Editor’s Page

The people have spoken,” said James A. Baker the Third, after George Bush’s dubious Florida victory (of .009 percent) was certified (by his campaign co-chair there). Not mentioned: Al Gore’s 325,000 national plurality. Can one express more contempt of democratic citizenship? Well, yes. When Florida’s Supreme Court backed recounts, Congressman Tom Delay assailed it for violating “the trust of the people of Florida in an attempt to manipulate the results of a fair and free election.” Not mentioned: Florida’s uncounted votes. The raw pursuit of power by the Republicans compares only to their pursuit of Bill Clinton. Dissent magazine, a quarterly, cannot keep up with events. We try to reflect on them; so expect some serious scrutiny of America’s political state in our next issue. (Had the elections ended “normally” we would have run a small symposium in this issue.) Still, one can hazard a few comments. Facile “authorities” will soon tell us that “in the end the system worked.” We should pose hard questions instead—about the political culture, about how elections work, about the roles of money and the media in them, about the nonvoting half of the electorate. Do the elections represent convergence on the “center” or deep division within? “New Democratic” centrism dominated the last eight years. The left was troubled, rightly, by the Clinton-Gore welfare reform and a trade policy that was indistinguishable from the policies of Bush t...