An election to celebrate (really)

As I write, it's Election Day, and every self-respecting pundit is lamenting "a nation exhausted after yet another bitter and polarizing election" that has "strained our civic discourse, if it can be called that, to the breaking point," as the Princeton history professor Kevin M. Kruse put it in today's New York Times. (Click here.)

Actually, I'm feeling pretty good about our recently concluded election, regardless of how my candidates did. A few reasons why I see my glass as half-full:

— The much maligned and long-drawn-out Republican primary process did precisely what it was designed to do: From a slate of some ten loony and (in some cases) downright frightening presidential candidates it chose in Romney the only real grownup, with the exception of Utah's Governor Jon Huntsman.

Billy Graham and the Mormons

— America's right-wing evangelicals— and even Billy Graham, for Pete's sake— turned out in droves to vote for a devout Mormon whose faith specifically rejects the Judaeo-Christian Bible. When you think about it, this phenomenon is even more astonishing than whites voting for Obama, or Christians routinely electing Jews like Arlen Specter, Ed Rendell and Lynne Abraham. Can a conservative Muslim Republican candidate be far behind?

—The much-maligned Electoral College, for all its flaws, reminded us of a few of its strengths that we tend to take for granted. In New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, which were especially devastated by Hurricane Sandy, it guaranteed that citizens of those states would be proportionally represented in the national tally, even if the storm prevented many of them from making it to the polls.

— Smaller states like Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin and North Carolina used to complain that candidates bypassed them because their electoral votes were negligible. This time, candidates lavished attention on those very same neglected states because the outcome in the largest states— like California, Texas, New York and Illinois— was never in doubt.

(Of course, Ohioans complained that they were inundated with too many political commercials.For some folks, the glass will always be half-empty.)

With friends like Sheldon Adelson…

— All that campaign spending unleashed by Super-PACs proved less than decisive. In fact, it was counter-productive, because the Super-PACs themselves became a major issue even while they canceled each other out. They also created a backlash. Sheldon Adelson's pledge to spend $100 million to elect George Romney, for example, probably did Romney more harm than good.

— Similarly, the new voter ID voting requirements backfired on the Republican legislatures that imposed them. Instead of discouraging poor and elderly people from voting, they handed Democrats a useful campaign issue, i.e.: the Republicans don't want you to vote.

— The distorted Super-Pac TV ads heightened public interest in the televised debates— which became the only place, really, where Obama and Romney could confront each other's talking points.

— Yes, the campaigns were negative. But so what? How are voters supposed to learn about a candidate's flaws unless his opponents point them out? More to the point, a campaign (like everything in life) is a test. Political attack ads really tell us more about the attacker than the victim. As Emerson (not to mention most psychiatrists) observed, one's opinion of others is a reflection on oneself.

Who needs moderators?

But Dan, you ask, is there nothing about this past election campaign that you would do differently? Actually, there is.

Over the past generation the presidential debates have varied their formats— candidates standing at podiums, or sitting near each other at a table, while responding to questions from a single moderator, or a panel of journalists, or a "Town Hall" meting of undecided voters. This variety is all to the good; each format tests a candidate in different ways. Permit me to suggest the ultimate debate format:

Eliminate the moderator altogether. Put the two presidential candidates on a stage by themselves and let them work out the rules between them, while the nation watches the process on TV. Can they reach an agreement about the ground rules? Can they conduct a civil conversation, or will they spend 90 minutes shouting over each other?

Such a debate may not teach us much about where the candidates stand on the issues, but it will teach us a great deal about how they deal with adversity— which may be the most important qualification for the White House.♦


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