MY PREDICTION FOR 2004
Mark Steyn looks back on his forecasts
and forward to life after all the chads have been thrown into the dustbin of history
New Hampshire ASK not for whom the chad hangs, it hangs for thee. In Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties, chads are dropping to the floor faster than Monica, as Democratic officials hold their endlessly recounted bal- lots up to the light. The local canvassing boards, after some initial reluctance, have now, in every sense, seen the light — Don Gorleone's enforcers having had a quiet word with them. Late on Tuesday night, the Florida Supreme Court took it upon itself to assume the role of legislature and execu- tive and — despite the absence of even the vaguest allegation of ballot fraud or mechanical breakdown — wrote new rules to be applied retrospectively to the election of 7 November. Trying not to look too smug, the Don himself is keeping well away, remaining in Washington and ostentatiously taking Tipper on a double-date with the Liebermans to see a film called — as luck would have it — Men of Honour. Al had originally been planning to see The Count of Monte Cristo, but fortunately discovered in time that he'd been misinformed and it wasn't the gripping tale of a dashing young vice-president and his plucky band of lawyers struggling to get a manual recount in an obscure Florida county.
The media, of course, are very concerned — not by the Gore campaign trying to steal the election, but by the Bush campaign being boorish enough to point out that Gore is trying to steal the election. The Republi- cans' bitter partisan rhetoric' — ooh! risks 'alienating' Democrats. In the New York Times, Thomas Friedman summed up the conventional wisdom by arguing that, in trying to resist the Gore team's efforts to invent new Gore votes, 'Mr Bush has left himself no room to be a gracious loser'. Ah, yes. And there's nothing the Times likes more than a gracious loser — as long as he's Republican. Bob Dole, for example: there was a guy who left himself plenty of room to be a gracious loser — a good eight percent- age points. If only Bush had been that gra- cious, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Poor old Dubya. He's hardly said a word, preferring to sit it out at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, letting Al have as long as it takes to rustle up however many votes he needs, at which point, gracious or oth- erwise, Loser Boy will be able to get the hell out of it and go back to a relatively sane business like professional baseball. His famous reference to 'the Greeks' as `the Grecians' now seems oddly poignant. Why wouldn't the guy be thinking of hair- colouring? After six months up against Al Gore, his hair has greyed and his face is lined: in the year or so since I first met him, he's aged a decade. And things aren't getting any better. For a week after the so- called election, Dubya was glimpsed only with his face covered in Band-Aids: some voodoo man on the Gore team had brought down a plague of boils upon his hitherto unblemished visage. In the run-up to election day, he thought his lead in the polls was about to break out; instead, his face did. No wonder he'd rather stay at the ranch and talk to his dog. And even there he can't get a break. 'George W.,' sneered Gore groupie Martin Peretz in the New Republic, 'may not know much of anything. The other night on television, the Texas governor introduced his dog to the Ameri- can people, and — do you believe it? his dog is named Spot. Young Bush is not an entitled man; he is an ordinary man.'
Democrats have a strange fascination with Republican canines. They're especially fond of the story of President Reagan and the collie. Asked by a journalist what the dog's name was, the President replied `Lassie'. The White House press office later explained that Mr Reagan had 'misspoken'. Peretz's problem with Dubya is that the guy didn't misspeak: he's so dumb, so 'ordinary', he thinks nothing of calling a dog 'Spot'. Ha! Not like Vice-President Gore, who has the taste and sophistication to call his dogs `Daisy' and 'Shiloh'. Still, his poodle over at the New Republic has a very 'ordinary' name, don't you think? 'Martin'. I prefer Spot myself. Bill Clinton, by the way, named his dog after his uncle, Buddy. The Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz, one of the few truly heroic figures in American journalism, said to me, 'Don't you think it's very odd to name a dog after an uncle?' Bipartisanship is crumbling on every front. Cry havoc and let slip the war of dogs!
Nonetheless, there was, as the Constitu- tion mandates, an election on 7 November, and, though Gore and his boys may yet suc- ceed in rendering it null and void, the results are worth paying attention to. To get the crow-eating bit out of the way, obvi- ously my prediction in the Daily Telegraph and its sister publications on 14 and 15 September that Bush would win 378 out of 538 electoral-college votes and 40 states was way out of whack. He won 271 votes and 30 states. If the election had been held a week early, I'd have been right on the money, but, given that I'd predicted noth- ing short of a third world war could affect the outcome, I don't think I can convinc- ingly plead that I failed to anticipate a 24- year-old drunk-driving conviction, or that the insouciant Dubya would respond to this last-minute revelation by taking the final Sunday of the campaign off to mooch around his ranch. The failure of my entrails has given some satisfaction to David McKie of the Guardian. I don't read the Guardian, of course, but I do read the Hamilton Spectator (no relation), a south- ern Ontario daily, which chose to reprint McKie's column on Conrad Black on the grounds presumably that southern Ontari- ans enjoy nothing better than reading about the internal machinations of the Daily Telegraph. The presidential results, concluded David, leave Mark Steyn looking an even bigger fool than the predestinari- ans. Thank you, America.
The predestinarians is Mr McKie's term for the various US professors who had developed statistical models showing Gore would win big, with 60 per cent of the pop- ular vote. Give a guy a break, man. They're far bigger fools than I am. But McKie was concerned that, if I were proved right, I would become even more insufferable than he is now. If Gore pulls off his constitution- al coup, things may be looking up for you, David. Al Gore will win, wrote Alan Rutkowski to Canada's National Post, in which my prediction also appeared. When he does, will Mr Steyn turn in his political pundits' badge? I was happy to assure Mr Rutkowski that, if Gore won, I would kill myself live on the Internet. So hang in there, McKie!
However, in this interlude before the Usurper takes office, it's worth pondering why exactly he's been reduced to dimpling unmarked chads down in Florida. Clearly, there was a late surge to Al, and this was especially pronounced in the so-called bat- tleground states. But the reason he's having to sue his way into the White House is because this year the battleground states weren't really the battleground; the Gore surge was spread very unevenly; and it was accompanied by a Bush surge in crucial states. Thus, the last pre-election polls showed Bush within four points of Gore in California: on the big day, Al won by 12 points. But, conversely, the last pre-election poll showed Gore within one point of Bush in Arkansas: on the big day, Dubya won by six points. The difference is that Dubya didn't need California, but, as it turned out, Gore most definitely did need Arkansas.
Credit where it's due. The left-liberal vote was immensely impressive — bigger than in any year since 1964 — but it's more concentrated in fewer places than ever before in the party's history: the coastal cities, some Mississippi River towns, and the geriatric conurbations of Florida. It's too confined to do the Democrats any good electorally. While I was explaining my Bush victory rationale to Telegraph readers, the Times was telling its readers 'Midwest Voters Hold The Key To White House' no, they don't — and the Guardian's Mar- tin Kettle was advising Bush to start plan- ning for an extended fishing trip in November. Gore has probably got it. Other British papers were excitedly talking up Ralph Nader. In the event, the Nader vote collapsed to a pitiful 3 per cent, and the northern states he was strongest in — Ore- gon, Washington, Minnesota, etc. — all wound up in the Gore column. What cost Al the election was his loss of Arkansas, West Virginia, and his own home turf of Tennessee — all non-battle- ground states the Democrats should have been able to take for granted. No Nader effect here, no decaff-latte-swilling, pony- tailed eco-lefties to queer Al's pitch. He lost for reasons I outlined in The Spectator back in September: white rural men, in Particular, loathe Gore. The cracker I spoke to in West Virginia, a traditionally Democratic state, said he'd rather move than live under a Gore administration. It's very difficult for a Democrat to be elected to the White House without carrying one or two southern states and every successful Democratic candidate in the last 40 years has done well down there — it's the differ- ence between, on the one hand, Clinton and Carter and, on the other, Dukakis, IVI ondale and McGovern. But id is head- ing for a total blow-out south of the Mason-Dixon line, and there's no mystery about why: he wants mandatory photo-ID licences for gun-buyers, a three-day wait- ing period, a limit on handgun purchases to one a month.... The reason the Gore surge did not translate into an electoral majority is because it was matched by an intensification of antipathy towards him by rural whites, as predicted in these pages. While I'm being insufferable, I also note that, when the analysts kept talking about how the issues favoured Gore, they were making the mistake of assuming their issues were everybody else's issues — so, prescription drugs was deemed to be an issue, but Gore's gun-licence plans weren't. As the Los Angeles Times's Ron Brownstein — no conservative — was obliged to concede, in this election gun ownership was a more reliable predictor of voting patterns than anything else. That's especially true if you look at the county map: 677 counties voted for Gore, 2,434 for Bush. The presumption is that the great coastal Goropolises are not just where all the people are but also where all the action is, and that the Bush-league counties are fading backwaters with a cou- ple of rusting grain elevators. But not so: if you measure economic growth in the last decade, in Gore-voting counties it was 5 per cent, in Bush-voting counties 14 per cent. The Gore counties cover 580,134 square miles; the Bush counties 2,427,039 square miles. As long as this country is a federation of states, the outlook isn't good for the Dems.
Apropos Dubya's alleged stupidity, I also remarked that, if Bush is the candi- date as moron, Gore is the candidate for morons. I had no idea this would become the animating principle of his post-election campaign — that fit, healthy, youngish Democrats would be demonstrating in the streets of Palm Beach advertising their stu- pidity by demanding a chance to have a second crack at filling out a perfectly sim- ple ballot. This is the exquisite, logical reduction of Democratic nanny politics: grow too dependent on the party and eventually you'll be too enfeebled even to vote without some operative punching the chads for you.
So a mixed record for The Speccie on election day. But, when they stop blaming Nader up north and Buchanan in Palm Beach, even Democrats will realise that the reason their man isn't in the White House is because he couldn't hang on to the remnants of the old Democrat south, including his own state. Regardless of which way the constitutional coup goes, here's the first prediction of Campaign 2004: if Gore's the candidate again, he'll win fewer than 600 counties.
We couldn't stop him.'
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