You might think this year’s presidential race would be exciting: going into the stretch, Al Gore and George W. Bush are running neck and neck, and both parties have at least a chance to control Congress. Not many voters, however, are on the edge of their seats. Most of the interest in the election so far has been polite or mildly irritated. The stakes are real, but do not move us very much. And issues aside, relatively few Americans are finding candidates they love; even candidates to hate seem in short supply. (Hillary Clinton still stirs juices, of course, especially on the Right, which ranks her as a rival to her husband for the status of arch-fiend. But the Left has to scramble for equivalents: Newt is off-stage; for most voters, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay is too obscure; Pat Buchanan is sinking-and not slowly-into the bog of irrelevance.) Even the voters who make it to the polls in November may have moments of wondering why they came.
At the moment, Al Gore seems likely to win the presidency and it’s a good bet the Republicans will keep majorities in both houses. Times are good, after all: in political science, the most sophisticated models, based on economic data, are all predicting a Gore victory, some by very wide margins. Actually, it’s more complicated than that. With an exuberant stock market and an economy running at high speed, Middle Americans in the millions have been tempted to take their current prosperity more or less for granted, discounting their immediate interests in favor of their hopes. In this mood, as sociologist Alan Wolfe observes, our growing inequality looks less appalling; becoming rich seems both more enticing and more desperately necessary. The Republican program-tax cuts favoring the well-to-do, the repeal of the estate tax, the privatization of Social Security-speaks to that sensibility, and George W. Bush still has reason to think that it may help him into the White House.
But the economy and the market have been slowing down, not enough to hurt-the movement is ordinarily described as "lateral"-but enough to introduce an element of uncertainty that strengthens Al Gore’s hand. Gore still benefits from prosperity, but the note of caution makes voters more inclined to worry about security, more concerned to have a government that will protect them against the market at its worst, and less disposed to rock what is, after all, a rather comfortable boat.
Bush’s strong suits, however, have always been his more attractive personality and the broad itch to get past the seediness of the Clinton administration. Bush has the advantage, moreover, of having captured the Religious Right, instructed by the impeachment disaster about the limits of its power, yet eager for revenge. The dominant spirits on the Right were content to show their muscle in the Republican primaries and in the unchanged plank on abortion. And with the nomination in hand, Bush-no rightist-began his gallop toward the inclusive center, affirming traditional values but promising toleration, emphasizing compassion at the expense of conservatism. The Republican convention, staged in that spirit, was a great success. Many pundits expected Bush’s lead to stand up.
Gore, however, is first rate as a counterpuncher. In the first place, by selecting Senator Joseph Lieberman as a running mate Gore did more than put some distance between himself and Clinton. The Lieberman nomination allows social conservatives-to say nothing of people attached to the decencies-to find something attractive, or at least not repugnant, in the Democratic ticket. It limits Bush’s ability to move toward the center without having to worry about his own right, especially in the North. And Gore’s moral signal may be enough to let him claim the political high ground.
Trailing Bush in the personality sweepstakes, Gore has turned, almost of necessity, to an appeal to party. (Throughout the campaign, Democrats have been much less committed to Gore than Republicans to Bush). Gore’s championship of "working families" is partisan combat at least as much as it is an appeal to "class war." In fact, it’s hard not to believe that the vice president or someone in his confidence has read, and been persuaded by, America’s Forgotten Majority (Basic Books), in which Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers argue that the white working class, more than "soccer moms," has been the swing vote in recent elections. In any case, Gore’s appeal, calculated to shore up his base (and limit any defections to Ralph Nader), is also calibrated to a time when economic uneasiness is causing Americans to pay more attention to the ways in which our new-model inequality threatens the dignity of ordinary Americans and the democracy of our politics.
Of course, Al Gore as a "populist" hero of the working class is not really credible. As Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times, the Democrats are "awash" in their own version of big money, and Al Gore has served, loyally, in an administration relatively indifferent to the claims of equality or, in the crunch, to American labor. The Republicans, however, can’t and don’t want to attack Gore on that basis, since their own record and program is a good deal worse. (Or at least as bad: Bush, like Gore, supported "normalizing" trade with China.) Republicans prefer to assail Gore’s suspect fundraising, accusations that move very few voters, since most Americans are convinced-probably rightly-that there isn’t much either party won’t do for a fast buck. "Working families" seem to be concluding that, although Gore is two-faced, at least one face is friendly; as E.J.Dionne observes, Gore is making the case that the election does matter after all.
Nothing either side is saying, however, is likely to capture America’s imagination or avoid a low turnout. More Americans will vote, probably, than watched the last episode of "Survivor" on TV, but it will be close.
"Survivor," in fact, revealed a good deal about our civic life. Except in moments, it wasn’t about the physical difficulties of survival: the show was preeminently about the politics of survival, and it claimed us, I think, because viewers could watch people engaged in the practice of self-government, maneuvering and speaking in a community where individual citizens visibly mattered, each show culminating in a vote. (In the best democratic fashion, too, the choice of the ultimate winner was made by losers, the individually weak-as defined by the game-collectively controlling the strong.) By contrast, "Big Brother," so much less popular, leaves the crucial decisions to the mass, call-in audience; its participants fall short of self-government, and its politics is too much like what we have. It is significant, after all, that young Americans-the least likely to vote-were most likely to watch "Survivor": the show was, in many ways, a measure of our political discontents.
Rightly, more and more Americans are convinced that our politics, a matter of masses and media, is increasingly dominated by money. Our public life is becoming more oligarchic in fact, despite its democratic form, losing its old enchantments. And our leaders-even Al Gore, that gonfalonier of working families-are too much concerned with our well-being as consumers, too little attentive to our dignity as citizens. Whatever the outcome, that is not likely to be changed by the election of 2000.
