[Translated from GegenStandpunkt Protokolle der Jours fixes in München 11 December 2000]
What is remarkable about the open ending of the American presidential election? Particularly for political feuilletons it is evidently an infinitely fascinating subject that America does not yet know, one month after the election, who the next president is. Grand interpretations are employed that want to tell us the reason for this result. Can one notice how united the American nation is because it can evidently find no difference between the candidates and it is therefore all the same who governs them? Or is it so divided into two sides that it really finds no compromise at all? Perhaps they want to make clear to both candidates that they find them sub-par? All this is difficult to say because an electoral ballot is no statement in this sense.
It is interesting that nobody maintains that what is now at stake is what America will become in the next four years. There are already a few feuilleton articles saying that the world needs leadership that would be lacking if the leader is not skillfully authorized. Also reflected on is whether it is good or bad for Europe if the US president is weak. Here also one can be of a divided opinion. One side says that this is bad because the world needs a leadership which Europe is incapable of; others say that the world needs leadership, and if it does not come from America, that is perhaps a challenge for us to get together and take over leadership as Europe. Those are all views that are inspired by the point of view of intervention. They want to figure out what is meant for us -- the Europeans or any other form of supervisor of what one thinks America has to regulate.
If one leaves that aside and asks oneself from our disinterested side what the election actually shows, then the first thing that is actually noticeable: very little of what America becomes seems decided by the US vote. If then this exciting event occurs, that week after week passes without a certain election winner, then nevertheless there is no talk that this would mean anything like the ungovernability of America. The fact that on January 20th the US president will be enthroned with all power to then scuffle with Congress is today already certain. Also the agenda, thus all the topics about which America must look after, is on the whole certain. Then it already becomes a very technical question, which accent or other could probably placed there.
However, those are all things which lie outside the now allegedly so exciting event that one does not yet know who he is. Obviously, America is somewhat irritated over this situation. What then, given that objectively nothing at all depends on it, is irritating for those involved in this postponed election result? The counting of votes by hand which can be seen in the media is not taken as ridiculous, but as a certification for how seriously the thing is taken. The people almost despair that it is not clearly determined who now has the majority. The whole banal content of the controversy consists over whether one may again recount the paper ballots not accepted by the computer for the determination of the winner. What in this could throw a democratic voter off balance?
Instead of the vote finding out a leader, a controversy exists. Otherwise one could say to the voter who misses having a leader over himself simply that he has to wait another month; nothing depends on it. On January 20 they will know exactly who the new leader is. The fact that they do not yet know this, about that point one could comfort, really, every democratic voter. But to them, instead of the security of knowing who governs them during the next four years, something else is offered. For the American constituency what is irritating in the current situation consists of the fact that what should be over with the vote -- the struggle for power of two figures -- is not yet over. Actually, the only thing remarkable consists in the fact that nevertheless a struggle for power continues.
Question: But in the struggle for power itself the voter actually finds nothing special. The confusion consists in how this runs off now, namely that the voting procedure is actually there to unambiguously finish the struggle for power, but just this is what it does not carry out now. In the USA it is discussed whether something has to change in the election process itself because it cannot be acceptable that judges decide who is the next leader of America.
Then they just agree to procure other computers. One must differentiate between the arguments that are to be found in the course of the controversy in the USA and those which represent our opinions about the whole thing. Arguments like: the voter no longer decides but a court belongs in the controversy now taking place. To the position that now instead of the voters the court decides there is the opposite standpoint that nevertheless the court will only decide so that the voter's vote comes to course in the election contest, thus that the purity of the voter's vote is protected. One side says that it wants to protect this by the fact that it is counted especially thoroughly by hand, while the other side says that to most fairly count the voter's vote the same neutral machine should be used. If the scandal is marked so that the voter's vote is replaced by a court decision, then that is firstly not at all the case, and secondly it is one of the arguments with which the candidates beat each other mutually over their heads: the other would only be a court appointee, while with me the (finally determined) voter's vote would be best served.
Nothing in the affair is embarrassing, but the only thing remarkable consists in what one can discover in this current excitement about the achievement of an election. The question of who is to take office is of course the most important thing for those who apply for it. One also notices what one contributes as a voter: one decides nothing but the struggle for power between two figures. That is decided by a vote and, by the way, was decided also by this election. It is only uncertain in which sense; that is the whole joke. The latter is still another consideration. If they only had to wait a little while, then they should just wait a little bit, enduring the time till Christmas. But something happens instead that does not belong to the time after election night any more. A struggle for power continues between the figures. They immediately mobilized their election campaign staffs again on the same night. It is interesting that this looks obnoxious. They will continue to fight for power – of course now with other means, i.e. with contesting an election result or its rejection. With it the hard core of the election -- who becomes president and how this personnel question is decided -- is not settled, but precisely this continues, what was before the exclusive subject: Who of both of us is to win? This struggle for power is led with every trick and a lot of money. Nobody is wrong about the fact that American presidential elections are decided with money, television commercials, impressive staged events and such circuses. They can put a number on the minimum cost one needs to run for a senate office, almost three million.
All this is approved of for an election campaign as a competition for the voter's vote. The same thing extended after election night suddenly brings both candidates a little bit into disrepute. The fact that for them nevertheless it is only about the power they want to have for themselves if election night is past suddenly becomes a doubt, almost an objection against them. Otherwise nothing in the election campaign is too sleazy for them. Somebody can find that Bush 35 years ago got arrested for drunk driving and it is examined whether this is favorable or unfavorable as an election campaign argument. For two days it was as if this could break Bush’s neck. Had it turned out that the Gore had an affair then this would have immediately been a miraculous moment in this election campaign. Nothing is too sleazy or too petty; to overwhelm each other with complaints, that the other one would wrongly deduct some money sometime, this is all approved of -- for the election campaign.
In this whole circus, one notices: the question as to who, by whatever means, should be the next leader produces a dividing of the nation. And now this dividing over the vote must be terminated on election night with the acknowledgement of one side that the other side has won. This feigned fair play at the conclusion, in which the loser admits his defeat, is very important here because with it the whole dividing of the nation and the sleaziness of the struggle for power is forgiven to a certain extent.
In this it becomes recognizable what the finished voting accomplishes. It extinguishes all the sleaziness of the election campaign and raises a figure who until yesterday was only a party candidate, one thought capable of any ugliness, into the position of leader of the nation. What this legitimating function of the election wipes clean, and what it produces instead, becomes clear now that this achievement of the vote is postponed. What is actually to be concluded but continues to go on as a controversy, with all means necessary and the use of good lawyers (again with a lot of money because they are only as good as they are paid), is indigestible. One can be sure that this is also over when it is eventually certain that one won, while the other, who then indeed also plays his part, recognizes his defeat. Such nonsense as the loser recognizing his defeat plays a big role in democracy because with it the whole division that has been previously produced is put away until further notice, i.e. until the next election campaign, things are sent to file and the opponent from yesterday is raised to the leader today and for the next four years. This is the legitimization function of the election, which becomes so clear.
Question: If then one of these remarks referred back to the voter's voice and the courts, then the sleaziness in the debate after the election is that it is about nothing other than a struggle for power. This is represented as such by one and as such by the other. One says that this shows that the other turns it into a mere legal case, whereby the objection is not to the court itself, but that before it a struggle for power is decided when the office of the president nevertheless stands much higher. The other says, vice versa, that this must be so that the voter's will is valid, it is rightfully counted out.
Correct, both sides can mutually accuse each other of continuing the struggle for power. At the same time it is important that no bad light falls on the law and the court. Then the objection consists of whether the vote count should not be made simpler next time, etc. No bad light falls on the institutions, but rather on the candidates, whereby then again party lines are meted out, and a bad light falls on them because they are said to simply not give up. One of them does not allow for such a cheap thing as a recount so one sees that he is concerned not with a fair vote but only about his power. And likewise it is said of the other that he only insists on eternal recounts because he did not win. This is also correct; they still continue their struggle for power after the end of the election with these means. To say what is interesting about it again: they do not act any differently than during the election campaign at all, except more politely. It is actually only that it is past the point up to which this way of performing is democratically approved of and even desired. One can infer something from it, if one wants, about the meaning of democratically excited party conflicts and about the connection between party conflicts and national unity.
To remind again of the beginning: This steps out so purely because nothing is really at stake over the power of the institutions and only too surely over the power of the American state. The case of the US election throws a light on how important the pure legitimization question is for a democratic state, which refers, really, only to a person. All this lives on the fact that the office and the power of the nation, which is signified by this office, stands not in question. As soon as it would be somehow affected by the current events it would go in a completely different direction. By the way, that just constitutes the attraction for the whole public discussion. It opens the freedom to be able to look for a meaning in the thing and everything that one always wanted to say bad about America, to be able to refer now to this undecided election.
Question: The nation debated in the election campaign only about one point, namely who is the winner of this election, that is why the declaration of the winner extinguishes all the sarcasms of the election campaign. The winner legitimizes the government and the opposition. Nevertheless, the trick in the whole story consists in the fact that if one submits to the majority decision, then one has nothing more to say, but must announce his doubts as an opposition.
Yes, then this goes over to the normal government business, which is organized as an eternal battle between President and Congress. So functions government business, which then no longer concerns the voter. This is never done alone, and it is just institutionalized as the opposition of President and Congress. That they make life as difficult as possible is the way the effectiveness of politics is managed.
With the election campaign no other controversy is opened in democracy than that people argue about power. The fact that now nobody wants to present himself as the loser and both still fight for power, that the struggle for power still goes on, is criticized in the current situation. The whole previous election campaign has also been about nothing other than this conflict. In America nobody can be mistaken that all the notorious contents of politics are cited just in order to construct the image of a person who can make himself the more convincing with the assertion: “Here you see the next president of the United States of America!” And then an enormous applause goes off. The fact that the question “What would you do if you are President?” is not the actually crucial one, but serves only to construct the figure, should not to be overlooked as only in America. Between two figures, which stand with their parties like chieftains of the Mafia, a struggle for power takes place over the office of the President. This is the whole and not at all hidden content on which the whole election campaign is based. The election campaign carries into the country the debate over whether it should be Gore/Lieberman or Bush/Cheney. The question as to which asshole should now be president leaves normal people completely unshaken. But just this question is constructed specifically so that the people should concern themselves with just this question. Just on this it should align its whole political costume; it should divide and quarrel over this question, it should sort itself into two parties, which it either listens to already anyway or not yet enough. There democracy produces a controversy, but just this one, and extinguishes all others with it. In the irritation over this controversy extending after the election, one notices what the election has to so beautifully perform. The act of voting act becomes sharpened on this divisiveness, which was previously constructed as a bitter individual struggle for power, as a battle by two Mafia clans to rule and on which none of the voters would have come themselves. With the vote the legitimate winner and the recognized loser emerges from the competition of the two Mafia clans, with which the nation is united again in the vote. This is the dialectic of democracy.
The dialectic of democracy has a content against which what now happens offends. One asks oneself why the same thing that is properly required before in the election campaign as a struggle for power should then be something sleazy and improper when the election is over. This has its reason in the fact that this struggle for power is directed before toward the voter as a subject of the decision. He is called upon and is then really the subject of this decision, namely just between these two persons. With the act of voting the voter himself perceives this role. The candidates yield to this choice; they really submit to this judgment. And this submission is synonymous with the fact that the voters become the people again, thus the democratically obedient people who then are no longer divided and no longer followers of a party line. The conversion of the voter again into the people means: As a voter he is partisan, but as a people – no matter whether it has chosen one or other - the president is its will. In the election the will of the American people is found to exist in one or the other candidate.
In this case now the people have had the role of the subject, without its single will being immediately certain. This means, first of all, that the people are still party-liners and, what is not respectable, actually, run around as supporters of Gore or Bush to secure for their side the electoral decision after the vote, while they strengthen themselves so that one or the other should win. Instead of knowing that their will as a people is now him or him, which means to go on their way again because the leader has spoken. What is objectionable in the extended struggle for power is that the controversy delays the submission of the people to their role as subjects under participation of the people. That there is once again a legitimate leader to whom the people listen is offensively postponed instead of being decided by the election.
In addition another side note: it always means nevertheless by the majority that every voice counts. Now as a side effect it will be obvious that “people” and “people’s will” and “voting decision” is a construct. With the controversy around the election procedure it becomes clear that the majority is a question of the organization of the election, which always follows two (every political scientist knows) principles, that it must first of all be fair by allowing everybody to deliver his voice so that, secondly, an ascertainable decision must come out. A snag to this vote is that this basic principle, that the people deliver their voice which then counts so that afterwards an unambiguous decision emerges, just this has become scandalous. Accordingly, they argue about what is the best election procedure, how this principle should be chosen so that afterwards one can again stand clearly behind a leader in the best organized voting procedure. Thus everybody criticizes how it could come to pass that the US election has led to no clear decision. The fact that Gore had more votes would have been of no concern if in Florida the electors had been more clearly determined. It is thus immanently criticized that the procedure led to no clear decision and became the subject of contention.
In democracy this is known to be a problem and is regulated in the constitutions as far as ballots and elections so that a clear decision results. For this problem, which lies in the nature of the thing, there are also in the USA thousands of definitions. “Majority” is a procedural definition because afterwards the vote does not count any more anyway. The procedure of the election consists in the fact that a majority should come about through everyone delivering his vote.
However, if one spitefully suggests that it would be better if the candidates fight a duel because then the decision leaves nothing to desire in clarity, this ignores that the duel exhibits a crucial lack. With it the loser cannot recognize his defeat any longer; that is why the controversy remains. However, the joke in the democratic controversy is precisely that through it unity is produced. It is about the legitimization of the candidate, but not about the fact that only one is left standing. It is about the fact that the partisan mandate, with which the people are active as a subject of the vote, results in the one who is then their leader.
If one takes democracy as this legitimization act, then there is one thing that does not fit at all in it: opposing opinions about the purpose of the state. Opposing positions on the question of what the nation should become are foreign, actually, to a democratic election. Nevertheless, its achievement consists in subsuming all conflicts that are there or perhaps are not there at all under an alternative whose numeric decision as to who should do it then finishes the controversies for four years so that there is then the undisputed leader.