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If there's one thing that's clear from the actions of Vice-President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush, it's that they both want to win. Both have taken their case about as far as they can without sparking a popular backlash. Both have litigated in courts of law as their minions postured and pontificated in the court of public opinion.
But to what end? An increasingly prominent view of political experts is that the price of victory will simply be too steep. "The winner may very well envy the loser," says Marshall Wittmann, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. "Clearly, the losing side will be able to mobilize its base in two and four years."
If Bush wins, the Democrats will rally around the issue of the Palm Beach County "butterfly" ballots and other voter "irregularities." They'll decry the Bush camp's opposition to the hand counts. They'll remind people of what now looks like Gore's victory in the battle for the popular vote. And they'll try to portray Bush as the guy who would sell his soul for the Presidency. "If Bush wins, he's going to come in under a cloud," notes American University law professor Tom Sargentich. "Here's the guy who campaigned as the uniter, and I see nothing in his [post-election-night] stance that is not contentious."
If Gore wins, the Republican battle cry will be those subjective, error-ridden hand counts. They'll scream bloody murder over the fact that they took place only in heavily Democratic counties. The loss would leave a very bitter taste, says Wittmann. "The only comparison I can come up with is the Confederacy after the Civil War. It will be: 'The South shall rise again!'"
BLAME GAME. All this may not completely replace the intraparty recriminations that normally follow an election loss. Democrats would likely still blame Gore for his inability to win despite eight years of peace and prosperity. The Republicans would second-guess the wisdom of anointing a standard-bearer by consensus and blame Bush for wasting time in California when he should have been locking up Florida. But the animus of the election would give the losing party good reason to get beyond the blame-game phase fairly quickly.
The trick will be turning the determination of defeat into results. Notwithstanding all the comments made by President Clinton and others about how folks won't take their votes for granted anymore, few experts actually believe there will be a significant upward spike in voter participation. But this year's losing party may well find it a bit easier in future elections to turn out its base.
To pull this off, the loser will have to keep the issue alive. The next congressional election is two years off. And it will be four years before the Presidential loss can be avenged. In politics, that's an aeon. "Obviously there's a lot of intensity about the issue today," observes former Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour. "But I just can't predict how much steam is going to be left in the kettle" when the next election comes around. Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, points out that two years ago some Democrats thought they would be able to parlay the public's anger over the GOP's impeachment of Clinton into gains this year. Those gains never materialized. Indeed, few Democrats even tried to make an issue of impeachment.
But this time things could be different. Anger over the election loss is not the double-edged sword that impeachment was. And with the Congress so divided, the winner may not have a whole lot to show for himself two or four years from now. Who knows, with all that's happening, maybe we'll soon be talking about the spoils of defeat. It would be just one more example of how different this election is.
Carney is reporting for Business Week from Tallahassee Edited by Beth Belton
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