"I have an indifferent opinion of the honesty of this country, and ill foreboding as to its future system."
--Alexander Hamilton, letter to President Washington, 1783
I like the Electoral College.
That said, it's sort of a socialistic idea. For what the Electoral College system does is make the votes of those who happen to live in relatively less populous states worth more than those who live in New York, California or Florida. It's a redistribution of political power designed to make would-be presidents pay attention to groups of people who otherwise would be beneath their notice.
It's also an elitist idea--the founders understood direct elections were dangerous. Lots of things have changed since the 18th century, but essential human nature isn't one of them. When Alexander Hamilton (allegedly) told Thomas Jefferson "your people, sir, is a great beast" he was anticipating the emergence of popular favorites like Lee DeWyze, Kim Kardashian, the McRib and Boaty McBoatface. Hamilton thought that a childlike faith in the common sense of the masses was a naive and dangerous way to govern.
I agree with that. Left to our own devices, we'd break all our nice things like equal protection under the law, the right to free speech and our national park system.
If our national elections were decided by straight-up popular vote, then candidates would probably focus their campaigns on big urban areas. They'd campaign in New York-Newark, in Chicagoland, in Southern California because nearly 40 million Americans live in those three metropolitan areas. Without the Electoral College you probably wouldn't see candidates campaigning in what we now call "swing states" because there would no longer be swing states. Without the Electoral College the presidential election would be even more a personality-driven popularity contest than it is now. It would be even more about name recognition and Q rating. It would favor the bombastic and entertaining over the dull and competent, the brash over the cautious, the bomb-chucker over the technocrat.
It would be even more of a reality show.
A straight-up popular vote would set up well for a populist demagogue. I think Donald Trump is right; if the just past election had been simply a contest to see who could get the most voters, I think he would have won. The fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a wide margin is surprising and interesting but not terribly important. Everyone knew the rules, and HRC's campaign failed to win in places where it was expected to win--where it should have won. Leaving aside any questions about the relative merits of the candidates, she just got rolled.
Some of that was her fault. In hindsight, it seems clear that the Clinton campaign took certain parts of the electorate for granted. Maybe it believed too much in the polls that showed her winning handily; maybe too many of her supporters believed she was winning handily. My theory is that she simply didn't have that many highly motivated supporters and that a lot of them didn't bother to vote for her because they were pretty sure the country wouldn't elect the other guy.
But it wasn't all Clinton's fault. Some of the blame for her defeat belongs to FBI director James Comey, who's either inappropriately partisan or stupid. Some of it was due to the wishful ignorance of voters who accepted dubious claims propagated by propagandists (which is what we used to call generators of fake news). More of it probably belongs to cable news networks who amplified and legitimized Trump's message because his traveling show made for better ratings.
I wouldn't discount the role of misogyny or Russian cyber-mischief either. Both are real, difficult to quantify and easy to deny in an era when customized facts are available for sale. I know plenty of misogynists, and I doubt that any of them believe themselves guilty of anything other than being realists. And when the president-elect says he trusts Vlad Putin's boys more than our own intelligence agencies, there's plenty of cover available to those willing to question the CIA's assessment.
(Besides, like David Duke and any number of Facebook commentators have said, Putin isn't a commie anymore, he's a Caucasian. They think we ought to be making common cause with him.)
And credit the Trump team--probably Kellyanne Conway--for getting their candidate to shut up and follow the teleprompter for the last week of the campaign. They hung on, they did what they had to do, and America's indifference toward Hillary Clinton did the rest.
I still like the Electoral College. Even if it wasn't enough of a firewall to save us from ourselves this time. Eventually, we get the government we deserve.
Look, Trump won. And he deserves a chance to succeed. He deserves a generous amount of leeway in assembling his team.
That doesn't mean I'm not anxious about his choices, or that they shouldn't be scrutinized and vetted. Or that everybody ought to shut up and give the guy a pass--he's engaged in a lot of dangerous rhetoric and bullying and he's violated the precepts of common decency at every turn. It's disingenuous and whiny for him and his supporters to expect people who have good reason to be nervous about his ascendancy to give the guy a honeymoon.
Because like Barry Goldwater said (and the libertarian anarchist Karl Hess wrote), "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue."
It's on the incoming president to earn the trust and respect of the majority of Americans who didn't vote for him and don't approve of him. He's got to show us he's up to the task of uniting a country he helped rive. He's got to show us he can safely navigate the murky waters of foreign policy, to govern fairly and above all lead selflessly.
All he's shown us so far is that he can win a reality show.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 12/13/2016