Bush is home and dry but the street-fighting will continue
BRUCE ANDERSON
The unofficial Florida recount has turned into an unexpected inaugural present for George W. Bush. It seems that the new President did carry the state after all. This will help him to assert his legitimacy, which has been challenged over his failure to win the popular vote. But Mr Gore's 500,000 plurality is both less relevant and more dubious than liberal commentators will acknowledge.
Less relevant, because the USA is a federation. If the electoral-college system compels candidates to campaign on a basis of geographical balance as well as population density, this is in tune with the Founding Fathers' intentions and the spirit of the constitution. Each state is divided into counties. and, nationwide, George Bush won almost four times as many of those as Al Gore did. Thomas Jefferson believed that a man should not be able to hear his neighbours' dogs bark; he would have been horrified at the thought of a president being elected by the big cities alone. Equally, if the election had depended on the popular vote, both candidates would have conducted themselves very differently. Mr Gore would have spent more time in Texas, Mr Bush in New York. It is impossible to assume that voting figures under existing rules would remain identical if those rules were radically changed.
The cities ought to be kept in their place. They ought also to be obliged to conduct fair elections. Mr Bush will be pressed on electoral-law revision, and it would be in his interests to yield to such pressure. Southern Californian electoral rolls are swollen with the names of illegal Mexican immigrants, while in the Bronx, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and St Louis there are strong suspicions of vote-rigging and ballot-stuffing. It is probable that the Democratic party's organisers stole at least 500,000 votes; so that George Bush should have won the popular vote as well as the electoral college.
Until now, many Republicans have been squeamish about making that argument, because of its racial connotations. Almost all the rigged voting takes place in minority areas. It is encouraged by the type of black spokesmen who insist that all American blacks are still menaced by slavery, segregation and the Ku Klux Klan. So what is wrong with a little bit of voting fraud if the aim is to prevent the election of Mr Bush, who would immediately legalise lynching?
In the recent elections for the New Hampshire state house, a fluorescent nutcase man aged to secure a place on the Republican ticket. Embarrassment all round, until he was prevailed upon to return to obscurity. But, on most recent evenings, American television viewers have been treated to lies, delusions and hysterical exaggerations from Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other black spokesmen whose contempt for the truth is immune from censure.
Or from electoral punishment. At this election, the party of Abraham Lincoln won less than 10 per cent of the black vote. Yet there is a large black bourgeoisie, while many blacks — not only bourgeois ones — share Republican cultural values. As Condoleezza Rice puts it, she has never met a black atheist. But Jesse Jackson has been successful in obscuring the real facts of black life in contemporary America. He not only plays on white liberal guilt, but also on prosperous blacks' guilt. He persuades many of those who have escaped from the ghetto to feel guilty about doing so and to vote as if they still lived there. This makes it difficult for Republicans to denounce Jesse Jackson's use of the race card. Mr Jackson is allowed to say anything he likes about white Republicans, but if a white Republican retorted by complaining about black leaders' lies, malfeasance and self-pity, the response would be black outrage — and black solidarity.
Most Republicans believe that it is impossible to address this problem directly, and that the best they can hope for is benign neglect. In four years' time, blacks will be able to judge the Bush presidency by its record, so Jesse Jackson's rabble-rousing might be less effective. But few Republicans are counting on it, especially if Hillary Clinton were to be the Democratic nominee. Anyway, the GOP can win elections without black votes, as long as two other weaknesses are addressed.
The first is the Hispanics. They voted 65:35 for Mr Gore, which means that an even higher proportion of Mexicans supported the Democrats; the 35 per cent included a lot of Cubans. But it is the Mexican Hispanic population which is growing most rapidly. If it retained its current level of Democratic allegiance, it would be almost impossible for any Republican presidential candidate to carry California.
Mexicans are religious and family-orientated. They know about the evils of big, corrupt government; they have experienced them all in Mexico. Most of them came to the USA in search of work and opportunity. Once there, however, many are seduced by trade unions and welfare benefits, so that it is easy for Democratic activists to turn the barrios into a political monoculture.
This could be combated, for there are Hispanic Republicans, including Jeb Bush's family. But there is one difficulty: immigration. If the new administration tried to curb illegal immigration, most Hispanics, too, would be driven into solidarity with their poorest brethren. Indeed, the Republicans could end up with the worst possible result: an even more alienated Hispanic electorate, plus ineffective immigration controls. Hispanic immigration is the trickiest issue in current American domestic politics, for it will have dramatic effects on the USA's political demography.
The Republicans know that they cannot win elections as a purely Wasp party. This does not mean that the Wasps should be neglected. At the moment, Republican organisers are trying to design strategies for the ghettos and the barrios, while wondering whether there is any scope for dialogue with the unions. All very well, but it is only likely to produce marginal electoral gains. The Republicans cannot afford to neglect their traditional supporters.
At this election, the Republicans had all the money that they could spend, yet it was the Democrats who were more effective at turning their people out. In later decades, President Lincoln's party was also the party of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed, though it was the Democrats who subsequently perfected such tactics in the politics of New York, Massachusetts and Illinois. There would be no question of corruption — that should be left to the big-city Democrats — but the Republicans need to rediscover the black arts of street-fighting politics.
If they do not mobilise, they will be mobilised against. But it should not be impossible to energise the suburbs. There, the Republican message should be a sanitised version of the following: 'If you are happy to let Jesse Jackson choose the next president of the United States, there is no need to vote.'
This week, Mr Jackson and others are organising their alternative inauguration. The news from Florida will neither appease the protesters nor discourage their leaders. Mr Bush will have to find adjutants who can put a similar passion into enthusing his voters.
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