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Republicans and Democrats Put the Spin on the '90s
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17247 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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2 / 1990 |
3,773 Words |
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Everett Carll Ladd
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After every election, politicians and pundits strive to affix meaning to its outcome. What do the results portend for the next round of national voting and, generally, for the parties' future? The prevailing "spin" on the balloting held November 7, 1989 - which saw Democrats win narrowly in the New York mayoralty and Virginia gubernatorial contests and handily in the race for governor in New Jersey - offers two main conclusions. First, that after what was for them a painful Reagan era, the Democrats appear to have regained their stride electorally; and second, that the Republicans' opposition to expansive abortion rights has, in the charged climate following the Supreme Court's ruling in Webster V. Reproductive Health Services, finally backfired politically.
The first argument lacks foundation. Even worse, it deflects attention from the one feature that distinguishes contemporary party competition in the United States from that of all previous eras - that voting results in state and local races evidence a pattern sharply and persistently different from national voting centered on the presidency. Normally, one would be well advised not to make too much of the three races last November on grounds they are too small a sample to tell us anything about national trends. But, the fact is, their results are entirely consistent with clearly established patterns.
One year earlier, the Republicans won the presidency handily, their fifth victory in the last six competitions. Their total popular vote lead over the Democrats in this span is 10 percentage points 53 percent to 43 percent - a margin so large that it finds its equal only once in U.S. history, in the New Deal election. But throughout the period the Democrats maintained overall ascendancy in the statehouses and in Congress. Following the 1988 voting, for example, they led the GOP 55-45 in U.S Senate, 260-175 in the House, 28-22 in governorships, and 4,477-2,925 in state legislative sets. If 1989 results mean anything special, then, it is that the old cycle of divided party control is continuing into the 1990s. Why is this so?
'Cognitive Madisonianism'
In seeking to explain why the contemporary electorate is doing something no previous cadre of American voters ever did - divided one way in national and the other in sub-national elections - it isn't possible to avoid the conclusion that, in part, voters are trying to tell us something. I call their electoral response "cognitive Madisonianism," after James Madison, the great apostle of divided government. This interpretation starts from the fact that with two centuries of experience with a political philosophy and attendant institutions that raise checked-and-divided governmental authority to a lofty status as an instrument for preserving individual liberty, Americans are less likely than their counterparts in other democracies to be troubled by a Republican White House and a Democratic Congress. Never before the last quarter century had Americans regularly experienced sustained divided party control of their national executive and legislative institutions, but their entire history had prepared them for the underlying idea of divided government.
Has a new outlook been added to the historic mix? Are Americans now receptive to a heightened form of divided power - a Republican national executive balanced by Democratic ascendancy in Congress and the statehouses - to express new perspectives? Certainly the public is
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