Rogers Smith on Gore, Bush, and fixing this mess

Just when your South Floridian grandmother stopped talking about how confused she was on election day, the controversy in the Sunshine State has started to heat up again, with Al Gore's demand for another recount and the Supreme Court's agreement to hear George W. Bush's, DC '68, case against Florida's highest court. Where does the country go from here? The Herald sat down with renowned political science professor Rogers Smith to find out his answer to the question.

Yale Herald: Over the past few weeks, most political pundits said the U.S. Supreme Court would never intervene in the Florida presidential mess. Now, of course, it has, in the Court's decision to hear Bush's case this Fri., Dec. 1. What's the reaction from the constitutional law community?

COURTESY OPA Preeminent constitutional scholar Rogers Smith thinks a commission should change the election system.

Rogers Smith: Many constitutional scholars were indeed surprised that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and many continue to criticize its decision to do so. There was no inescapable necessity to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, and many in the Bush camp reportedly now regret doing so, as it assists Gore's efforts to prolong litigation. It's a political judgment as to what value is most important here, but certainly it's vital to make sure, insofar as possible, that every legally cast vote is counted, and counted in a legal manner. It's all the more important to do so in an extraordinarily close election where, for a variety of reasons, our elections system may well not have accurately reflected the will of the majority in Florida and the rest of the nation.

YH: Given the closeness of the race, the winner of the presidential election will not have an emphatic mandate. How will the legacy of whomever becomes president be affected by how he reached office?

RS: Both Bush and Gore received more votes than Bill Clinton ever did, and the notion of a clear mandate is mostly a myth anyway. The circumstances of the election will certainly be a burden for the new President, but if he and the country seem to be doing well, in a year or so his legitimacy will be accepted; and if he and the country are not doing well, he'd be in trouble anyway.

YH: How do the maneuvers of these politicians, with their suits and counter-suits, affect public opinion and support now?

RS: Neither Bush nor Gore has conducted himself terribly badly, but neither has enhanced his reputation for integrity and leadership. Bush has appeared to claim the office as his entitlement, without much real interest in what the voters actually thought. Gore has not explained very successfully why the problems in the conduct of the election make these delays justified as efforts to make the system work better, rather than merely ways to get him into office. So neither one is in a position to get off to a great start, and that's probably because neither one is an especially outstanding presidential candidate.

YH: How can you explain the actions of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris? How impartially and successfully is she dispensing of her duties?

RS: She is a Republican party stalwart who has tried to help what she believes to be desirable political causes as much as she can, within what she takes to be the limits of the law. That means that at every conceivable discretion point, she has done what is good for the Republicans, fully believing it is the right thing to do. A Democrat would have done the same the other way, but there's no question that her performance has been pro-Republican.

YH: What should the new president do to ensure that a mess like this is not repeated? Should the electoral college system be tinkered with?

RS: I think we should definitely use the Federal Election Commission or a special national commission to design a new system of elections, probably on computers, and we should promote state civil service election commissions. I'd also like to see the electoral college abolished—though I think that's unlikely—or replaced with proportional representation systems for electors.

YH: What about reuniting the country after this affair and sewing up partisan divisions?

RS: The great salutary lesson here is the other son of a President who became President, also after losing the popular vote: John Quincy Adams in 1824. He ignored the circumstances of his election and proposed quite an extreme nationalist platform, against the state's-rights views of Andrew Jackson—the candidate with the most votes. Adams then became immensely unpopular and remained so throughout his one term in office.

YH: So what happens now? Where does the country go from here?

RS: Various PR gestures emphasizing friendliness toward opponents, optimism about the country's condition and future, a general warm and fuzzy feeling are good ideas, but they will help only if things also seem to be getting done. The things liberals like me would like to see get done will not happen no matter which man is in office, unfortunately, but if they can produce legislation that does address at least some commonly recognized problems, the new administration will not be perceived as a failure. One place to start: reform of the voting systems—surely everyone sees now that we need to do something.

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