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COMMENTARY
November 3, 2004
Dies Irae
The dreaded day has come and not yet passed. At the time of writing to a deadline of 1 a.m. last night it appears the pollsters were nearly right. President Bush will be re-elected but by a close margin with the possibility of serious litigation much delaying a final result in the swing state of Ohio. It appears to me that Ohio is solid beyond challenging however with 87% of its precincts reporting and Bush more than 100 000 ahead. There have been no major upsets with the minor and mostly predicted Congressional upsets tilting slightly to the Republicans in Senate House and Statehouses. This will help to clinch the impression of an overall Republican advance. In the presidential race it appears that while Mr. Bush has made significant gains among people who voted for Mr. Gore in 2000 these were partly offset by new and first-time voters plumping for Sen. Kerry. But he has overall improved his position from last time and looks clear to win the popular vote by a couple of million. Indeed the refusal to call Ohio for Bush when Iowa Wisconsin and Michigan are much closer and have been called for Kerry (towards 1 a.m.) is something worth noting in itself. There is nothing "normal" in this year but with these numbers in any previous election the President's victory would have been announced on all networks. Mr. Bush's leads in both Florida and Ohio were sufficient to call them as quickly as the media called New Jersey for Mr. Kerry. At this point I think their skittishness reflects less media bias than the degree to which the Democrats have succeeded in intimidating -- not voters but observers -- with their threats of litigation. There are large numbers of provisional ballots in play and the Democrats have a large number of lawyers waiting to play them. In that sense they've won the battle of the bilge. The Democrats might still try to go over the top in the Electoral College by getting "every (dubious) vote counted" in every close state in which they find themselves behind; forcing the Republicans to retaliate vice versa. Even if such challenges fail fairly quickly some arguable doubt will be cast over the election in the minds of the Democrats' more passionate supporters (read: the angry left; Bush-haters). This would block them from what they most need: to think through why they lost and make adjustments for the future (read: tack to the right). The refusal to acknowledge defeat if it happens will do a disservice to the U.S. moreover by tending to delegitimize Mr. Bush's victory in the eyes of the outside world. It would thus damage the U.S. national interests that any President must defend; it would give rhetorical and ideological wiggle room to America's enemies. Reciprocally if Senator Kerry were able to win the Republicans including dangerously the overwhelming majority in military service who have voted for Mr. Bush would doubt Mr. Kerry legitimately represented them. In reality an invalid vote that gets counted cancels a valid one and so is ethically no different from preventing a valid vote from being counted. But the Democrats have blindsided even many Republicans into assuming that the former is somehow better than the latter. This makes Republicans look the equivalent of southern plantation owners each time they defend against a Democrat imposture. In turn it inspires the Democrats to try on bigger and bigger scams knowing that if they work they work; but if they don't work they can scream "the court stole the election". It is a triumph of "political correction" with consequences even deeper than for the result of the election. For democracy requires many unwritten rules of fair play beginning with the loser's agreement to accept the result once it is reasonably clear. There is no such thing as a perfect election and given huge electorates there must be some results approximating to a statistical tie which could be decided by the toss of a coin. The choice of a winner comes down to who won the count on the pre-agreed rules no matter how narrow the victory. That for all practical purposes is the coin-toss. Litigating that coin-toss destroys all trust all sense of fair play and quickly reduces political parties to warring tribes. So on balance I would say we do have a clear winner and the question now is only how will the Democrats react to defeat? I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic about this but willing to wait a day or two for the answer. Thomas Dewey the Republican presidential candidate for 1948 (who lost to Harry Truman) is reported to have said: "I don't know if I'm alive or dead. If I'm alive why do I feel this way? If I'm dead why do I have to go to the bathroom?" This exactly describes how much of the U.S. population on both sides of the party divide must now feel. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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