Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Big money, big votes

By Thomas Gorguissian

Last weekend, Americans were bombarded with televised political ads -- the 30-second politics -- and recorded phone messages. The selling of the presidential and other candidates was relentless. It was the closest White House race in 40 years and Vice President Al Gore and Republican candidate George W Bush were engaged in a frantic final push for votes -- a race to coax those crucial undecided voters, especially in the swing states, over to their camps.

How to convince these "late deciders", male or female, to participate and vote for a certain candidate was the premier issue for both candidates in the last days of the elections this week. In the 1996 presidential race, exit polls showed that 11 per cent of voters made up their minds in the last three days of the campaign. In 1992 it was 16 per cent. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that phone messages recorded by stars and well-known political voices plugging Al Gore would reach an estimated 20 million voters in 18 battleground states in the last days before the vote. Another 20 million calls were made by zealous volunteers at the Democratic campaign. On the Republican front, a staggering 62 million phone calls were placed. And if you were one of the lucky Americans who were online when the call came, you were still likely to receive one of the tens of millions of e-mails sent by both parties to mobilise supporters and guarantee votes.

Last weekend Al Gore was still expressing his doubts about the capabilities of Bush to lead the nation. At the same time, Bush was calling Gore "a man of Washington, by Washington and for Washington." Pundits and polls were trying to figure out how the race was proceeding, especially after the disclosure of Bush's 1976 drunk-driving arrest. Bush's campaign spokeswoman Karen Hughes accused Democrats of "last-minute dirty tricks," saying that Democrats "owe the American people an explanation." Some observers called it a "bombshell" -- others called it a "dud". But the lingering question had been planted in the nation's consciousness: what else did Bush not tell us? Many political analysts have mentioned that one of the biggest problems in this year's elections was that until the very end, many voters felt they still didn't know who the candidates were.

In this, one feels safe in laying the blame with the media, which many feel was either biased or not tough enough on the candidates. Washington Monthly Editor Charlie Peters, one of the prominent media figures in the nation's capital, remarked that the media had been kinder to Bush's misrepresentations than those of Gore. "The unfortunate result of all this is that Gore's credibility rating in the polls has plummeted," Peters said. "If Bush wins, this could be the first elections decided by the press, and the irony is that I'm sure most reporters will finally cast their own votes for Gore."

The manipulation of the media, along with the onslaught of advertisements, phone calls and star plugs, is the cut-throat climate of "big money politics", as Green Party candidate Ralph Nader described it. Last Sunday, more than 10,000 supporters gathered at the MCI Arena in Washington, DC, where Nader asked them to cast a "vote of conscience" that reflects their dreams, "not a lesser of two evils, where, at the end of the day, you're still left with evil."

A day before the Green Party rally, Gore was spinning some "evil" rhetoric of his own in Memphis. "I am taught that deep within us we have the capacity for good and for evil," Gore told an African American audience at a prayer breakfast. "I am taught that good overcomes evil, if we choose that outcome. I feel it coming. I feel a message here that on Tuesday we will prevail in Tennessee, and Memphis will lead the way."

Scandalised, Bush's Communications Director Karen Hughes called the remark "beyond the bounds of reasonable political discourse," noting that "We don't think the vice president is evil, we just think he's wrong." Denouncing Gore's choice of language, Hughes said, "The American people are not going to appreciate that kind of comment." And to a great extent, Hughes was right. Gore supporters had to explain later that the vice president hadn't meant to suggest that Bush, personally, was evil. A Los Angeles Times editorial put in its two cents: "Certainly neither Bush nor Gore is evil, but neither has been inspirational. They have pandered to narrow groups -- senior citizens, working families -- without asking them to look beyond their own interests."

The thrust of the editorial reflected a growing belief that the divide-and-conquer method of politics was ultimately faulty. "Americans respond most strongly to leaders who provide a vision of something bigger than any one of us, bigger even than all of us. The increasing, consultant-driven sectioning off of the electorate may explain why so many voters have remained on the fence even until now."

Studies show an estimated 100 million Americans will have sat out the polls on Elections Day -- about as many will have voted. These non-voters are generally younger and reports indicate that nearly four in 10 of them say they do not vote because they care less about politics and public affairs. Another one out of four non-voters (26 per cent) does not participate out of anger at politics and politicians.

Perhaps what is most significant, and indicative of an unstoppable trend in politics, election 2000 was the most expensive election in American history, with an estimated $3 billion spent on the presidential and congressional races. The combined total for federal and state spending in campaigning approached $5 billion, which is why Larry Makinson of the Center for Responsive Politics was prompted to warn: "I think we're in danger of drifting from a democracy to a dollarocracy."

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Related stories:
A voice, at last
The Nader factor
Can you see a difference? 2 - 8 November 2000
Ralph Nader by George Bahgory, 2 - 8 November 2000
A voice crying in the wilderness 24 - 30 August 2000

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