Editor’s Page

We devote this issue almost entirely to American politics, looking back to the disputed presidential election and forward to the administration of Bush II. The mix of articles is incomplete; we can’t cover everything at once. But the pieces add up; they make for some necessary self-reflection. The rest of the world, for the moment, is slighted.

There are four points that we begin to address here, and will continue to deal with. First, the most extraordinary fact about the election and the current political scene is that half the people are absent. The two parties have agreed among themselves to compete for 51 percent of 50 percent of the electorate. But the left should not accept that agreement, just as we should not make our peace with the more general decline in political participation and organizational membership. Who are these people who have withdrawn from, or declined to enter, or (as Ruth Rosen suggests) been excluded from the political arena? In the book section, Tom Edsall provides a useful, and sure to be disputed, account of the actual electorate. We also need to think about the potential electorate. n Second, an election that produced a statistical tie might be expected to lead to a centrist, assiduously bipartisan government. But I am fairly sure, and most of our writers agree, that Bush II will construct a centrist façade and serve as a front for a hard-right administration. His proposed tax cut is one of the purest pieces of class interest legisla...