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 hether we like it or not, whether it's fair or not,
whether it's the greatest system ever invented or not, the democratic
system of the United States requires disparate political groups
to come together in order to gain power. Interests must unite
to win.
 To some
degree, only by coming together and uniting can you share the
rewards of consolidated power. "United we stand, divided
we fall."
The Republicans learned this lesson well from the previous cycle. They got their fundamentalist wings more or less under control -- or at least out of the spotlight. Also, many religiously-oriented volunteers were burned by the lack of results of their political activism in the last cycle. Eschewing the corruption of politics in general, many have returned to saving souls instead of recruiting for politicians. Amen.
Pat Buchanan
did his part by riding off into the political wilderness to seek
supporters in non-battleground states. His strategy seemed to
be to try to get to 5% of the voters, to qualify for federal
matching funds, without too many of the rest of us noticing.
Ralph Nader, on the other hand -- constant crusader -- relished his role as spoiler for Al Gore.
The Democrats
didn't even seem to realize they had a problem with Nader dividing
workers and environmentalists. "Nader's Raiders" turned
into "Nader's Traitors" in some circles.
The world
of "green voting" can be confusing in the extreme.
A lot of people like to think of themselves as environmentalists,
but that doesn't mean they vote that way. Reasonable people can
disagree on solutions to complex environmental problems. Unfortunately,
too many still think it doesn't matter, or it doesn't matter
to them.
Political
expenditures by environmental groups aren't even big enough to
warrant their own lobbying category at tracking sites such at
"opensecrets.org." The vast majority of environmental
groups are nonprofit educational groups and cannot do politics
the same way that business groups do.
Environmentalist
cultures are rife with factions and divisions. Diversity is valued
over unity, and this is healthy, to some degree. But this could
be their political undoing in a system requiring unity to achieve
power.
Increased
communications diversity and basic individual empowerment have
spawned a plethora of groups divided according to personal preferences.
The experience of uniting behind a cause and working productively
with people of differing beliefs for the common good seems rare
indeed in today's world.
In the "voting commons," a sufficient number of individual environmentalists voted their ideals -- because in their heart of hearts, they know that Ralph is right about the corruption of the system. These voters feel they justifiably turned their back on the incremental if that progress that the two-party system offers. Nader voters voted their own views of perceived self-interest, directly contrary to the idea of uniting in order to gain power.
Some argue
that there is no such thing as green voting. You'd certainly
not discover much about it by surveying the national media coverage
this year.
The Project
for Excellence in Journalism, an initiative by journalists concerned
about the standards of the news media (www.journalism.org), has
analyzed media coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign. Their
most recent survey, from the last week of September to the third
week in October, found the coverage was overwhelmingly (57%)
about internal politics of campaigning.
Of the more
than 1,100 stories studied, they found 61 recurring themes. These
were grouped into 11 broad categories to identify the nature
of the coverage.
Just one in
three (29%) dealt with issues and 13% dealt with the candidates'
character and record. The four most popular themes were all related
to the politics of campaigning: the most popular (22%) was assessments
of the debates, both before and after those events. Second was
coverage of battleground states (15%). Next came campaign strategies
(12%), followed by momentum and media (8%). Only then did they
find themes relating to policy or character.
Foreign policy,
driven by the crisis in the Middle East, and Bush's character
(especially as it related to his record in Texas) each accounted
for 7% of stories. The next three themes were also character
or policy related, comprising 6% each of stories: Gore's character,
health care and elderly, and various domestic issues. These were
followed by the themes of taxes and energy, both of which made
up 5% of stories.
Energy could
be an environmental story, but it's seldom covered that way.
A study earlier
in the cycle concluded, "The news media are offering the
public a fine education in campaign tactics but telling them
little about matters that actually will affect them as citizens.
[T]he reporting is overwhelmingly focused on the internal tactics
and strategies of the campaigns."
Sara Fritz,
Washington bureau chief of the St. Petersburg Times, summed it
up during a project-sponsored panel discussion at the National
Press Club: "They end up writing stories for each other
and for the candidates."
The dominant
culture of political coverage has become a mutant-cross between
sports play-by-play and beauty pageant commentary.
But no one forces us to tune-in. We just can't resist a spectacle -- especially one with real life power and drama. We just shouldn't base our voting decisions on it. 
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