Micah Tillman: The Impossible Dream of Choice and Mandate

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Micah Tillman

I dream of a day when the statement, "Either a Republican or Democrat will be elected President" is no longer a certainty. Viable independent, third-, and fourth-party candidates are the heroes of this hope. I want to walk into the voting booth feeling like I have a real choice.

I imagine that nothing would sound a democracy's death-knell like the widespread belief that everything's already decided. Given the ubiquity of the question, "Does my vote even count?" however, one wonders whether our democracy isn't already dead. Perhaps some of us are in the "Bargaining" stage of grief, then, but we have begun to dream. I dream of real indecision, of having a choice of candidates rather than an either-or. I want a teeming marketplace, not shoe-ins.

Watching the presidential "debates" of late, however, I've had the feeling that most of the candidates are wasting our time. We all know they have no chance of winning. Perhaps it's a step in the right direction to have eight or ten people on stage at once, but when the polls read, "25, 15, 14, 3, 2, 4, 0.1, . . ." - when everyone knows what you mean by "first-, second-, and third-tier" candidates - it feels like they're mocking the dream rather than fulfilling it. Eventually the Democratic and Republican fields will be whittled down to one each, and the pretense of plurality will be gone.

Whatever I think of their specific political opinions, the Bernie Sanders, Joe Liebermans, Jim Jeffords, and Michael Bloombergs of the world give me some kind of hope. The Sam Waterstons do as well. I brighten at the thought that the newly-official run of Republican Fred Thompson might bring notoriety-by-association to (his fellow "Law and Order" actor) Waterston's Unity08.

But in a world where non-Demoblican candidates are either irrelevant or "spoilers," what hope is there really? What we need is someone with the power of a superstar, someone whose name-recognition and charisma will make up for not having the backing of a political machine. We need a real leader, not one who waits to get elected.

I want to have a choice beyond the two customary options, and that requires that I be able to believe that my vote for any one of the candidates will not be an automatic throw-away. I want to wake up on a November Tuesday and read polls that say, "33, 33, 33," or "25, 25, 25, 25." I want it to matter that I touched the screen.

And I want my candidate to enter office the following January with a mandate for change. I want to have the will of the people on our side. I want prompt action and sweeping reforms.

After the '04 elections I remember walking past a car whose bumper-sticker announced: "51% is not a mandate." And if that's true, what I want is my candidate to win by a wide margin. I want a decisive, landslide victory so she (or he) will be taken seriously when she (or he) arrives on Capitol Hill. I want it to be recognized that she (or he) is the voice of the people.

But I can't have both choice and mandate at the same time, can I? Statistical choice requires close poll numbers. Statistical mandates require large margins of victory. If you get one you can't have the other.

But I'm still in the Bargaining stage. There may be a way to have my cake and eat it too. I imagine a new voting system reflecting those in Europe. Let everyone run. Then take the top two and make them run again. A 33-33-33 pre-election situation might turn out 34-32-33 on election night. And in the ensuing runoff, candidate C might win over all of B's voters. We'd end up with a 65-34 mandate.

But the polls preceding the runoff would tell me that, and I would feel like a vote for candidate A would be a throw-away, and a vote for candidate B would be inconsequential. So perhaps we should just ban polling instead. That way no one will know who's winning and everyone will seem to have a chance.

But still, that wouldn't solve the problem. If I vote for the landslide victor, my vote is proportionately less significant (compared to the total number who also voted for the same candidate) than if I voted for the big loser. And if I voted for the big loser, I've essentially been told that my vote matters not at all.

It seems that our system cannot satisfy, no matter how we tweak it. The more my vote matters, the more likely my candidate will have no mandate and what I want for Washington will not get accomplished. I am tempted to move into the Depression stage.

The citizen who ends up casting a vote for the winning candidate may be comforted by the fact that she is part of a triumphant group. The largeness of her cohort may make her individual voice comparatively small, but when she speaks she speaks with a thousand voices, or however the saying goes. Her vote is the vote of the majority. Her vote is the winning vote, even if not the "decisive" one.

So do I move on to Acceptance, and say with the jaded, "Our democracy has many problems, but it's the best we can do"? Do I vote because not voting is an implicit endorsement of having other people decide my leaders for me? Do I, like Camus' Sisyphus, see my inherently meaningless ballot as a way of struggling against the absurd? Is it my means of pretending to choose my leaders so that I can avoid calling myself a slave?

Or does acceptance and rebellion go deeper than what I do or don't do in the voting booth? Don't I still have the choice to accept, or not, the "elected" leaders given me by the system? Isn't it my choice of attitude that Frankl and Camus tell me is mine no matter what else is out of my control?

nd isn't the true leader the one you follow because you choose to, even if you have to, but not because you have to? If statistical choice and mandate are mutually incompatible, I'd rather have choice. And I'd rather have the personal choice the existentialist philosophers speak of than the statistical choice the pollsters do.

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America. His articles on politics, philosophy, and religion have appeared on sites such as RelevantMagazine.com, BuzzFlash.com, and FreeLiberal.com. Links to his articles, as well as a list of upcoming titles, can be found at http://micahtillman.blogspot.com/.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

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