2000 AND TWO

The most obvious aspect of that challenge is that for the first time since the nineteenth century the United States is governed by a President who, as a candidate, was rejected at the polls. "The Longest Night: Polemics and Perspectives on Election 2000" (California), a just published collection of essays by some two dozen distinguished scholars of law and history, includes several contributions from foreign observers. One of them, Shlomo Avineri, of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, notes sharply, "Certainly there is no other democratic society in which an executive president can be elected if he receives fewer popular votes than his major contender." But, as he points out, this possibility persists for good historical reasons, notably the patchwork way in which modern democratic norms were gradually and informally grafted onto the Constitution's eighteenth-century contrivances. In Avineri's words, "The democratization of the American system happened incrementally, not through revolution or rupture; new wine was poured into old vessels." He adds, "This nonviolent incrementalism is clearly praiseworthy; yet in Florida in 2000 it exacted its price."
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