Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Deeply? Or, Closely.

Wednesday November 22, 2000

Any way you slice this election it was close. President - even up. U.S. House - bare majority. U.S. Senate - at best one or two seats. State Houses and State Senates - almost 50-50.

So the question comes: Is the nation, as we hear from breathless pundits on cable news shows hour after hour, really DEEPLY divided? Is the result of this election evidence that the country is split in half, with any healing process difficult, if not inconceivable?

Is America, in the first days of this new millennium, a country heading in two different directions? Or, worse yet, are there already two Americas?

Are these two Americas so deeply divided that no matter who wins the Presidency the other half will refuse to accept him? Are these two Americas so deeply separated that no bill passed by a closely divided U.S. House and an equally divided U.S. Senate will have any backing among the constituencies of their 535 voting members?

Are we staring down the barrel of an Administration which will be so harried by a fractious Congress that we will pine for the good old days of Gingrich v. Clinton?

Will each side seize upon any weakness in the other, and attack, attack every day on every issue in every medium desperate to wring the smallest victory out of the most insignificant issue to sway another 10 or 15 voters?

Might this, in turn, lead to mid-term election turnout rates in the twenty percent range from an electorate which has thrown up its collective hands at the entire process?

Or . . .

Or is this not a nation deeply divided, but a nation which is CLOSELY divided?

Those of you who have had to sit through a mull miester's speech or lecture know that I think people involved in politics are, by their nature and by necessity, optimists.

Political operatives are optimists because we believe we can find a path forward to an election victory. People who actually run for office are optimists because they believe they will win, and they will truly be able to improve the lot of their constituents.

As an optimist, I choose to believe America is growing up. Before our very eyes. Perhaps this election was so close because we are becoming at ease with our differences. Whoever ends up taking the oath as President will be the President and, while the other guy's supporters may gnash their teeth, they will still send their kids off to school, go to work, pay their taxes and watch the Superbowl.

The notion that the U.S. House and Senate are almost equally divided sounds, paradoxically, a soothing note to the ear of this closely divided nation. We are not going to have a President elected by an angstrom who will be propped up by an overwhelming majority of his party in the Congress.

Nor will we have a President closely elected who will be pilloried by a huge opposition majority in the Congress holding him, and in effect the country, hostage day after day for four years.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day which - even given the Florida Supreme Court - requires the taking of a national deep breath.

It is safe to assume that most people in America today have a great deal - maybe more than any previous generation - to be thankful for.

We can, at a minimum, be thankful that we live here and not in a country where a close election is settled by one side or the other taking control of the national broadcasting facilities and the armed forces.

We can be thankful that we have people who have strong feelings about things like this election and who are permitted to give voice to those feelings. And we can be thankful we can agree or disagree with them -aloud - without fear.

I can be thankful that The Lad had the opportunity to participate in this process and more than that, he is my lad. And I can be thankful for his mother who, through thick and thin, has been there for 28 years.

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