Mark Schmitt

A Mandate for What?

Yes, Bush "has his mandate" in the sense that there is more legitimacy to his election as president, and there is a general sense of majority approval of his actions so far. But the term "mandate" to me means something a little more than just being indisputably entitled to be president. I think it generally means that in the election, the candidate put forward a fairly clear agenda and made the election a referendum on that agenda. The last two reelections, Reagan in 1984 and Clinton in 1996, have featured that sort of affirmation.

In this case, I believe that Bush's choice to run a campaign that was essentially 100% negative has to, in some sense, limit the mandate. Many of the things he probably wants to try to achieve, such as privatizing Social Security, he explicitly denied. And many of the things he did talk about, such as banning gay marriage, he probably doesn't want to deal with. Does he have a mandate for a particular approach to Iraq? Only to not be inconsistent. Does he have a mandate on taxes? Only to not raise them 9,400 times. Does he have a mandate on Supreme Court nominations? Only that he would not appoint anyone who would uphold Dred Scott. Does he have a mandate on terrorism? Only "to take an offensive posture" and not let the wolves eat us.

In a sense, Bush had more of a mandate in his first term: to be "a uniter not a divider," for "humility" in foreign policy, for K-12 education reform similar to No Child Left Behind, and for a tax cut that would benefit "a waitress with two kids earning $20,000." We're 1 for 4 on that mandate. Maybe we should get that mandate finished first.

There are reasons that presidents seeking reelection would not normally undertake such a relentlessly negative and other-focused campaign. One is the risk of backlash, although that risk is mitigated if, like Bush, you have no option but to destroy your opponent. The other reason is that it squanders the great opportunity of a second term, which is to put forward "second term issues." If you are perceived as a successful president, you can put forward some ambitious ideas and, if ratified, move forward on them without worrying about reelection. That's the privilege of a second term.

And perhaps its a privilege that Bush will feel he has the right to exercise, with further massive tax cuts, privatization of Social Security and perhaps further foreign policy adventurism, although I actually suspect that he is the one who will lose interest in Iraq and pull back abruptly and destructively.

That Bush can do almost whatever he wants is inarguable. His presidency has been endorsed. But I can't bring myself to call it a mandate because he did not do the honest work of presenting an agenda and asking for a mandate.

Turning Points

A number of bloggers contributed to the New York Times article on turning points in the campaign, before the results were known. In the spirit of Kevin Drum, who changed his response today, I'll take the opportunity to offer my unasked-for response, with benefit of hindsight. Two key moments:

-- When Kerry got no significant bounce in the polls out of his convention. As I wrote two days ago, I came to really appreciate Kerry as a candidate, and while we can all fantasize about a candidate with more down-home warmth or a Southern accent or a less Senate-vote-compromised record, I ask you to find one whom you can confidently predict could also withstand a massively funded, completely fabricated attack, plus survive four and a half hours of debate. But it was very odd and should have been a real warning sign when Kerry came out so flat from his convention. It's been over-analyzed to death, mostly to the conclusion that the convention overemphasized his personal qualities and Vietnam experience and did not show a vision. That may be. I think more likely is that Kerry just doesn't make a great first impression. People seem to warm to him slowly. I think he would wear well, and after a year of seeing him on TV as the leader of the nation, his dignity and his values would be understood. But it's not to be. Instead, he came out of the convention with a base of barely 50%, which was all too easy to knock down with the Swift Boat fraud, leaving Kerry fighting to get himself back up over 50.

-- The rapprochement between Bush and McCain. Senator McCain was never going to join Kerry as his running mate, nor should he have. But there was a period as recently as the early summer when it looked for all the world like McCain was very happy to sit this one out, and to let it be known that he despised Bush on many levels and admired and liked Kerry on just as many, which I think remains true. And yet at some point he gave that posture up. In the month leading up to the election, there was a flood of principled, independent conservatives who turned against Bush -- some of the newspaper editorial boards, some public intellectuals, some bloggers, and some McCainites like Marshall Wittman. But there was no one whose name was known beyond the narrow confines of political cyberspace, no one who would publicly symbolize the counter-reaction in the way that McCain could have. McCain's tacit abstention would have been a very potent symbol for upper- and middle-income white men especially, who it seems were the group that returned most solidly to Bush after starting to drift away.

What happened with McCain? I've heard some explanations from those who might know: He understands that his future is within the Republican Party. He has a huge, not surprising, sense of duty and loyalty to the person who wears the title Commander in Chief. Bush and Rove finally realized that they needed to reach out to him and ask for his support, and had they done so earlier they would have received it. And finally, that Rove did some unknown something to repair his very bitter breach, of unknown cause, with McCain political advisor John Weaver, who had gone over to the Democrats. (Franklin Foer covered some of this ground in The New Republic in August, but couldn't really explain it either, except perhaps as laying the ground for a 2008 presidential run.)

I've also heard that McCain extracted a solemn vow from Bush to really work on campaign finance reform in the second term. There's nothing wrong with pledging your support in exchange for such a promise on your pet issue -- if it's a promise to really fix the presidential system of public financing and perhaps create a public financing system for congressional races similar to the Arizona system that McCain supports. But I doubt that's a promise Bush could offer. DeLay and McConnell aren't going to stand for that. On the other hand, what if the only promise McCain got was for legislation to restrict 527 committees? That would be awfully small potatoes, especially as Bush would be perfectly content to punish 527s, since have been so closely identified with Democrats because Republicans don't need them. Watching how this issue plays out in the next Congress (and my guess is that nothing will happen with it at all, and that whatever vague promise Bush made to McCain is as serious as his pledge to the Texas Air National Guard) will answer some questions about this very key moment in the campaign.

Pottery Barn Rule

Assuming, for the moment, that Bush's lead in Ohio holds and is real, there's a lot to say about the election, and many weeks to say it. The fact that the result seemed to end up in almost exactly the same place as four years ago should not obscure how much has changed. It's easy to condemn the Democratic Party, but there is so much that is healthier about this party and its satellites than four years ago. The development of a real small donor and activist base, a sophisticated turnout mechanism, and fundamental unity of purpose are huge achievements. They didn't quite go far enough this time.

One important thing to remember: Now Bush is fully responsible for the consequences of his mistakes. He's responsible for Iraq, he's responsible for the budget, for Medicare, etc. What Colin Powell called the Pottery Barn Rule applies: He broke them, he owns them. That's not good news for the world, because Bush wasn't competent to deal with the situation of peace and prosperity handed to him in 2001; he certainly isn't be competent to handle a mess. The dangers are profound.

But politically, it at least avoids a situation where Kerry would have borne the responsibility and blame for Iraq or for raising taxes. All accountability now rests with Bush and his party. Everything that's been swept under the carpet until after the election will come creeping out. And the best use of all the resources of people, brains, money, and coordination that's been built this year, in addition to developing a stronger base of ideas, is to find ways to hold Bush, DeLay et. al. absolutely accountable for their choices. I really believe that this will be like Nixon's second term, and thus the seeds of a bigger long-term change than could have occurred just by Kerry winning the election.

This is not a look-at-the-bright-side comment. Just a thought about what comes next.

In Defense of Herseth

There's been some angst in the left blogosphere about Rep. Stephanie Herseth's announcement that, if no candidate wins an electoral majority and the vote goes to the House of Representatives, she would cast her one vote, representing the South Dakota delegation, for Bush. (Assuming, I guess, that Bush wins South Dakota.) This has been seen as a ridiculous sellout.

Herseth is doing exactly the right thing. Her role as a quasi-elector in the event of a tied electoral college is not the same as her role as an elected representative on normal legislative matters. It is a special, unusual function of the House of Representatives, and the difference is indicated in the fact that the members don't vote as individuals, but each state delegation casts a vote. (Thus small states like SD have even more of an undeserved voice than in the Electoral College, but that's an issue for another day.)

Herseth thus carries the burden of being her own state's delegation. If her state supports Bush by a margin of 55-45 or higher, as seems likely, it would seem to be her responsibility to reflect that choice.

(We should mention that, of all the possible election disasters, an exact tie is the least likely outcome.)

I wonder if Rep. Mike Castle, a Republican who is Delaware's lone representative, will take the same approach, assuming Kerry wins Delaware? If so, their votes will cancel.

But even if Castle wouldn't do it -- and while he's a very decent guy, there are plenty of House Republicans who wouldn't even consider doing it -- that's not reason enough for Herseth to defy her state's vote. We're entering a new era tomorrow. Democracy, respect, and fair play start at home.

Most Votes. Ever

One of the most memorable depressing, statistics from the 2000 election was this: Vice President Gore got more votes for president than any presidential candidate in our history, with the single exception of Ronald Reagan in the 1984 landslide. More than Clinton in 1996, more than Bush in 1988, and of course half a million more than Bush II.

Gore got about 51,000,000 votes. Reagan in 1984 got 54,000,000 votes.

Given even modest turnout increases, I think it's a fair bet that if Kerry wins the popular vote, even by a small margin, he will have received significantly more votes than any candidate for president in history. Of course, Bush will probably be second. Or vice versa.

John Kerry Will Make Things Less Bad

I find the whole business of bloggers issuing "endorsements" a little silly, although I guess if your vote is really a surprise like Drezner or Sullivan, or their opposite numbers who are surprisingly voting for Bush (yes, that's a joke), then it can be significant for those readers who have followed your thoughts. I only have two comments:

My support for Kerry is unqualified. I don't have any caveats like, "the least appealing candidate the Democrats have nominated for president in my lifetime" (which would be a dubious statement even coming from a 15-year-old). Kerry wasn't my first or second or even third choice for the nomination. From my time working in the Senate, I didn't have a particularly high opinion of him and never understood the logic of his running for president. But the way he has conducted this race made me fully appreciate his talents. He won the nomination more smoothly than any Democratic challenger in my lifetime, without being divisive and without depending just on a financial advantage. He's fundamentally right on most of the big issues: Iraq, on which his position has been consistent and only complicated in comparison to the Manichean simplifications of the White House. Health care, on which his plan is creative and would make a difference, but is also modest enough to be politically viable. The budget. And the rest of the Democratic agenda, environment, choice, rights, etc.

On terrorism, I think the case for Kerry is exactly as clear as Bush supporters believe theirs is: He "gets it." Bush doesn't get it. Getting it means understanding that huge international criminal conspiracies are not the same as states and must be fought with different means. Bush's Cold War mentality convinces him that it's all about states -- Afghanistan, Iraq -- and equally that states whose leaders are "with us" pose no problem whatsoever -- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia. That is the most dangerous delusion of our times, and Kerry has understood it since his first investigations of global crime in the 1980s.

As a candidate, Kerry handled himself impeccably through four and a half hours of debate, with perhaps two slight missteps: "global test" and the mention of Mary Cheney (an off-note in my view only because he ascribed views to her without knowing her), neither of which would have mattered except that they gave Bush and Fox an excuse to make something of them.

I heard the other day that political analyst Charlie Cook had denigrated Kerry, saying that he didn't bring anything to the ticket that another candidate wouldn't have. Although I think that's the way you talk about a vice presidential nominee, not a presidential candidate, Cook may be right. Kerry doesn't bring a constituency or a particular angle, in the way that General Clark might have, for example. But none of them could have performed as solidly as Kerry did in the cauldron of presidential politics. None of them could have handled the debates as well. None of them could have understood and made use of the unity of the party as well. If Kerry loses, it will not be because there is some other hypothetical candidate who would have done better. One of the reasons that Dick Gephardt was perhaps my third choice for the nomination was that I respect his kind of professionalism about politics. He knows that it's a business not a calling, that mistakes get punished, and, as Al Gore used to say, "It's a day-to-day fight" to put together a working coalition. I think it's turned out that Kerry was the true professional in that field.

If Kerry wins, expectations will be low. And that's a great thing. Because all that can be done for a few years is to make things less bad. As anyone who's been reading The Decembrist knows, the early years of the Clinton administration were a formative experience for me. The sense of triumphalism in 1993 was ultimately a disaster. The White House didn't understand the limits of what it could do, in the face of a completely intransigent Republican bloc, and more importantly, key Democratic constituencies had been led to expect such a transformation of government that they were all too quick to write Clinton off as a sellout when he couldn't deliver. This all but forced Clinton to "triangulate" after 1994 -- to try to build a new governing coalition around a very dubious set of deals with the Republican majority and swing voters. This saved his hide but did not create a long-term basis for governing.

Kerry will not make this mistake, and the Democratic and independent constituencies that will come together to make his victory will retain their skeptical, no-illusions unity for some period into the next year. The memory of Bush-DeLayism will be so fresh (and will probably remain alive in the House) that the old infighting between DLC Democrats and labor Democrats, or between deficit-fearing "Rubinomics" and invest-in-America liberalism might be quiescent. This is a big deal. If Kerry can manage these conflicts, and if he can free up just a few Republicans who are willing to deal with him on an honest basis, then he can govern the country succesfully. Whether he can do that is as big a worry for me as the election outcome itself, but I believe the conditions are in place.

Finally, a less-predictable endorsement, for all of you in New York: Please vote for your candidates on the Working Families Party line, Row E. You don't live in a battleground state, and your votes for Kerry and Schumer may not have much immediate impact on the outcome of those races. But you can make a difference by supporting the idea of an independent political organization that is aligned with the Democratic Party when its values are right, and not when they aren't. For example, Working Families enabled an alternative to the Democratic nominee in the special election for City Council in Brooklyn last spring, who ultimately won, and Working Families offers alternatives to the corrupt system of judicial selection in Brooklyn. Further, when the labor and community activists of the Working Families Party can approach, for example, Senator Clinton and point out that the number of votes she received on their line was greater than her margin of victory, that's a message that no ordinary constituency group can deliver. WFP is only five years old, and it's still in many ways an experiment. If it works, perhaps we'll see interest in other states in opening up to "fusion" parties -- those that can endorse Democrats or Republicans sometimes, or their own candidates if they need to. This is a reform that will dramatically open up the electoral system and also create strong, modern organizations of the type that are winning this election for Kerry. Voting on the Working Families line sends a message to the New York political system, and also beyond.