections according to the Preamble to the Constitution, which I’m pretty sure (. . . reciting to self . . .) make that very sure does not address how elections shall be held. And we are not a country that embraces as a “fundamental principle of democracy” changing the rules mid-stream (i.e., “We have always used the Electoral College, love it or hate it, but since in THIS case, our guy got most of the popular vote, let’s throw it out.”) I focused on the Electoral College (obviously) because it explains how Gore could receive the majority of the popular vote (which I don’t believe anyone disputes) and still lose the election. Why in the world would you focus on the Preamble to the Constitution?
I don’t know how to respond to this. I do not “read” things with a particular motivation. I read the words as you type them. If I have misunderstood you – which I doubt – then you WERE unclear. You now appear to be saying that attacking the election is a way to attack the legitimacy of the President’s policies and not the President’s right to hold office. If THAT was your point, I can only say that I missed it because the separation – as if the policy exists without the person propounding it, and as if the policy, and not the person, was elected – is to me so transparently artificial that it would not have occurred to me to be a point anyone would even attempt to make.
MINTY – Mandate, schmandate, Jodi. What I’m talking about is the moral authority to govern under a particular agenda. . . . No consent, no just powers.
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Oh, c’mon, MINTY. You’re about the last person I would expect to hear this from. When the election is too close to call and irregularities are alleged, then the whole thing gets thrown to the Electoral College and the legal issues are taken up by the appropriate forum – the courts. This is EXACTLY what happened here. That’s democracy in action. It is ridiculous to say that because the election was not a “clean” one, the resulting president lacks “consent” and “just powers.” What is your alternative? Anarchy? Let’s just throw out the entire 200 + year old system and refuse to have a president because YOU think he lacks the moral authority to govern? Hogwash. At some level he is president because SOMEBODY had to be president. A “do-over” is not an option, and our system does not function without an executive. I would note, AGAIN, that this is a direct attack on his legitimacy as president – something that whether YOU like it or not has been conclusively proven by the Electoral College and the courts.
Really? Maybe you should lend your crystal ball to the major news outlets, because what is clear to you is not clear to me or to many. Again, Bush may not have a mandate – a clear endorsement of his agenda – but then neither would Gore have had one if HE had been elected. And I do find it damn presumptious of you to declare what “the American voters” intended to reject – in a contest this close, it is beyond argument that almost half intended to endorse him and his agenda.
What do you mean, “legitimized his agenda”? His agenda is not subject to being “legitimatized,” except to the extent it is legally pursuable. Apart from legality, all else regarding policy and agenda is a matter of opinion. His agenda does not need to be “legitimized;” it is what it is – his agenda. And he is the president.
I have yet to see a study of the election concern itself with the legitimacy of the president’s policies or agendas, as opposed to the election itself, and I would love you to point me to one that does. Policies and agendas are not elected. No one said “I vote for higher tariffs” or “I vote for aid to Israel.” Bush or Gore – those are your choices.
Why? I really don’t get it. If Gore was in office under similar circumstances, would you be decrying his lack of authority to govern, even though elected by the Electoral College and sanctioned by the Supreme Court? Somehow I doubt it. Just as POLY says, if the shoe was on the other foot, I somehow doubt you’d be so concerned about the “will of the people.” In any event, the election DOES represent the will of the people as expressed by the Electoral College – which is the way it been expressed for centuries.
I do not discount it. I merely point out that when the will of the people cannot be finally discerned, some accommodation must be made and someone must give way, so that the country can move forward. At least Gore had the sense to realize this, even if some others do not.
Hmmm, a Republican who’s incredulous when the Democrats when they say they find a valid distinction between the office-holder and the agenda. Where have I heard that before?
[sub]No offense intended if these labels do not match any posters’ actual political persuasions. But it’s not near as funny otherwise.[/sub]
MINTY, do not misunderstand me. There is obviously a valid distinction to be made between the official and the agenda. You know this, and I know this, and I know you know it (and you know I know that you know . . . ). BUT you can only attack the OFFICE-HOLDER through attacks on the election, because it is he who was elected, not his agenda. So for someone to say, as ELVIS has, “In attacking the election, I am not attacking the MAN, I’m attacking his POLICIES” seems to me to be . . . well, facile, among other things. This is not to say that no such distinction exists; it is to say that it is not a distinction that can be made in the context of an election, so long as we continue to elect human beings and not agendas.
about some Republicans “just wanting to fix the system” and having no interest in proving who won? It was mere days ago that we had the “Bush wins! Again!” thread, where a whole bunch of Republicans were gleefully jumping up and down about how Bush supposedly really is legitimate.
It’s only a partisan waste of time when the Democrats are doing it about Gore. What is it when the Republicans are doing it about Bush?
Be honest: How many separate threads bitching, moaning, kvetching, whining, and crying about the election have you, personally, started – not just participated in, but STARTED? It has GOT to be in the double digits. Shoot, even THIS thread was started by Gore apologists attempting, on the most flimsy of “evidence” to claim the election for Gore and asserting, which diddly as evidence, that it’s just a matter of time until Bush’s presidency is found to be “illegitimate.”
It seems to me self-evident that Republicans do not have the same impetus to “prove” the election as Democrates do. Bush already IS the president. He doesn’t have to prove he won; he’s president either way. But proving he lost the election could enormously damage his administration – or such, I gather, is the hope of some Democrats. Which I find ironic: Clearly he will not be removed from office, but some seem content to render him as powerless and ineffectual as possible. I am certain that should such tactics succeed, the Democrats will in turn reap what they have sown in divisiveness and refusal to respect the office if not the man, and it is the system as a whole (and the prospect for bipartisan cooperation on any issue) that will eventually suffer. This to me is Not A Good Thing – for any of us.
For this reason, I would devoutly love the nation as a whole to put the issue behind us and just SHUT UP ABOUT IT ALREADY. (ESPRIX started a whole Pit thread on this very issue recently.) But I see little indication that people will do so, and in my experience it ain’t the Republicans who keep bringing it up.
Jodi, here’s the difference between using the election to attack the office holder and using it to attack his policies.
A) “More people voted (or intended to vote) for Gore! You shouldn’t be president, you punk-ass chump!”
That’s a facially ridiculous proposition under the rule of law, as you’ve repeatedly pointed out. B) “More people voted (or intended to vote) for Gore! Don’t you dare shove that right-wing nonsense down the voting public’s non-consensual vote, you punk-ass chump!”
Seems reasonable to me. Bush still gets to be president, but he doesn’t get to pursue far right policies without being reminded ad nauseum that the voters rejected those positions. It’s also perfectly legitimate politics, exactly as the Republicans would–and should–be doing if the shoe was on the other foot.
Actually, there isn’t, as I will again attempt to point out.
I’m glad we agree at least to that extent.
And why can’t he “shove right-wing nonsense” down the voting public’s throat? Because they didn’t vote for the “nonsense,” or because they didn’t vote for HIM and it’s HIS nonsense? To me, the answer is obviously the latter. As long as we are electing invididuals and not policies, the individual’s policies can only be attacked (in the context of the election) by attacking the individual – because he was the one on the ballot. Not his policies. And, again, you are treading a very fine line by insisting that ANYTHING he does is “non-consensual” in terms of “the public” when you know or ought to know that a LOT of the public – statistically, almost exactly half – ENDORSES those policies.
It doesn’t to me, for the reasons given above. You can only claim to attacking policies and not personal legitimacy by artificially removing the individual from the election – as if we elect agendas and not people. I see no way to do that.
Except, of course, that they didn’t. The voters made no distinction between “far right policies” and “middle-right policies” and “middle-left policies” and “far-left policies;” they voted for individuals. There is no mandate against far-right policies – there is no mandate AT ALL. That is what a close election means, much to Bush’s chagrin.
I do not find it “perfectly legitimate politics” to attack far-right policies not because they are defective or distasteful or not a good idea – as many of them are (or are not, as the case may be) – but rather because the election was a close one. That, to me, has diddly to do with questions of policy. It doesn’t even serve to illuminate why a particular policy should be attacked or discarded. Under this same rationale, NO policy of Bush’s – conservative or liberal, good idea or bad, far right or far left – can EVER be considered legitimate. I find the continued concentration on the election at the expense of actual, meaningful discourse on policy to be the antithesis of “perfectly legitimate politics;” it is, rather, an attempt to undermine the man’s ability to do his job by concentrating on something that is in the past and manifestly will not be changed. I fail to see why that is a good idea for ANYONE. I fail to see that it accomplishes (or even attempts to accomplish) anything other than undermining the president and, by extension, the office he holds. And I don’t believe that the fact that I consider that A Really Bad Idea has much to do with the fact that I’m a Republican. Democracy depends on the people being willing to accede to being led, sometimes by people they don’t like, if that’s the result dictated by the election – whether it’s a landslide or a squeaker. In this case, some people appear to be unwilling to do so, and I consider that very dangerous. It is also, I will note again, not a position held by Gore, the person you purport to support.
Stoid, that’s me you’re talking about. I’m a Republican, what used to be called a Rockerfeller Republican. Go back and read my posts in the various Election Threads. I’ll wait.
Now, what were you saying?
I find myself almost exactly halfway between Bush and Gore, ideologically speaking (not that that’s so big a gap). I spent weeks deciding for whom to vote, only to have to re-evaluate time and again as new info came to light. I find Blind Ideological Loyalty to be one of the more contemptable examples of intellectual cowardice, but 'till now, have refrained from fully expressing my disgust.
This is a board supposedly dedicated to the banishment of ignorance, but I find this forum (GD) in general, and the Election Threads, in particular, to be filled with dogmatic adherance to position, Religeously Political thuggery for various parties and/or causes, inflamitory posturing, hackney sterotypes, sly jabs at personal character, and other manners of disappointingly childish behavior. My three year-old shows more maturity than some of positions taken in here. I’ve even caught myself descending to the general level of hatred and discontent.
It appears some people just can’t get off their asses (positions) and move on. Well, I’m moving on. I’m outta this thread. If you want to respond to me in here, fine, but it’ll not be answered in this thread.
Disparaging the man is expected.
Our last President was impeached. His predecessor was successfully labelled a liar. His predecessor was a smiling puppet. His predecessor was a devout incompetant. His predecessor was a bumbling stooge. His predecessor was a criminal.
I think Jodi ought to have a bit more faith in our government.
In many nations attacking high officials is dangerous ( and consequently dangerous for the person speaking out. ) In Czarist Russia and Aparthied South Africa popular upswells brought down the old guard. In some parliaments, Italy being the example I’ve heard most, divisiveness led to chaos. The American system has evolved into a wonderfully balanced machine for collecting and diverting popular movements into safe channels. Extreme political rhetoric isn’t irresponsible because nothing will come of it. The oval office remains secure, if a bit uncomfortable, for its occupant.
– belongs to Dick Cheney, a rational, moderate conservative who dearly loves his wife and daughter – and the woman his daughter fell in love with. That fact has got to stick in the craw of every Christian Coalition member. (I noted over on Fathom that John the ex-Cyberian, affectionately remembered by many longtime posters here :eek: , was asking “who should replace Mr. Cheney when he resigns due to this heart condition” – which I have grave doubts would cause him to resign unless pressured into it by the Far Right.)