choosing the party

Stanley Fish

April 8, 2007, 9:12 pm
Parties Matter

The political polling season is already upon us (a bit prematurely, but everything is ahead of itself these days), and polls taken in the past couple of weeks reveal a pattern that commentators are busy explaining. When the question asked is, which party do you trust to do a better job with the economy, the war, global warming, the environment, education, the deficit, immigration, reputation abroad, the administration of justice, the rebuilding of New Orleans?, the Democratic party wins — and in some categories by impressive margins. The same polls show that 60 to 70 percent of the American people believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, and there is no doubt that President Bush’s rating numbers are also headed in the wrong direction. Why then do Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama consistently lose to Rudy Giuliani and John McCain in head-to-head matchups? (The three Democrats do outpoll Mitt Romney, but who wouldn’t?)

The answer usually given is that it’s early. Two years out voters are reacting to personalities, or rather, to their perception of personalities. When things get more serious, and the candidates are put under the lens of relentless scrutiny and have to answer hard questions about hard issues, the ratings, we are told, will turn less on personality and more on policy, and the numbers will change.

Maybe so, but I suspect that in 18 months the personality profiles now given to us by the media will still be in place and remain the focus of political commentary. We’ll still have Giuliani, the stalwart 9/11 hero and crime-fighting mayor (a little tainted by Bernard Kerik and the messiest personal life this side of Britney Spears); John McCain, the stalwart Vietnam War hero and straight shooter (a little tainted by claims that Baghdad is a nice town for an afternoon stroll); Hillary Clinton, the smart, well-organized, effective senator (a little burdened by baggage she is unlikely ever to shed); Barack Obama, the charismatic, eloquent harbinger of a new day (a little suspect because the glittering facade seems unaccompanied by even one substantive idea); and John Edwards, the up-from-poverty trial lawyer and former senator with an inspiring wife (a little defensive when he is asked why a self-advertised candidate of the people has recently built himself a mansion.) When September 2008 rolls around, two of these characters – or perhaps a dark horse drawn from the current list of Bill Richardson, Christopher Dodd, Joe Biden, Al Gore, Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Tommy Thompson and Newt Gingrich – will be paraded before the citizenry, which will be asked (endlessly), “Whom would you rather have running the country, protecting our troops, educating our children, and throwing out the first ball on opening day?

It is the wrong question. The right question is “Whom would you rather have exercising the power of appointment?” That’s not a sexy question, but it gets to the heart of what electing a president means. It means that within a few weeks of his or her inauguration, different people will be administering and guiding the nation’s key institutions. In the past several elections there has been some attention paid to Supreme Court appointments and the difference that would supposedly be made by the elevation to the court of a liberal or conservative jurist. But Supreme Court vacancies are like papal elections – they don’t come around very often, and you can’t sit around waiting for them to occur. Meanwhile the day-to-day business of governing has to be done, and the people who will do it will be the people the president appoints.

From that fact follows a strategy I would recommend to the Democrats, who seem to believe that they will win in ’08 simply because the Bush presidency has imploded: Run against the other party – not against its candidate or the sitting president (although you should do a little bit of that too), but against what the other party usually does when it gets into office. What it does (based on the record of the past six years) is appoint cabinet members and ambassadors who are either jokes, incompetent cronies or malign subverters of the Constitution.

President Bush has had two attorn