By William Tucker on 10.28.04 @ 12:08AM
If Kerry wins, does that mean we have to behave?
I wasn't going to write this column unless John Kerry wins next
Tuesday. Now I realize it's better to say it all now before we know
who wins the election.
I have one plea to conservatives. If the Democrats do manage to
squeak through next week, I have one request: Let's let this guy
govern. I know it's going to be tempting to scream foul or to start
making fun of his daughters or to put under the microscope whether
John Kerry really was in Cambodia for Christmas 1968.
But let's at least give him the chance to pull the country
together.
American democracy has been taking a beating lately. Looking at
the emotions running loose now, you begin to understand why
democracy doesn't always work in other countries.
The mistake about democracy is to believe that the only thing
that matters is the majority rules. That isn't true. Majority rule
is only half the story and probably not the most important part.
What is more important is that the losers are willing to accept
the verdict.
For the last four years the Democrats have come perilously close
to defying this principle. They have never accepted the legitimacy
of George Bush's victory in 2000, even though it's written right
there in the Constitution. From that point it's been easy to
proceed to the premise that we wouldn't be in Iraq and maybe the
terrorists wouldn't have even attacked at all if George Bush hadn't
been President. The result is the state of unreality the Democrats
inhabit today.
If the Democrats lose again this time, I think they're going to
go over the cliff. There are elements of the Democratic Party that
are so self-righteous that I doubt they'll be able to function as a
minority party. They'll go extracurricular, stonewalling court
nominations, disrupting Congress, parading in the streets and
taking "direct actions" to try to accomplish what they can't win in
the voting booth.
Unfortunately, the worst thing that could happen is for the
Republicans to turn into a mirror of that party. We had a lot of
this during the Clinton era. The demonizing of Bill and Hillary
Clinton, the snooping around in their sex lives -- I was never very
happy with any of that. Granted Bill Clinton was a libertine, but I
don't think anybody can withstand too much scrutiny of their
personal life.
The fact remains that the country was reasonably well governed
during the Clinton era. We balanced the budget, passed welfare
reform, and created a good deal of economic prosperity. The things
that we didn't do right -- ignoring the terrorist threat, allowing
nuclear proliferation -- were part and parcel of the deal and have
now been corrected. Altogether, though, divided government isn't
that bad. Even if Kerry wins, the Republicans will still control
Congress, so it won't be a complete disaster.
There's one more thing that makes a reasonable acceptance of the
will of the majority well advised. Kerry is going to lose his
electoral base faster than any President in history. At least half
his constituency thinks that once he wins we'll be out of Iraq in
three months. This isn't going to happen. When all the electoral
balloons have floated away, Kerry will face the same dilemma George
Bush now faces -- a hostile Middle East, an indifferent Europe, a
fragile democracy in Iraq, and a world where rogue nations are
acquiring nuclear weapons as fast as possible.
Kerry is not Jimmy Carter -- a Dogpatch simpleton who thinks he
can fool the world by grinning. (He does have a vice president who
fits the description, but that's another story.) Kerry has enough
aristocratic starch in him that he may be able to stand up for his
country if it becomes necessary.
It will become necessary. After six months in office, Kerry will
be seeking asylum from the pacifist loonies that surround him. At
this point, the Republicans will be in a position to accommodate
him. They can then co-govern, exactly as they did with Bill
Clinton.
But all this will be possible only if we don't first destroy the
Presidency in the process of choosing one. For the sake of the
Republic, what Republicans should exercise now is a little
intelligent self-restraint.
topics:
Bill Clinton, Constitution, Iraq, Nuclear Weapons
