Probably Not, but Ask Me in Twenty Years

It's hard to tell whether any election is pivotal except in retrospect. While this is an immense cop-out, it's also the truth. This is especially true, as in this fall's contest, when challengers focus more on critiquing the incumbent administration than on issuing concrete plans for change. Given the ambiguity of the Kerry agenda, and the Bush administration's refusal thus far to provide much detail regarding a second term agenda, it's hard to know how much the outcome will really matter.

Incumbent bids for reelection, even during times of crisis, have rarely proven pivotal--even in retrospect. Ultimately, it's tough to argue that the elections of 1916, 1940, or 1944 were pivotal. Does one really envision Wendell Wilkie keeping us out of World War II after Pearl Harbor (remember, Roosevelt, too, promised to keep us out of war)? Of course, one reason that it's hard to argue that incumbent bids for reelection are pivotal is because every incumbent running in the general election during a time of war has won reelection--so one question is whether Americans will vote like they always have during wartime, or whether the "war on terror" will yield a different outcome.

Wartime elections are most likely to seem pivotal when the candidates hold starkly different stances on how to prosecute the conflict--as was the case in 1864. Today, there is little clear difference between how a Kerry and a Bush administration would manage the next four years in Iraq. Moreover, given the Bush administration's decreased willingness to go it alone in confronting "rogue" states or aggressively pursue the preemption doctrine, even when it comes to Iran, North Korea, or rooting out terrorism, the difference between the two candidates may be more tonal than substantive.

On a broad range of domestic policies, it's equally hard to argue that the election outcome will yield predictable, significant change. In 2000, it was possible for conservatives to imagine that a Bush victory would mark an effort to complete the "Reagan agenda" by privatizing entitlements, promoting faith-based approaches to addressing social policy, flattening the tax code, cutting taxes, and ensuring that the surpluses of the Clinton years were not used to fuel a new expansion of government. In reality, the Bush administration delivered tax cuts, but coupled them with a first-term wave of new domestic spending, disregard for fiscal discipline, and a lack of serious effort to pursue entitlement reform, tax reform, or faith-based measures. While the Bush campaign murmurs "just wait for the second term," there's no evidence the administration is marshaling the public support required to back dramatic reforms it shied away from in the first term.

The big differences between the candidates on domestic policy are on their approach to health care and taxes--with Kerry likely to raise at least some taxes and increase spending somewhat more rapidly than Bush. Even this picture, however, is complicated by the fact that a Republican controlled House, which appears a near certainty, may be much more disciplined in holding the line on spending and program expansion when facing a Kerry White House. For instance, it's important to recognize the very real possibility that a Gore administration would never have been able to enact the costly 2003 Medicare expansion--because it would have been stopped cold by conservative House members who caved to the Bush administration. Despite Kerry's stream of new spending promises, it is quite possible that House Republicans freed from the yoke of the current administration would ensure that a Kerry administration will be more fiscally responsible than a second Bush administration would be.

The biggest argument that this election is pivotal could very well turn out to be the winner's ability to reshape the Supreme Court. Just as in 2000, there's the ongoing possibility that the next president could conceivably appoint four justices in a term and shape the court for a generation. Of course, there's also the possibility that the next president might appoint no justices. Meanwhile, any appointments would have to be shepherded through a closely divided Senate--so there are no sure bets even on that front.

At the time, not even the 1980 contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter appeared the seminal event it is now remembered to be. Because so much of any election turns on domestic and international events beyond the president's control, it's the rare election that reveals its significance until it is in the rearview mirror. So, it's hard for me to see this election as pivotal; but ask me again in twenty years.

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