By
Lora J. Mackel
It is easy to forget, with all the excitement about the closeness of the election, what the actual vote tallies mean for America. Beyond both electoral and popular votes, the percentages state one clear thing about this country: we live in a deeply divided society. Such divisions will surely make politics contentious for years, and demonstrate that there is no one real vision for America.
Last Tuesday, roughly 50 percent of the American voters turned out to make their decisions about the future. Out of the millions who elected to vote, a majority choose Al Gore, while George Bush secured the amount of electoral votes needed to win. This is not the first race in which the popular vote and electoral vote were divided, but it is one of the closest races in the entire history of our nation. Voters were neatly divided, 49 percent for each man. Races' outcomes, in our current electoral system, are not affected by such an outcome. No matter the will of the people, the candidate with the most electoral votes still takes the cake.
So Bush has won, fair and square constitutionally, and now the nation has to move on. Theoretically, that is correct, Bush is now our new president and the House and Senate are still retain their Republican majorities. We are now entering into a new era of governmental and legislative conservatism.
The problem is, however, that nearly half of the voting population, 49% of the voters were opposed to this election, as many as were for it. With a Republican majority in Congress, a conservative legislative agendas is certainly in the foreseeable future. This might be a source of deep dissatisfaction for 50 percent of the voting population.
Additionally, even though the Republicans have a majority in the House and Senate, they hold them by incredibly slim margins. For any legislation to be passed, the Republicans do still need some Democratic backing, setting up a potentially fractious period in American government. And when presidencies are won on such slim margins, bitterness remains a determining factor in politics.
Beyond the literal outcome of this election, its closeness spells confusion for our nation's future. This election was not a close race of passion against passion, but rather one of evil against lesser evil. Perhaps the outcome is a reflection of both major parties' insistence of running down the middle. Though the candidates did have policy differences, neither was prepared to state them strongly for fear of losing that one last swing voter. This was not an election of bravery and vision, but one of strategy.
Additionally, if exit polls are to be believed, they show just how divided the nation is. There was the religious right vote against the secular, the suburban or rural vote against the urban, the female vote against the male, and the young against the old. To further complicate the issue, even these groups had deep fissures. Chances are, among your friends, and your family, the philosophical political differences have never been deeper.
Certainly, when historians look back on this age years from now, our electorate's missteps will be clearer to them. They will see, that in an age that demanded a clear vision, apathy, bad candidates, and an outdated constitutional mandate interfered with America's ability to articulate a strong path into our future. They will see that the issues of social security, Medicare, the Supreme Court and the surplus all had their pivotal turns in this era, and that half of the country did not like what happened. What will they say about us in 50 years?
What happened Tuesday is a rare occurrence in our country, and certainly destabilizing for our democracy. Whatever our reservations and regrets, the die is now cast. How America reacts to this ideological divide will speak to our nation's character. Out of this confusion, a peace with a vision must arise.
