This election was Al Gore’s to lose. The Vice President was blessed with unprecedented economic prosperity, the absence of any foreign policy crises and a boss with historically high job approval ratings for a second term U.S. President. While Gore received more votes than President Clinton did in either 1992 or 1996 and won the popular vote by over 300,000 votes, the election turned out to be the closest in American history, with the country evenly divided down the middle.
Vice President Gore’s failure to achieve a significant majority of the electorate is already being interpreted, by some, as a rejection of the Third Way philosophy and agenda, most closely associated with the New Democrat movement in the United States. Many on the American left argue that Gore did not aggressively embrace a genuinely ‘progressive’ message of reform and was too willing to adopt the centrist line on issues like the environment, free trade and the balanced budget.
Yet it is premature to argue that this election represents a defeat for the New Democratic message. For one, Gore ran a campaign largely targeted at traditional Democratic constituencies rather than one aimed at independent or ‘swing’ voters. In an attempt to distinguish himself from Clinton, he ran ‘as his own man’, embracing a populist message which emphasized taking on the pharmaceutical, oil and tobacco companies and environmental polluters, and ‘fighting for working families’.
Crucially, Gore failed to make the current economic prosperity a central election issue. He shied away from linking the economic boom to the Clinton Administration’s policies of the past eight years. As a result, George Bush was able to make the argument that government plays an insignificant role in the success of the economy. The Vice President also lacked a larger thematic framework for his campaign, resulting in a platform that could be portrayed by the opposition as a list of incremental spending programs.
In addition, on too many critical issues Gore did not emphasize the New Democrat message of reform, preferring instead to emphasize the protection and shoring up of existing programs. This approach succeeded in mobilizing the base of core constituencies (Gore won a higher percentage of the union, African American and liberal vote than Clinton did in 1992 or 1996), but failed to win a significant percentage of swing voters, particularly those in the suburbs. Had the Vice President emphasized more of the New Democratic themes and ideas, he would have gained a broader base of support.
Second, on a rhetorical level, Bush moved to the middle and presented himself as a ‘different kind of Republican’. His campaign message was a mixture of reform (education and health care) and conservatism (tax cuts and gun control). But unlike Clinton in 1992, who challenged his party’s traditional positions on such issues as welfare reform, fiscal discipline, trade and crime, Bush provided superficial changes to existing conservative ideas without fundamentally altering the substance. Crucially, however, these changes were enough to separate him from the fiercely partisan and conservative Congressional Republicans and win over some independent voters. Last, it is important to remember that this was more than a Presidential election. While Republicans retained control of Congress, Democrats picked up seats in both the US Senate and House. More importantly, most of the gains were accrued by New Democratic candidates. The New Democratic Coalition in the Senate is likely to add at least six members to its growing ranks, swelling the total to nineteen or twenty. Most of the newly elected Democratic House members are likewise New Democrats. It is clear that whoever finally sits in the White House will have to work with both sides and govern from the center. Arguably, this is exactly what the electorate voted for, implying that what they are looking for is a continuation of Clinton Administration policy, hardly a rejection of the New Democrat philosophy.
This election does not represent a defeat for the Third Way, but serves as a warning to New Labour and provides several lessons. First, governing on a Third Way platform is necessary, but not sufficient. New Labour must reinforce the connection in the electorate’s mind between economic prosperity and the policies that produced it. Second, and more important in the long run, Third Way thinkers must vigorously pursue the next generation of policy innovations. They must be willing to address emerging controversial issues, such as education and modernization of the welfare state, and challenge existing constituent orthodoxies within the party. Simply resting on the success of the past allows opponents in the other party to appropriate the mantle of reform and define the agenda. Jenny Bates is international economist at the Progressive Policy Institute, Washington DC. Steven J Nider is the director of foreign and security studies at the PPI