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Winner-Take-Almost

by Christian Huebner 

My first political memory is going to school in second grade with twenty Ross Perot buttons pinned to the front of a red, white, and blue striped shirt.  (For the record, my parents cannot be blamed, either for political brainwashing or for sartorial negligence.  This was entirely my own idea.)

I’d seen Perot on T.V. during the 1992 presidential campaign, delivering long, paid infomercials.  Something about his posterboard charts, squeaky voice and brown suits entranced me.  So when my elementary school held a mock election that fall to teach us about the political process, I started a one-man write-in campaign for the big-eared independent from Texas.  On voting day, I went all-in for my man.

It was not a success.  Perot came in with a dismal 5% of the vote at Humann Elementary School, far less than he garnered in the national race.  Disappointment aside, though, the experience gave me a taste for elections, the goofiness of campaigning, and the excitement of a winner-take-all contest.

I was reminded of these early memories this week, in the wake of the Massachusetts special election for Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate seat.  It was one of those pleasant occasions when you realize you’ve now been alive long enough to have learned something larger than the present moment.  And that is that in politics, winner-take-all is never really winner-take-all.

Right now Republicans are enthused.  Their commentators are giddy about possible landslide gains in this fall’s midterm elections.  If Republicans can take Ted Kennedy’s old seat in Massachusetts of all places, what can’t they take?  The buzz is that Republican trajectory has turned sharply upward.

Turn your gaze toward the Democratic camp—or at least what people are writing about the party—and you hear something completely different.  On Tuesday, the Democrats held the Presidency, 257 House seats, and a coalition of 60 Senate seats; on Wednesday, they held the Presidency, 257 House seats, and 59 Senate seats.  And yet, to hear of it, the Democrats have now utterly failed in their effort to govern.  The end of days is at hand.

Scanning the wires, websites, and wi-fi on Wednesday, I was reminded of a marvelous scene in George Orwell’s 1984.  In that scene, the state-run media is spouting invective against the state’s chief enemy and praising its chief ally, when the broadcaster receives word that alliances have shifted.  Without missing a beat, the broadcaster switches the names of the enemy and ally, keeping up precisely the same patter about their respective nobility and vileness, but with exactly the opposite characters. 

Even someone whose political memory begins at Ross Perot can see that something similar happens in our own time.

Step back even just a handful of years to 2004.  Republicans have won a second term in the Presidency and bolstered their majorities in both the House and Senate.  The rhetoric is that the Democratic party is in ruins; they are unorganized and lack a coherent philosophy.  The Republican machine looks entrenched.  Stories circulate that the Republicans have nearly become the “natural” party of American politics, and the Democrats have been relegated to a permanent minority status.

Move forward to the 2006 midterm elections.  The Democrats sweep into control of both houses of Congress.  The rhetoric shifts: now the story is a gathering sense of anxiety in the Republican camp and a growing sense of vigor among the Democrats.  The 2008 campaign looms large.

Move ahead two more years, to the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009—just one year ago.  A charismatic new Democratic president, stronger Democratic majorities in Congress, even a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate.  The rhetoric says that the wheels have come off of the Republican party.  They are unorganized; their guiding philosophy has gone stale; the tech-savvy Democratic machine looks like it’s here to stay.  Stories circulate about the contraction of Republicanism into a permanent, regional minority movement in the South and Great Plains.

And now there is this past Tuesday.  In the fall there will be midterms.  One party, probably the Republicans, will be cast as the victor and the other, probably the Democrats, will be sent off to lick its wounds.  As someone once said, there is nothing new under the sun.

Elections are important; the people we choose as leaders make decisions that can drastically influence our lives for the better or for the worse.  They’re also a lot of fun; we ought to stake our yard signs and wear our campaign buttons with gusto.  But no one should think that the most recent laugh will be the last one.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)