Word: partisans
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Union was surreal and intense, like nothing I ever experienced in the White House. The Lewinsky scandal had exploded about a week before, and to me that speech was a moment that crystallized so much about Clinton's presidency. Clinton had to try to govern through media clamor and partisan pressures that were almost unbearable, yet at the same time, he was able to seize the policy high ground...
...then what? Instead of concentrating on the President-elect's appointments and agenda, we would see weeks of argument that he should not, in fact, be the new President. We would see the new Congress, whose first job is to certify or reject these votes, embroiled in furious partisan debate. We're talking about the de-legitimizing of the new President before he ever puts his hand on the Bible on Jan. 20. The spectacle of the most powerful country on earth enmeshed in a crisis-cum-farce would do us little good in world opinion--or in the financial...
...Bush or Gore, the man who wins the White House will face a leadership dilemma. New Presidents who have won less than 50% of the vote--John Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968, Bill Clinton in 1992--have started out under pressure to conciliate rather than undertake bold partisan ambitions. Bush, as a President tainted by his lack of a popular-vote margin, could be even more inhibited...
After last Tuesday's wake-up call, we cannot accept politicians' assurances that the current electoral system has managed for over a century, that 2000 was a fluke and that maybe we'll be lucky for another 100 years. Partisan rancor, the divided outcome and the disputed Florida are more than enough proof that the viability and legitimacy of the 21st century presidency require either constitutional or legislative reform...
That depends on which Lott shows up to lead. Will it be the bitter Republican partisan who last May got into a shouting match with Tom Daschle on the Senate floor--the minority leader accusing Lott of turning the Senate into a "dictatorship," and Lott, waving his arms in anger, saying he refused to be "threatened and intimidated"? Or will it be the conciliator who bucked his party's hard-liners during the impeachment crisis and quietly collaborated with Democrats to shorten the Senate trial...