WORTH THE WINNING:

Wellstone's Ghost: How Minnesota voters got snowed. (William Saletan, Nov. 6, 2002, Slate)

A number of Democrats are going around today sniffling that the GOP may rue its election victories because it now bears full responsibility for whatever goes wrong. Front-page articles in several newspapers imply a similar warning. Republicans will dig deeper into their wish list, the theory goes, and may antagonize voters in the process. That's possible, but the opposite is more likely. There are elections worth winning, and there are elections worth losing. This was an election worth winning.

An election worth losing is one in which you can see trouble on the horizon. The 1988 presidential race was an election worth losing for two reasons. First, the recovery of the 1980s was running out of steam. Second, the bills from the Reagan tax cuts, unbalanced by commensurate budget cuts, were coming due. The winner of that election would have to raise taxes, cut spending, or both. George H. W. Bush won the booby prize and was tossed from office four years later.

The 1992 presidential race was an election worth winning. A recovery from the 1990-91 recession was already underway. (Bush kept saying so and was derided for it.) The information revolution was gaining steam, the World Wide Web was taking shape, and the collapse of the Cold War was freeing up money and attention that would have been consumed by military needs. The winner of that election would preside over a boom and an influx of tax revenue that would relieve the federal deficit. Bill Clinton won the prize and was re-elected four years later.

The 2000 presidential race was an election worth losing. The recovery of the 1990s was running out of steam, a recession was brewing, and the Nasdaq was beginning to tank. If the winner of that election had known what was coming, he would have expected to be punished in 2002. But for reasons that are still being debated this afternoon, he wasn't punished.

Though one would quibble over some details and omissions, that's an excellent analysis of the last few presidential cycles. 1992 in particular was a race that the GOP had to win. Had it done so the realignment back towards the Right would have been a fait accompli by now. But George H. W. Bush--who also had to deal with the potentially catastrophic collapse of the U.S. Savings and Loan industry and the standing down of the economy from a sixty year military-industrial configuration--shot himself in the foot by raising taxes instead of cutting what was obviously an absurdly bloated budget for a post-Cold War nation. He thereby made himself unelectable because he so alienated his own base--much of which switched to Ross Perot.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 10, 2002 7:26 AM