Curing Voter Schizophrenia

When one desperate man takes on more than 500 of his colleagues in an attempt to preserve his position in life, surely that man has a screw loose. But President Bush, seemingly in possession of his sanity, made the Congress the heathen enemy in his holy war for re-election. There was no War on Drugs, no War on Poverty, no War on Crime--only the War on Congress. So why has the Congress taken its beating lying down?

While Bush attacked the federal government's legislative branch, about 40 percent of its members showed no signs of opposition. In fact, Republican Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, who normally hits the roof when responding to critics, joined the president in abusing the body that pays his salary.

The Democrats in Congress, who are frequently the scapegoats of government inaction, were surprisingly mute in response to the president's constant salvos. It is not surprising that in recent weeks, party higher-ups deferred defense of Democratic legislators to Bill Clinton, the party's presidential challenger. In any case, granting him their press coverage would ultimately work in their favor.

Now, however, one can logically assume that, as a self-portrayed Washington outsider encountering a reasonably friendly majority, Clinton will refrain from picking up his predecessor's insidious rhetoric.

The people who really should have taken offense to the president's insults are the voters themselves. Whether people like it or not, Congress represents their choices. Aside from cases of blatant misrepresentation, the voters can expect no more than a return proportional to the raw materials they send to Washington. The current situation in the capital indicates that those who vote for one party locally and another nationally are ready to sacrifice governmental efficiency on the altar of their preferences.

The system of checks and balances mandated by the Constitution would seem to encourage a certain amount of conflict between branches. Therefore, only when all can agree that particular legislation is in the nation's interest does arguing cease and lawmaking begin. For the last four years, this reality of partisan disputes prevented even non-partisan bills from passing. Last-minute attempts to satisfy local constituencies and to inject partisan amendments were often the culprits.

The most obvious explanation for governmental "grid lock," to use a recently coined term, is a sort of voter schizophrenia--the propensity to vote for local and national candidates with completely different views of the nation. This phenomenon is evident from the fact that Democratic Congresses have sat alongside Republican presidents for the last 12 years. Moreover, states that voted overwhelmingly for a Democratic President, like Massachusetts and Connecticut, elected and re-elected Republican congresspeople.

Nevertheless, one could propose that voter schizophrenia has temporarily subsided with the election of a Democratic president. In fact, Clinton garnered a percentage of electoral votes roughly proportional to the Democrats' holdings in Congress. Were it not for Ross Perot's fairly strong showing. Clinton's gains in the popular vote might also have reflected this distribution.

Attaching importance to this correlation, however, would effectively cast aside another relevant aspect of the election's results. Even in the wake of the House Bank Scandal, scores of incumbent representatives, many of whom did write bad checks, were returned to office.

Can President-elect Clinton readily associate himself with these politicians, given that he campaigned on a platform of change, change and change? The fact is, Clinton will likely be much more receptive to the ideas of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council than his blazingly liberal speeches would indicate.

In any case, a simple solution to the "voter schizophrenia" problem is to equip all voting booths with two levers--Republican and Democrat--that would register votes for all the candidates of the respective parties. Although President Bush showed us that desperate measures are always in order in an election year, such action might cheapen the electoral process.

This contention is slightly hypocritical, though, since many people, particularly in local races, vote without any knowledge of the candidates and their position on issues. Furthermore, the current system of the Electoral College already obscures the choices of individuals, since those who vote for the losing candidate are not represented in the electoral vote counts of 48 out of 50 states.

The Congress must now surely see itself in a position of power. President Bush, devoid of a majority and now also of a mandate, exemplifies the term "lame duck." House Speaker Tom Foley is now arguably the most powerful man in Washington. However, while Clinton's transition team begins to construct a new administration, Foley might see fit simply to lead Congress in a restful period of licking its wounds.