From the Managing Editor:
Election thoughts
By the time you read this the fall elections will likely be over. The question is, “Will we know who will serve as President for the next four years?” Already the media is analyzing the likely scenarios that might well play out after November 2, 2004. Reports are circulating that both the Democrats and the Republicans already have 10,000 lawyers standing by to challenge each and every ballot irregularity. Suits have already been filed claiming voter disenfranchisement. Truly our litigious society has spawned some nightmare possibilities. If political parties can tie up nearly every state’s vote count by claiming fraud or discrimination or intimidation, then our elections will ultimately end up like the Bush/Gore race in 2000 – the Supreme Court will pick the President.
Now, come to think of it, that might be an idea worth considering. We’ve got nine solid Americans, supposedly immune from political partisanship, maybe they could just pick between the two candidates and save us all the hoopla and waste that is an election campaign season. Just think of the benefits that would accrue if all the money spent in the primaries and on the general election was instead plowed back into the general fund. I for one have had enough political advertising and electioneering to last me for a lifetime. We could just turn over the resumes and perhaps a questionnaire filled out in a locked room by each candidate to the justices and let them debate who would be the most able President. How could that be any worse than the current system that tends to get us “the best President money can buy”?
I suppose the other hope we can have is that the election will not be close enough to kick all those lawsuits into gear. We might get lucky and one or the other of the candidates will win by such a landslide that any challenges would be seen as meaningless and would be dropped. We might also wish that Osama bin Laden would march in to the closest police headquarters and turn himself in, announcing that he’s become a born again Christian. I think the odds would be about even on either of those happening. But, hey, you never know.
The main thing I feel we must do following the election is to truly work to heal the enormous breaches that have formed thanks to the partisan bickering over the last six months. Whichever candidate is chosen as President will surely try to produce a legacy of success. Their differences of opinion are not so starkly different that we will be bound toward fascism or communism depending on who wins. The worst thing that can happen would be for the country to remain polarized for four years. I’ve heard and read both conservative and liberal commentators who declare, like Chicken Little, that surely the sky will fall in if their candidate is not elected. Both of the candidates themselves have made much of the idea that “this is the most important election in our lifetime.”
Hype or reality? No one can know for sure, but with the elaborate checks and balances between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches provided our fantastic Constitution, I tend to believe that no one person can have enough control to truly damage or ruin our nation. If we pull out of Iraq in one year or two, if we conduct stem cell research this year or several years from now, if we privatize some of Social Security now or later, if we keep all the Bush tax cuts or roll some of them back, none of these choices can destroy us. What could be really destructive to our nation is if we begin to see ourselves as “us against them” instead of “one nation under God.” It would be disastrous if we spend the next four years finding every possible way to attack each other and find fault about each and every program or proposal that is put forward. DBJ
Joe Meek
DBJ Managing Editor
