Voters Are Not Fools
by Larry L. Eastland

While the result of the 2000 Presidential Election may be history for most Americans, for many of those who live and breathe politics, it is not. It is a visceral, bile excreting, inflammation of the psyche. It has produced a class of haters on the left just as surely as Bill Clinton's gross public immorality and misuse of power and privilege did on the right. There is no logic, no repentance, no forgiveness, and no quarter given. Even the most trivial speck in the candidate's past becomes a one-week sensation before running to the next byte of minutiae.

Even the terms "winner" and "loser" may not be very descriptive any logner. In Barbara Boxer's last election to the U. S. Senate against Bruce Hershenson in California, the Field Poll announced the week before the election that whoever won (yes, I said won) would immediately be the most hated politician in the state. In the atmosphere of today's presidential politics, this may be an accurate description of this year's presidential election too.

The presidential primary and pre-convention season has never been so long, so negative and so trivial. Because of the need to grab headlines and nightly news - where debate about serious issues can only last so long until the quest for new stuff overcomes the ability to keep significant issues fresh - the sink into the trivial has happened sooner and will last longer than in any election in American history. If issues are the backdrop to describe the character and vision of the candidate, then we're in for bumpy ride.

Let's face it. The overwhelming issues of this campaign don't need one year of debate. They don't need six months of debate. There are complex policy questions, yet in a campaign context they are quite straightforward. And, all deal with the incumbent.

First. Do we want George W. Bush to continue to lead this country? If the answer is "yes", then the election is over. That was the case in 1984 when Ronald Reagan ran for re-election. Walter Mondale was never in it. It was over before it began.

Second. If "No", then: are we willing to take a chance on John Kerry to lead this country? If the answer is "yes", then it is a dogfight, but Kerry probably will win. Just like incumbent Jimmy Carter against challenger Ronald Reagan in 1980. It wasn't until the final weeks that the voters finally said 'I can't take any more malaise, I'll take a chance on the Gipper.'

Third. If the answer to the second question is "no", we don't want to take a chance on Kerry to lead the country, then the incumbent will win by default. That's the "most hated winner" scenario.

That's the way it is. And, the voters' decision will revolve around a combination of three generic issue groups: war and peace, more or less, and bread and butter.

War and peace today means Iraq; by extension it means the war on terror, but that is not controversial. Someone once said that the measure of a true leader is not how he handles a crisis, but how he handles a mess. Well, weapons of mass destruction or not, Iraq is a mess and everyone knows it. It is the ultimate laboratory of whether or not democracy as we know it is truly the aspiration of all people. Americans will be deciding whether to stay in the lab or get out. The alternative is to turn it over to the U.N. Then, it could really fall apart.

More or less means government intervention in our lives through taxes and spending; and, social intervention such as the current series of debates about marriage and abortion. The public verdict is in: a resounding YES! for lower taxes; no understanding about what government spending is doing to them; and dislikes where social policy is going but doesn't know what to do about it.

Bread and butter was best summed up by Ronald Reagan's question to the American people in 1980: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" This is simple: not the stock market, the growth in GNP, the balance of trade, or any other macro mush. It's about "me." Period.

I am reminded of a piece written by Art Buchwald back when Jimmy Carter was president. Carter decided to swoop down on unsuspecting Americans and surprise them by asking their opinions on what they felt the most important issues in America were. A really silly idea to begin with, but Carter was a man with that kind of worldview. Anyway, Art Buchwald in his parody had Carter knock on a door in rural America and ask: "Hello, I'm Jimmy Carter, what is the most important problem facing America today?" The answers were: "getting my kids ready and out the door for the school bus on time every morning" and "lack of sleep because of the dogs howling all night in our back yard." It's about "me."

Ultimately, however, not only policy, but also character counts. And it doesn't take one year to find that out. We really know about all we're going to know that matters about the two candidates right now. George Bush is a Texas conservative sometimes with a strong sense of American power in the world, a muddled understanding of the economic impact of government spending, and a "manifest destiny" view of the future. John Kerry has been running for president since the third grade in an uppity prep school; he's a dull Massachusetts liberal who "speaks with forked tongue", has learned nothing as a Senator that would be useful as a President, and has the leadership vision of the world of someone who's only real accomplishment is to have married well twice. More than that, however, Americans see one man as strong in conviction, and the other as fuzzy. Agree with that conviction or not: that will be the character issue.

So, while the interested political class will chatter about inconsequential secondary (or even tertiary) issues and events, the public will make up its mind on more substantive things. V. O. Key, Jr., the great Harvard political scientist, wrote more than four decades ago in his little book The Responsible Electorate, that "voters are not fools." Whatever politicians may think the voters ought to be using to decide how they will vote, the market place of ideas has a hidden hand just as sure as the economic market place, and voters will express their will based on their own set of issues no matter what is fed them through $100 million of negative advertising and 8 second sound bites followed by ideologically slanted commentary.