Winner Take All
It appears that Arnold outpolled his opponents and “no on recall” (e.g., Davis) in a fair, high-turnout election. Congrats to the new Governator. Now the he’s about to learn what it is he won, maybe he’ll sponsor a recall of himself after a few months in Sacramento. Good riddance to Davis, one of the worst Democrats and certainly worst politicians we’ve seen in a long time. Can you imagine some people were talking about this guy as a presidential candidate at one point? At least the 2004 field won’t have to share a podium with him when they come around on the campaign trail. As for California, they get the governor they deserve (sorry Susan…)
The problem here isn’t the outcome – although I’m not crazy about it for my own reasons. It’s the continuing precedent of using legal but extremely drastic measures to put Republicans in power when the customary means of regularly-scheduled elections produces results they find unpleasant. Impeachment, appeals to the Supreme Court in Presidential elections, mid-term redistricting and the recall of governors are all weapons of mass political destruction, until now reserved for cases when there was no other way to get a complete scoundrel or criminal out of office. They’re not meant to settle partisan scores, and they are certainly not meant to thwart the expressed will of the people in the normal course of the democratic process. And yet now, all of these extremely disruptive and destabilizing tactics seem to be available to anyone who thinks they provide a path to quick and easy power.
In every case, we have our Republican friends to thank for this. It’s amazing they can call themselves “conservative” with straight faces. Theirs are the methods of radical, anarchic, bomb-throwers, not responsible statesmen. We’re not talking about simple legislative ju jitsu like filibusters and committee votes, but interference with the very heart of the democratic process, which is the popular franchise. They offend the notions of fair play, of grace in accepting defeat, and of the customary limits of debate in a democracy. And yet, the perpetrators of these carefully-orchestrated schemes seem to get a free pass because they provide the media with so much spectacle and excitement that no one who depends on a news organization paycheck will dare to call them on it. Instead, we get po-faced anchors relating lies about “grass roots efforts” and ignoring the twisted, bitter faces behind the curtain, probing the system for weaknesses like a teenage computer hacker trying to exploit a programming bug.
For the first hundred years of our history, the diplomatic and financial credibility of the United States was always under suspicion, as the institution of democratic rule seemed to foreign investors inherently less stable than the monarchies and polite aristocracies of Europe. Partisan debate got pretty fierce at times. Over one significant issue, there was no political settlement short of Civil War. Since that time, Americans of both parties have generally respected the process, gracefully accepting periodic defeat at the polls in the national interest of preserving order and allowing the government to do its job. Civil customs have replaced civil war, and the result has been the emergence of the most stable, powerful and prosperous democracy in history.
Now all of that is threatening to come undone as a result of short-sighted pursuit of advantage by a cadre of fanatical ideologues who despise the entire idea of government and have nothing but contempt for democracy if it does not produce results favorable to them every time.
Gray Davis may have been a poor governor and a lackluster leader, but the Republicans should have defeated him when they had the chance in a scheduled election. If Schwartzenegger wanted to be governor, there was clearly nothing that could have kept him from victory in 2002, sparing the state a costly and disruptive process, and keeping the extreme measure of the recall on a high shelf, away from the hands of any ambitious politician or party (and please, spare me the pious lies about this being some kind of citizen initiative – it was clearly bought and paid-for by Republican insiders and stage-managed from the White House, and to suggest otherwise deeply offends the intelligence of anyone who was paying attention). Instead, rather than accept defeat and let someone whose only crime was unpopularity serve out a duly-elected term, they chose to set an awful precedent that threatens to plunge many states in the union into the same cauldron of chaos just at a time when we need governors and legislators to focus on the hard task of governing.
The thing about the scorched-earth tactics that offends so many Democrats is that, despite the numerical parity expressed in so many polls, Republicans govern as if they were the only party in the country, and as if their constituents were the only ones deserving of favorable treatment. The past three years have been notable for an utter lack of graciousness, bi-partisanship and compromise despite the circumstances by which Bush came into the Presidency. This has been aggravated by repeated and systematic efforts by the Right to paint the 50-plus percent of Americans not enamored with Republican policies as some kind of crazy, out-of-the-mainstream fringe – not just proponents of flawed policies, but fundamentally wrong and illegitimate, unpatriotic and even treasonous. Now, we see the routine application of the most excessive measures to uproot duly elected officials for the sin of not being Republicans. This is hateful, un-American behavior, fit for a one-party African kleptocracy or authoritarian Central Asian state, not the world’s greatest democratic republic.
For better or worse – worse, mostly – California has crowned the new age of “winner take all” politics at a moment when the national electorate is evenly divided along partisan lines. This tactic has benefited the well-organized and uncompromising Republican party, whose members seem willing to sublimate their divergent policy interests in the name of victory-at-all-costs. But Democrats are growing tired – enraged, even – at these continued assaults, and the expectation that they handle every shabby power-grab at face value and accept every low trick that results in a Republican takeover with grace as if it were legitimate. Fortunately, up until now, Democrats have not been as willing to play dice with the political fabric of the country. After California, payback is on the minds of many. And as Martin Luther King, Jr., once pointed out, “eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
9:13:35 AM 
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