Professor of Political Science Demetrios James
Caraley Comments on the Outcome of the Presidential
Election and the Resulting Political Landscape
Introduction:
Demetrios James Caraley is Janet Robb Professor
of the Social Sciences at Barnard College and
professor of political science in the graduate
faculties of Columbia University. He has published
numerous books and articles on national security
policy, congressional policymaking, and party
and urban politics, including The Politics
of Military Unification, and is the editor
of Political Science Quarterly. He has
been a chair of the mount Pleasant Democratic
Party in Westchester county and also has been
an elected official in North Tarrytown, NY.
In
the following interview about the outcome of the
Presidential election, Professor Caraley argues
that the Supreme Court overstepped their bounds
and talks about what Bush will need to do to govern
effectively.
Q:
Can the nation come together in support of President-elect
Bush, given the extraordinary election?
A:
First of all it is kind of what other choice do
we have? But it is going to depend on how he is
going to govern. It depends on how he works and
whether he will work with bipartisan majorities
in Congress. Congress is not the same as the Texas
legislature, and is a truly independent body.
Bush will have to deal with his own right wing,
Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, and Trent Lott, and the
Democrats, so on his own he has very little of
his base. He has the moderate GOP, but that is
not a big base.
Q:
What must Bush do to govern effectively?
A:
He must get very good cabinet officials, and some
of them should be Democrats. The problem is that
the obvious choice - a Democratic senator - would
not accept an appointment because Republicans
might gain a majority on the Senate. Bush needs
to make appointments of the caliber of Robert
Rubin, the former treasury secretary, but he may
be one of a type. His other problem, which is
a benefit to the country, is that we are no longer
in a hot or cold war so that he cannot use foreign
affairs to unify the nation.
Q:
What is the mandate of President-elect?
A:
I don't think he has any mandate. He said yesterday
there was agreement on prescription drugs for
the elderly, on education, and on a tax cut. I
don't think there was agreement. His own and Gore's
detailed proposals were very different.
Bush
should start with two or three things, like eliminating
the marriage penalty, cutting the extreme death
tax, adding a prescription drug benefit for the
elderly, and get them through with a bipartisan
coalition of the center. That will start him off
with something that is doable and then he can
go on to more difficult things.
Q:
Did the Supreme Court tread new ground in its
ruling?
A:
This is a political issue. In 210 years, the Supreme
Court has never before gotten involved in a presidential
election. All details governing those elections
are in Article 1 and Article 2 of the Constitution,
and refer to Congress and the President. This
was never before considered a federal question,
and so they created new law for themselves, new
Constitutional authority. Some argue that this
is a one-time intervention and so it hasn't really
damaged the country all that much, but I think
it has, and the most damage has been done among
the political elites -- those who regularly participate
in and observe politics -- not the general public.
One comes to the conclusion from reading all of
the Supreme Court's rulings that whatever the
Florida Supreme Court would do, the five-person
majority on the Court would always find a way
to say "that's wrong," send them back, and let
the clock run out so that no more votes could
be counted.
There
is no Constitutional mandate requiring the names
of electors to be submitted by Dec. 12. That date
does not appear in the Constitution. After the
1960 election, Hawaii sent in their electors as
late as Jan. 4, 1961, and those electors were
counted. The justices who signed the majority
opinion turned Dec. 12 into a Constitutional mandate
by some mystery, by saying Florida has a preference
for it and then cynically sent the decision back
to the Florida supreme court to come up with better
standards on 10 PM of December 12, the date they
said was sacrosanct. But a Florida legislative
preference is not a Constitutional mandate.
Even
more startling in the per curiam opinion, was
the declaration that the individual citizen had
no Constitutional right to vote for electors for
the president of the United States. We all knew
that was the history and we were voting for the
president indirectly, but I don't think any court
or law or political science professor ever would
say in the past 150 years that the ordinary citizen
does not have an enforceable right to vote for
president.
That
is terrible thing to say, because that means if
you don't have a right to vote for them, you don't
have a right for your vote to be counted. In fact,
the Florida state legislature had said that electors
were to be chosen by popular vote. There is no
coherent theory in the majority's opinions. Internally
it is inconsistent, and the only position that
is consistent it came down to "just don't count
any more votes."
Q:
Has the credibility of the Court been damaged
because of the Court's failure to reach a unanimous
or near-unanimous verdict?
A:
I think they have damaged themselves, but mostly
again among the elites.
The
concept of judicial review relies on the trust
that judges will be impartial in administering
the law. That is why their decisions are accepted
even though they have no force to use. Trust is
the most important thing in a democracy, and if
you don't have confidence that judges will not
be political, then any democracy starts running
downhill. Up to forty years ago, the Court used
the concept that some issues -- even extremely
important ones -- were not judicial issues but
political issues and should not be decided by
the courts. Going back to that would be a good
idea.
Q:
Given the low voter turnout in U.S. election,
will this election galvanize interest in politics
or weaken it further?
A:
I don't think it will weaken it further because
there are so many things to do: To get new voting
equipment, and to make sure the votes are all
counted and accurately; to eliminate winner-take-all
choosing of electors; perhaps even in this first
century of the new millennium, to have some official
document that says the general public does have
a constitutional right to vote for president.
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