Don't worry, this won't take long.
The polls had begun to close. Across America, television sets flickered on, fingers were crossed, and beer bets were laid. For the first time in living memory, the Presidential election was a three-way tossup, and it was all down to one eccentric man’s ambition.
Before February, the race had looked to be a conventional one, with incumbent George Bush facing a rough economy and looking vulnerable to any of a crowded field of Democratic candidates. That was before Ross Perot, a Texan high-tech billionaire, had rocketed to national fame with the announcement of his independent campaign on Larry King Live in February. Unlike previous cycles’ also-rans and flashes in the pan, however, Perot set himself apart with a unique mix of left- and right-wing ideas that were broadly popular with the public but not on the radar in Washington. These included his advocacy for a balanced federal budget, his touting of direct democracy and e-voting, and his embrace of the conspiracy theory that the US government had abandoned POWs in Vietnam. By far the most significant of his pet issues was protectionism: Democratic and Republican leaders were both committed to the upcoming North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the millions of Americans who suspected it would cost the country its remaining manufacturing jobs had seen their views unrepresented by the major-party candidates. He was a populist without adjectives, a pure throw-the-bums-out candidate.
Perot’s voters might have been stereotyped as grumpy old white kooks, but there were a lot of grumpy old white kooks in America, and besides, the campaign’s appeal broadened as November drew closer. Voters have always liked an outsider, and Democratic and Republican attacks on Perot’s inexperience managed to turn the authoritarian billionaire into a hero of the little guy.
That type of populism, however, had a ceiling, and Perot had struggled to break it. Despite maintaining a plurality in the polls, narrowly leading Bush and his Democratic challenger Bill Clinton, two-thirds of Americans still had trouble trusting the Texan. Acid-tongued comedian George Carlin spoke, for once, for most of the country: “Just what a nation of idiots needs,” he sneered on his latest tour, “a short, loud idiot.”
Political junkies of all stripes – Young Republicans in their ill-fitting blazers, think tank operatives in their polyester shirts, wingnuts in their threadbare bathrobes – were on the edge of their seats all night. By the time the results were called at five a.m. EST, many must have thought they were hallucinating. The Perot campaign had fulfilled its promise, pulling in over a third of the popular vote and ringing in a new era by surpassing both established political parties. But the Texan's supporters were spread so widely that despite topping the polls in toto, he had only won a plurality in two states: Alaska and Maine. Every state in between had been carried by either the Democrats or the Republicans, many by razor-thin pluralities of hundreds or thousands of voters. Bill Clinton had received an electoral college majority, despite being almost five percent behind Perot in the popular vote. To millions of Americans - including many who had voted for Clinton or Bush - the whole thing was just too absurd for words.
Clinton’s acceptance speech acknowledged that most of the country had not voted for him, but he pledged to be a President for all, to “work with Mr. Perot” and to “reform the political system, to reduce the influence of special interests and give more influence back to the kind of people that are in this crowd tonight.” Bush’s concession statement didn’t even mention the issue. Privately, both felt that America had dodged a bullet. A controversy of this magnitude, however, couldn’t be brushed under the rug, even by the orator of Hope. By the day after the election, the grassroots movement to abolish the Electoral College had begun.
Previous attempts to reform the archaic process, a relic of the Founding Fathers’ Enlightenment-era suspicion of “mob rule,” had been stymied by the opposition of legislators from small or thinly populated states. They typically argued that doing away with the College would cause political attention to shift exclusively to large urban areas. As November faded to December and the presidential transition began, opponents of the proposed Twenty-Eighth Amendment – such as former Delaware governor Pete du Pont, soon to be honorary chairman of the pro-EC Americans for a Balanced Constitution (ABC) – continued to make the small-state case against a popular vote, but their argument was considerably flimsier now that Perot's greatest successes had come in Alaska, Maine, and Montana. A quickly commissioned series of opinion polls showed clear majorities of voters in all three states supporting the abolition of the Electoral College and agreeing with the notion that the 1992 result had been undemocratic. It wasn't only urban voters whose voice didn't count under the current system – it was the entire nation.
So when Ross Perot emerged from seclusion in December to lead the charge on constitutional reform, Clinton began to realize that he hadn’t escaped election season just yet. He might have to take the rest of his term, it seemed, on someone else’s terms.
The polls had begun to close. Across America, television sets flickered on, fingers were crossed, and beer bets were laid. For the first time in living memory, the Presidential election was a three-way tossup, and it was all down to one eccentric man’s ambition.
Before February, the race had looked to be a conventional one, with incumbent George Bush facing a rough economy and looking vulnerable to any of a crowded field of Democratic candidates. That was before Ross Perot, a Texan high-tech billionaire, had rocketed to national fame with the announcement of his independent campaign on Larry King Live in February. Unlike previous cycles’ also-rans and flashes in the pan, however, Perot set himself apart with a unique mix of left- and right-wing ideas that were broadly popular with the public but not on the radar in Washington. These included his advocacy for a balanced federal budget, his touting of direct democracy and e-voting, and his embrace of the conspiracy theory that the US government had abandoned POWs in Vietnam. By far the most significant of his pet issues was protectionism: Democratic and Republican leaders were both committed to the upcoming North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the millions of Americans who suspected it would cost the country its remaining manufacturing jobs had seen their views unrepresented by the major-party candidates. He was a populist without adjectives, a pure throw-the-bums-out candidate.
Perot’s voters might have been stereotyped as grumpy old white kooks, but there were a lot of grumpy old white kooks in America, and besides, the campaign’s appeal broadened as November drew closer. Voters have always liked an outsider, and Democratic and Republican attacks on Perot’s inexperience managed to turn the authoritarian billionaire into a hero of the little guy.
That type of populism, however, had a ceiling, and Perot had struggled to break it. Despite maintaining a plurality in the polls, narrowly leading Bush and his Democratic challenger Bill Clinton, two-thirds of Americans still had trouble trusting the Texan. Acid-tongued comedian George Carlin spoke, for once, for most of the country: “Just what a nation of idiots needs,” he sneered on his latest tour, “a short, loud idiot.”
Political junkies of all stripes – Young Republicans in their ill-fitting blazers, think tank operatives in their polyester shirts, wingnuts in their threadbare bathrobes – were on the edge of their seats all night. By the time the results were called at five a.m. EST, many must have thought they were hallucinating. The Perot campaign had fulfilled its promise, pulling in over a third of the popular vote and ringing in a new era by surpassing both established political parties. But the Texan's supporters were spread so widely that despite topping the polls in toto, he had only won a plurality in two states: Alaska and Maine. Every state in between had been carried by either the Democrats or the Republicans, many by razor-thin pluralities of hundreds or thousands of voters. Bill Clinton had received an electoral college majority, despite being almost five percent behind Perot in the popular vote. To millions of Americans - including many who had voted for Clinton or Bush - the whole thing was just too absurd for words.
Clinton’s acceptance speech acknowledged that most of the country had not voted for him, but he pledged to be a President for all, to “work with Mr. Perot” and to “reform the political system, to reduce the influence of special interests and give more influence back to the kind of people that are in this crowd tonight.” Bush’s concession statement didn’t even mention the issue. Privately, both felt that America had dodged a bullet. A controversy of this magnitude, however, couldn’t be brushed under the rug, even by the orator of Hope. By the day after the election, the grassroots movement to abolish the Electoral College had begun.
Previous attempts to reform the archaic process, a relic of the Founding Fathers’ Enlightenment-era suspicion of “mob rule,” had been stymied by the opposition of legislators from small or thinly populated states. They typically argued that doing away with the College would cause political attention to shift exclusively to large urban areas. As November faded to December and the presidential transition began, opponents of the proposed Twenty-Eighth Amendment – such as former Delaware governor Pete du Pont, soon to be honorary chairman of the pro-EC Americans for a Balanced Constitution (ABC) – continued to make the small-state case against a popular vote, but their argument was considerably flimsier now that Perot's greatest successes had come in Alaska, Maine, and Montana. A quickly commissioned series of opinion polls showed clear majorities of voters in all three states supporting the abolition of the Electoral College and agreeing with the notion that the 1992 result had been undemocratic. It wasn't only urban voters whose voice didn't count under the current system – it was the entire nation.
So when Ross Perot emerged from seclusion in December to lead the charge on constitutional reform, Clinton began to realize that he hadn’t escaped election season just yet. He might have to take the rest of his term, it seemed, on someone else’s terms.