It used to be said that Americans play not so much to win but to test their skills and to have a good time for all. Winners are magnanimous in victory and losers take disappointments most philosophically as one of the inevitable hazards of daily life. The rules are said to apply whether Americans play baseball, conduct business or run for public office.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Rough patches do appear here and there. But the assumption has always been that sore losers are too few and far in between, that the bitterness in some games and contests has more to do with over-enthusiastic fans and bystanders rather than real players and principals, and that, in the end, the better part of American nature prevails.
George W’s disputed victory in Florida and the corollary of his taking the US presidency from Al Gore most certainly cast dark clouds over these bonhomie beliefs.
Yes, Americans are not and have never been spared from the curse of partisanship and incivility. Like everybody else on earth, they can be rough in love and war, and war, ironically, just as vicious and unforgiving in the practice of supposedly democratic politics.
Before the current stand-off before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court, the Gore-Bush fight had already gone well beyond the harsh, some say, poisonous rhetoric of any presidential campaign in recent history. Just about every dirty trick in the books have been practiced in several states, although far short of outright violence and massive cheating that have been arguably eliminated over the past 30 years.
Other rough campaigns like Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Johnson-Goldwater in 1964 and Clinton-Bush in 1992 come to mind, but not one of these comes close to the personal enmity generated between the present combatants. It goes without saying that whoever eventually captures the White House will face the unremitting hate of the man left out in the cold. That is, the next four years will be one of endless nitpicking and recrimination, abetted by the fact that both Houses of Congress will be almost evenly divided between the Republicans and the Democrats.
To be sure, most Americans are acutely embarrassed by this cruel turn of events. How can they go on preaching about the virtues of the democratic system while their leaders seem to be going down the sleazy path of Taiwanese, Chilean, Indian and – God forbid – Filipino politicians.
That wasn’t a pretty sight on live TV – that venomous picketing of Al Gore’s official residence in Washington by foul-mouthed Bush supporters, many fundamental Christians with clearly fascist tendencies.
Some say this and other unpleasant confrontations are a direct result of what’s now recognized as the closest presidential race in US history. Indeed, the margin of victory or defeat borders on the absurd – something like one-tenth of one percent. Of the six million votes cast in Florida, Bush has been certified with a razor-thin 537 votes over Gore.
No matter who ends up winning Florida, the fact is that Gore has swept the national popular vote with more than 200,000 lead over Bush. If Bush is finally credited with Florida’s 25 electoral votes, he will be only four electoral votes ahead or 271 to 267. So where is the mandate?
Blame, therefore, the United States’ peculiar electoral rules for this anomalous situation of the highest vote-getter in the race ending up the loser because it’s the electoral votes cast on a state-by-state basis that determine who becomes president. But unless the rules are changed (and the results cannot be made retroactively), the man who convinces the federal and Florida Supreme Court to uphold the way the Florida count is made will emerge as the winner. Still, there may be hell to pay in further legal and political challenges that may extend well into the next presidential bout in 2004.
Remember, too, that this 2000 race has been a grudge fight between the Bushes and the Clintons, with former President George P. Bush represented by his eldest son and namesake and President Bill Clinton, barred by law from seeking a third term, by his two-term Vice President.
Our American friends can’t be blamed for hanging their heads in shame and dreading more terrible days ahead. They know history can be most whimsical and unkind. There’s the haunting lesson, for one, of the Athenians of the Golden Age of Greece who took immense pride in Periclean democracy, only to watch it dissolve in a massive orgy of internal and external contradictions.