AFTER LAST WEEK’S terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, nearly everyone agreed that the political landscape in America had been forever changed. The big questions of early September — whether President George W. Bush’s tax cut helped or hurt the economy, whether to raid the Social Security surplus to fund other programs — now seem irrelevant. Party differences have grown so muted that New York’s lightning-rod mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has received almost universal praise for his handling of the disaster. It’s hard to believe that we’ll soon return to the political climate of last November, when a disputed presidential election split the country in half.
But we will.
The recently published Almanac of American Politics 2000 (National Journal, 1776 pages, $57) offers some clues to how the two major political parties are likely to respond in the long run to terrorism on our soil. At first glance, however, the book seems like a relic from another era. For example, principal author Michael Barone tries to reassure us about George W. Bush’s leadership abilities, noting that " Bush showed he could respond in crisis " when he lost to John McCain in last year’s New Hampshire presidential primary. Now that we’re in what Bush has called " the first 21st-century war, " that doesn’t seem like much of a test of character. It’s similarly jarring when the authors talk about " safe territory " for Democratic or Republican candidates, or lay odds on the " capture " of congressional seats from " targeted " incumbents. We’ve become accustomed to using military terms for the most mundane activities (from the end of World War II through last week, kamikazes got you drunk, not killed); a more careful use of language may be one of the many changes in store for American society.
Barone and his co-authors, Richard E. Cohen and Charlie Cook, can’t be faulted for their often irreverent tone, for it was hard to take American politics very seriously before last week. Covering the Gary Condit scandal was a waste of any serious journalist’s talent, but most of us now wish that the sordid case of the missing intern still dominated the news. We may even feel nostalgic for the last event to prompt round-the-clock newscasts: the disputed presidential election of 2000.
That election, which led quite a few parents to tell their kids that they were witnessing history, sets the tone for the newest Almanac, which methodically (and often entertainingly) describes the politics of every state and all 435 congressional districts in America. In his introductory essay, Barone calls the United States " the 49 percent nation, " referring to a deep and consistent split right down the middle in recent presidential and congressional elections. Barone also notes that straight-ticket voting in recent years has been " more pronounced than in any decade since the 1940s. " At the presidential level, a skimming of the Almanac shows that, throughout the country, the 2000 election results lined up almost perfectly with those of the 1996 election That is, Bush combined the votes for Bob Dole and Ross Perot but got no more than that.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, it’s tempting to say that these figures don’t matter anymore. Surely the country will unite behind the president, at least in the short term. Bush’s job-approval ratings predictably rose into the 80s last week, and nearly everyone (with several notable exceptions, including the New York Times’ op-ed page last Wednesday) refused to acknowledge the pain — and often the alarm — that comes from watching this president do anything more than read from a prepared speech. Two of the other exceptions, Massachusetts congressmen Martin Meehan and Richard Neal, received hundreds of angry phone calls last week after violating what might be called the ESPN Rule: in the wake of a national crisis, don’t criticize the president until professional sports teams resume play. When the 2002 congressional elections and the 2004 presidential election come around, it’s likely that voters will base their votes on foreign policy and broad economic issues, not on the narrow social issues that now seem so trivial (like imposing waiting periods before people can buy a gun or get an abortion). Certainly, news coverage of the world beyond our borders increased sharply last week, after years of steady decline since the 1991 Gulf War.
But the United States is too large and diverse to avoid political debate for very long. The two halves of the " 49 percent nation " may seem unified now, but it may not be long before we return to the " red vs. blue " conflict of last year’s election. After Congress sends financial aid to New York and approves ways to gather intelligence about imminent terrorist threats (see last week’s vote to expand the government’s wiretapping powers), unanimity will be impossible to maintain.
