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Have we already seen our last landslide?

by Jack Neely

I always used to look forward to election night. When I was a kid, it was usually a night when the teacher didn’t give much homework, and when my parents let me stay up late.

Later, even if I’d voted for a third-party candidate, as I often did, I kept the holiday. With friends I’d stay up late and drink beer and watch. It was kind of like New Year’s Eve, except without the kissing. Actually, New Year’s Eve was like that, too.

However, something changed in the ‘80s; each election seemed a little more disappointing than the last. Not the results so much as the speed with which I heard them. The winner was often accurately projected by 10 o’clock or so. I’d go to bed at regular bedtime, not particularly tired and sometimes even sober, already knowing who the next president was. There was none of the holiday license of staying up to find out who’d be our next president. It was the inevitable result of high technology.

That is, until 2000, when, for the first time in over 20 years, I stayed up all night to find out who’d be president. That election-night holiday went on for weeks.

That year, everyone regarded it as once-in-a-lifetime fluke. But then, the next one was close, too. And I’m beginning to suspect that what we saw in both Novembers, 2000 and 2004, may be another result of high technology. Electronic polling does let us count votes faster. But it also helps the candidates’ handlers groom and tweak their candidates, find what the voters want today as opposed to the day before yesterday, and warp their candidates to fit.

To paraphrase the old retailer’s dictum, the voter’s always right. They don’t need to be led any more than any diner in a swanky restaurant who desperately wants to think he’s getting a better deal than he’s paying for. The candidates are our waiters this evening.

Every four years, America is the biggest O’Charley’s in the world, and candidate/waiters race from the kitchen to our tables and back, flattering us about our excellent choices, never, ever telling us maybe we’re wrong. (“Gas prices are too high? Yes they are, and it’s the other guy’s fault. I’ll make gas prices nice and low.”)

Campaigns aren’t so much about principles anymore but about identifying demographic groups based on polling data, studying them, and acquiring them. Candidates split the nation like two waiters will split a dining room.

If both sides are relatively well funded, and the candidates themselves are agreeably malleable, the two candidates will, with their handlers’ help, divide the country between them. If they have less than half to begin with, their campaign managers will find ways to annex new demographics, by promises and flattery. Their tendency will be to find the center, and slice.

Maybe the era of the landslide is over. Maybe, from now on, the results of all presidential races will always tend to be 50-50. If they’re not, one side or the other is being unnecessarily scrupulous.

The biggest landslide of my lifetime was in 1972. Nixon, running for re-election during a war, rolled over another antiwar liberal Senator named George McGovern. Nixon beat him, 520 electoral votes to 17. That was, of course, before the ascendancy of the spin doctor.

But consider what might have happened if aggressive high-tech pollsters and campaign managers of the 21st century, like the ones who handled both the Bush and Kerry campaigns, had been in charge of McGovern’s campaign. What had happened at the Watergate Hotel that June was a rumor by November. If that election had been held 30 years later, his handlers would have gotten it out. By November, Watergate would have been all over the Internet, on the radio talk shows, and the subject of a couple of skewed documentaries.

McGovern was a war hero, a bomber pilot of the Second World War. But as an antiwar candidate, he didn’t find it fitting to boast of his decorations. Modern advisors wouldn’t have let him off that hook. Call yourself a hero, they’d say. Mention World War II every chance you get. Stand up and salute at the Democratic National Convention and say, “George McGovern, reporting for duty.”

“But that sounds corny,” McGovern might answer. “And gee willickers, Bob, that war was 27 years ago.”

Advisor: It doesn’t matter. Have some pride, man. You were pilot of a B-24, flying missions over Nazi Germany, one of the most dangerous jobs in the war. Everybody thinks Democrats are wimps, and that proves you’re not. You make Nixon look like a bilge pumper. There are tens of millions of voting war veterans out there. We need them. The NASCAR dads will go for that, too.

McGovern: The who?

Advisor: Also, we know you’re against the war, but the people who want to believe this war is worthwhile are a huge voting bloc. Say the war’s a good thing, but it just needs to be handled better. Tell them you’d win in Vietnam. And it’s not enough to defeat Communism. Tell the people you’ll capture and kill the Communists. And while you’re at it, propose a ban on gay marriage.

McGovern: What’s gay marriage?

Advisor: You don’t need to know. Just be against it.

McGovern: Is my opponent for it?

Advisor: No, he’s against it, too. But that doesn’t matter at all. Gay marriage just freaks people out. That’s why this is all so very, very important to the U.S. presidency. Be against it now, and be against it hard. Propose a constitutional amendment to ban it. Abortion, too. But be sure to call it “moral values.” And give the middle-class a tax cut.

McGovern: Wait a darn second. How can we do that, for crying out loud? We’re already in a deficit, and we’re at war? A tax cut can only be paid for by deficit spending. Our kids will have to pay for it someday.

Advisor: Listen to me, George. Listen to my words. Our kids don’t vote. Duh. Sometimes I wonder about you. Now, let’s work on that comb-over.

I can’t guarantee that McGovern would have won, but with the help of his expert advisors, he would have narrowed the gap.

I’m just not sure how he would have felt about himself afterward.

November 11, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 46 © 2004 Metro Pulse