CODA: Volume XVII, No 4, WINTER 2000/01

If Not Perfect, at Least Excellent
Karl E. Meyer

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Cynics assert that Americans are allergic to history, a subject so useless that the word itself is almost an epithet (as in, "You're history!"). Advertisers and television producers seemingly are persuaded of this, because of 107 weekly series offered this season on six networks, only one was set in the past: Fox's "That 70's Show," the ancient epoch in question being the 1970s. How interesting therefore that for weeks on end Americans witnessed on news programs an election melodrama in which the term "historic" became an overworked cliché. For 22 consecutive days, beginning November 6, the New York Times greeted its readers with a banner headline splashed across six columns-a record, according to the paper's editors, and a novel experience surely for younger subscribers. Yet in this celebration of history it struck some of us that too little was said about the origins of the Electoral College, about federalism, or about a notable American historian, C. Vann Woodward.

As certain as yeast rises, every four years a good many Americans are surprised to learn they are not voting for a president but for electors to a nebulous college. Surprise turned to shock last November when it became evident that George W. Bush, the likely electoral winner, trailed Al Gore in the popular vote. Here was a chance to say something useful about the ineffable college beyond deploring its existence. True enough, as various pundits remarked, the Framers of the Constitution did not believe in direct presidential elections and to that extent, the Framers were undemocratic. But this glosses over the more interesting point, that the alternative to the Electoral College in 1787 was not a direct popular vote but letting Congress choose the president, the course favored by key delegations at the Philadelphia convention.

Imagine the potential for mischief had that course been taken, the backdoor haggling, the winks and collusion over jobs and legislation, with victory going (as the authors of The Federalist warned) to a politician "with talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity." What the Framers struck upon was a republican means of choosing a chief executive who would be neither the tool nor the master of the legislative branch. The resulting formula (according to The Federalist) was "if not perfect, at least excellent." The president would have moral and political authority independent of Congress, rooted in a national election, using an electoral system that encouraged rivals to seek support in smaller, less populous states as well as bigger states. And the president's power was carefully stipulated, requiring his collaboration with Congress. Since no model existed for the system the Framers created, it was an inspired innovation, with the added merit of actually working for more than two centuries. (See Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding, edited by Charles R. Kesler.)

Of America's example to others, perhaps none is so relevant as federalism, especially for multiethnic countries. One cannot yet say whether the new president of Yugoslavia, Vojislav Kostunica, will realize popular hopes for a democratic rebirth. Still, it is encouraging that he is a constitutional lawyer who translated the Federalist papers of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay into Serbo-Croatian. The genius of the American system is in its unequal representation of different interests: every state, big or small, elects two senators, and all governments fall within the purview of a nonelected judiciary that significantly overepresents an older generation. It is federalism, and not democracy, that constitutes America's distinctive political contribution. The resort to pinstriped lawyers and courts -the butt of so much ridicule during the election dispute-seems far preferable to resort to braided colonels and the barracks.

With the great exception of 1860, when the system broke down, federalism has enabled Americans to settle fiercely contested elections without resort to force. That was so in 1876, when New York's Democratic governor, Samuel Tilden, won the popular vote but fell short of an unchallenged electoral majority. Tilden and his Republican opponent, Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes, both claimed victory in three Southern states, one of them, it so happens, being Florida. In due course, the crisis was addressed by a bipartisan commission meeting in secret at Wormsley House, a hotel in Washington, whose members awarded the presidency to Hayes.

The 1877 deadlock was recalled in recent op-ed essays and in broadcast commentary that underscored the consensual wisdom-that the compromise resulted in the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, thereby ending the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. Yet except for a comment on television by the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, I did not hear or read a single reference to a classic account of that election, Woodward's Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (1951). After sifting through scores of forgotten archives, Woodward found that what happened at Wormsley went far beyond the question of troops, which had already been decided. Southern Democrats signed on to an overall deal that also involved railroad routes and Northern investments, a bargain that foreshadowed the subsequent tactical alliance in Congress between conservative Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans. If the positive fruit was economic development, the 1877 compromise also helped sire that malignant pair, Jim Crow and Judge Lynch.

Woodward's book was recognized as a feat of historical detection, and was a precursor to his major future work, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913. His example, and his personal influence as a teacher at Johns Hopkins and then at Yale, energized two generations of American historians. In an extended essay, Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History (1984), he offered a quizzical self-assessment, confessing that he was a presentist, a moralist, an ironist, a one-time activist, and a chronicler with a weakness for history-with-a-purpose, adding, "That poses the question of whether the present deponent testifies for the defense or the prosecution. The answer, I am afraid, will have to be left to the reader." What a pity that Woodward, who died in 1999, was unable to comment on the latest turn in Southern politics that pitted a Texas governor against a vice president from Tennessee, both well-born scions of political dynasties, with victory hinging on a judicial review of Florida's Votamatic ballots.

In any case, we will all have memories of Election Year 2000, which gave us two presidents-elect and one serving president, reminiscent of Gibbon's Year of the Three Emperors. But we needed no Praetorian Guard to determine the winner.

 -Karl E. Meyer

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