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Stuck In the Middle with You
By John J. Pitney, Jr.

John J. Pitney, Jr. is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

Date Issued: 11/03/2004

Historian Theodore H. White once said that presidential elections are about three things: bread and butter, war and peace, black and white. Despite the high passions, the election was not a landslide because neither candidate had a decisive advantage in any of the three areas.

When the economy is terrible, the president's party usually loses. The hallmark example, of course, is Herbert Hoover's crushing defeat in the Depression year of 1932. When the economy booms, the in-party usually wins. In 1984, Ronald Reagan carried 49 states on the strength of strong growth in gross domestic product.

The 2004 election stood somewhere in the middle. Democrats could point to net job losses during the past four years. Republicans could point to the average 5.6 percent unemployment rate between January and September. That level was identical to the same period in 1996, when Bill Clinton cruised to reelection.

Issues of national security cut both ways, too. On the day that Saddam's statue fell, it seemed as if the invasion would give a major political boost to President Bush. That boost evaporated when the postwar situation turned ugly and Americans could find no weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, it is surprising that the war in Iraq did not cause President Bush even more political damage. How come?

Senator Kerry never quite found his footing on the issue. His 2002 vote to authorize the use of force put him into a tough political bind. On the one hand, he could have simply said that he made a mistake. But such an admission would have subjected him to crossfire from the right and the left. Conservatives would seize on such a remark as further evidence of vacillation. Nader supporters would also have pounced, since the remark would have let them ask: "Who's worse—George Bush, or somebody that George Bush can brainwash?"

Instead, when reporters asked in August whether he would still have voted the same way, he said: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it's the right authority for a president to have." He criticized the way the administration had carried out the war, but he kept stepping on his own lines.

During the first debate, he repeatedly called it a "mistake." When Jim Lehrer asked if Americans were dying for a mistake, however, he said no. At the second debate, he said: "Well, let me tell you straight up: I've never changed my mind about Iraq. I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat." When discussing Iran moments later, he reversed himself: "It's a threat that has grown while the president has been preoccupied with Iraq, where there wasn't a threat."

President Bush had more of a political edge with the larger war on terror. Americans still remembered his decisive leadership in the days after the 9/11 attacks, as well as the rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet as Senator Kerry pointed out, we did not catch Osama bin Laden, and questions lingered about the effectiveness of homeland security. The last-minute bin Laden tape apparently reinforced those questions.

Once again, though, Kerry's criticism was not as effective as it might have been. His odd comment about terrorism as a "nuisance" threw him off message and gave Bush forces a target for counterattack.

On the issue of race relations, conventional wisdom once held that Republicans gained politically by appealing to "angry white males." Whatever truth that assumption ever held, it had vanished by the 1990s, when racial issues simply did not drive many votes into the GOP column. In 1996, for instance, Californians passed Proposition 209, to ban racial preferences in state hiring and education. During the same election, Bill Clinton carried the state decisively. Meanwhile, racial issues actually helped Democrats by energizing turnout among African American voters.

The administration was painfully aware of this history. President Bush endorsed the Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, and studiously avoided the topic in his campaign speeches. So while he captured only a small share of the African American vote, his record did not give rise to an upheaval against him.

What now? The winning side has earnest hopes and the losing side has dire fears.

Both should stop hyperventilating, because daunting constraints face the White House in 2005. The deficit severely limits the government's options in fiscal policy, and the situation in Iraq will continue to defy a quick solution. The party balance remains close in both chambers of Congress, so one should not expect dramatic legislative accomplishments. In the Senate, the majority is short of the 60 votes that it takes to break a filibuster, meaning that many controversial measures and nominations will slowly die in a vat of words. And the polarization of the parties will persist. Many voters may be thinking of the Stealers Wheel lyrics:

It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.