The word has gone forth from the Republican camp of George W. Bush: Al Gore is a sore loser.
The word has also gone forth from the Democratic camp of the vice president: Bush is unfairly trying to become president by opposing a vote recount in Florida that Gore believes will show he actually won.
This political spin not only has enveloped the American people like a Great Plains tornado, but it also has created a live classroom about our values as a people: about the right way to win or lose, about the limits of aggressive pursuit of self-interest, and about the power of victimization and revenge in our society.
All these values are being hotly debated as this contest plays out before our eyes. Better than any teacher could, it instructs in ways that will have lasting impact upon millions of learners, young and old. Yet the arguments of neither is convincing and clear-cut.
The Bush camp’s demand that Gore gracefully withdraw when the odds are against him contrasts sharply with our culture’s obsession with competitiveness and winning.
“Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser,” said famed Boston Celtics basketball coach Red Auberbach.
The late NFL coach Vince Lombardi is said to have preached: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Running a football team is the same as running a political party, he once asserted.
“The object is to beat the other guy,” he said. “Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.”
One reason America is having such a difficult time making up its mind about this election contest is its conflicting values of altruism and competitiveness. Bush himself is a strong advocate of making American schools among the world leaders in math and science.
Seizing the moment is a widely taught value and could be a major factor in Gore’s aggressive legal challenge to Bush. In a tabloid culture where politicians are frequently despised, one big chance may be all you get.
By going all out to win the presidency, Gore is risking being tagged as a sore loser, a label most politicians try to avoid–although some sore losers in our history have staged comebacks.
Examples of sore losers abound in all walks of life, especially in politics, sports and business. It means whining about a cause that already has been lost when a graceful concession is more in order.
Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov was universally called a sore loser when IBM’s Deep Blue computer drubbed him in 1997. He said the machine had “not proved anything” and was “not ready to win a big contest,” which it just had.
Conceding an election when there are allegations the other side has cheated puts the defeated candidate on a moral high ground. The GOP said Gore should stop whining like Kasparov and follow the leads of such election losers as Richard Nixon in 1960 and Gerald Ford in 1976.
Voter fraud was alleged in each case, yet both men stepped aside, saying they did not want to be sore losers and were putting the country over self. Such seemingly high-minded statesmanship, however, had a strong subtext of realism. Historian Robert Dallek said Nixon and Ford probably would have lost even if they had challenged the results.
Statesmanship is often seen as a lost, difficult-to-teach virtue in an America where competition is keener and meaner than ever. Ford practiced it well in his presidential and congressional life and certainly will go down in history as a president who healed the country after the Watergate scandal.
There are no firm rules on when to quit and step aside with grace, but in American politics that time usually arrives when all hope is lost. Yet creeping into our political system is a growing tendency of candidates to resort to legal tactics, especially in close races such as the 2000 presidential election, until the bitter end.
Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), who lost his re-election vote to a dead man, the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, won plaudits when he decided against contesting allegations of voting irregularities in a race that will put Carnahan’s wife in the Senate. He said it was not in the best interest of Missouri to use the law to the fullest to tie up the election.
Grace in politics is often a highly desirable quality, but it often implies concession, said Northwestern University political scientist Susan Herbst.
“And that is something that neither of these two guys is willing to do right now,” she said.
Michael Genovese, political science professor at Loyola Marymount College, said he never understood all the calls for high-minded concessions.
“We’re electing a president, not a priest,” he said.
Let no one doubt that the real ethic guiding America is that of using one’s powers and abilities to the utmost to achieve success–a lesson taught to children by parents all over the country. Televangelist Robert H. Schuller preaches a message of “possibility thinking” in which dreams can be realized by putting a positive mind to assiduous work.
“Turn your scars into stars,” he says.
In the political realm, this is even more relevant. If Gore or Bush were NFL coaches, would either shun an instant replay on a game-deciding play in which he thought the referee had made the wrong call?
Yet history has shown that sore losers sometimes win.
Nixon did. He railed against the press after losing the 1962 race for governor in California, saying they wouldn’t have him to kick around anymore. Nixon said he was glad he did it. He wrote that his outburst caused the press to be softer on him in subsequent years.
“He bounced back and won two presidential elections after that,” said Vincent DeSantis, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame. He talked at Republican dinners and banquets and collected on all those IOUs when he won in 1968.”
Andrew Jackson was probably the sorest of sore losers. And he wound up winning too. He lost the 1824 presidential contest to John Quincy Adams even though he had won a plurality of the popular vote. When the race was thrown into the House of Representatives, the candidate with the fewest electoral votes, Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky, provided his support and electoral votes to Adams, who later named Clay as his secretary of state.
Jackson and his supporters labeled this manipulation the “corrupt bargain.” In those days secretary of state was seen as a stepping stone to the presidency.
Forget grace and statesmanship. Old Hickory blasted “the rascals at Washington” for their villainy and said he was cheated out of the presidency, said a biographer, Robert Remini of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
From 1824 to 1828, Remini said, Jackson played the role of a victim.
“He said the people’s will had been thwarted,” Remini said. “He was very popular in the country and, to all his supporters, the so-called corrupt bargain seemed so blatant.”
Clay, famed for his statement “I had rather be right than president,” ironically pursued the office aggressively all his political life. In the one contest in 1840 he might have won, he was denied the Whig nomination by party insiders in favor of William Henry Harrison. When he discovered he had been pushed aside, Clay was furious, a sore loser of the worst sort, Remini said.
Historian Dallek said that when popular-vote winner Samuel Tilden lost the presidency in 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes, he might have profited if he had been more of a sore loser in fighting the dealmaking in the House of Representatives.
When Tilden’s supporters began to take to the streets to demonstrate against a winner they called “Rutherfraud,” Dallek said, the New York governor “calmed them down and urged them not to carry out such protests.”
“They took the election away from Tilden because he didn’t raise a big fuss,” Remini said.
Tilden might have made a good victim, but he had his one moment in politics. And now the question for both Gore and Bush is the same: Is this their one moment or do they have a future? Whoever wins certainly will take over a weakened presidency. But can the loser play the role of victim and exact revenge in four years?
Jackson certainly showed that revenge worked in the 19th Century, but the loser in this contest may find it harder in a television age where attention spans are short and politicians are distrusted.
Herbst of Northwestern said that the loser, whether Gore or Bush, will have much political repair work to do. Bush would remain as governor and try to stage another run. Gore no doubt would present himself as a candidate who won the popular vote and probably Florida, too, but Herbst said “that would be a very hard song to sing for four years.”
The truth is basic: America loves winning, grace and a fresh face.
