When Americans go to the polls tomorrow, they will be voting in perhaps the least important election since World War II. There are no great ideological dividing lines in this presidential election. Arguably, the mid-term congressional election was more important than this presidential election. At least then there was a clearer division between the promises of the two parties, even if after less than two years the Republicans’ contract with America to wind back the extent of government had been frustrated or broken before the ink was dry.
Indeed, the events over the past four years reveal how the American system tends to constantly draw policy, politics and politicians towards the centre. This is because of the system of checks and balances, where the head of the executive, in the form of the President, is elected entirely separately from the legislature in the form of the Congress and that the President does not choose his or her Cabinet from members of the Congress but from people who must be apart from it, even though their appointments must be approved by it. Another check and balance lies in the fact that the President can veto legislation, but the veto can be overridden by a two-thirds majority of each house of Congress. And further, the states have a separate fount of power and there is another check against the exercise of power in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, whose members in turn are appointed for life by the President.
So Americans will be voting for a representative, a senator, the president, and often a state governor and state congressional members on the same day. The power of those elected will be fettered, unlike in Britain where people vote for one MP and the person who leads the party with the most MPs has virtually unfettered power.
Moreover, those elected to Congress feel much more responsible to local demands than to any national or congressional party organisation. They do not vote along party lines and cannot be guaranteed to support a president of the same party.
It means that the person elected to the presidency must deal with all the checks, balances and fetters on power. Only extraordinary people can achieve significant things in this climate which necessitates compromise. And in this election both Bob Dole and Bill Clinton have become experts at compromise. Dole learned to be a compromiser, through decades of steering legislative deals through the Senate and Clinton had compromise thrust upon him. And so neither have significant achievements on the board. Dole has a long list of items of legislation he got through the Senate, each item of which had been compromised to insignificance, or even defeated in the House. Clinton failed in attempt at a significant achievement … universal health insurance … after refusing to compromise on its key points and then finding he had to agree with other Democrats to abandon it.
After that, Clinton lost his idealism which had cost him dear and he reverted back to the centre, indeed to the right of centre.
On the other hand, Dole now talks of huge tax cuts and cutting government, but he like Clinton will have to compromise to the centre. This was shown in the past two years when the Republicans had a majority in Congress, but could not force a shrinkage in the size of government.
In this constitutional environment, then, since independence sheer force of character and personality have been of greater moment than the size of a president’s win or the popularity he has among the people. But neither of these two candidates has exhibited it. Neither appears to be able to garner and maintain support for any great ideal or direction for the US.
Clinton has been the great vacillator, rather than facilitator in foreign affairs. He has spoken high words of great purpose over Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq, but not followed it up. True, he has been a consistent advocate of free trade, but he has bullied (or let Congress bully) rather than led.
Neither candidate is a Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt or a Ronald Reagan … a president to change the shape of history … or even likely to be in the next four years.
Clinton rose to be a winning Democrat candidate four years ago by sheer luck. A year before the election President Bush was running so high after the Gulf War that no significant Democrat wanted the task of taking him on. Dole has won the nomination of his party also largely by default.
Whoever wins, almost certainly Clinton, will have to deal with seemingly intractable government and trade deficits at home and a world in which the US is being challenged by both a united Europe and Japan as the economic and political world leader. Either candidate is more likely to muddle through than engage the nation in large-scale economic or social reform.
It is not a significant election.