Until the millennium, the watchword in U.S. politics may be uneasy equilibrium.
After all the turbulence, hairpin turns and unexpected reversals of the past six years, voters on Tuesday ratified a tenuous partition of power that denies either of the major parties the right to claim a clear majority of public support.
Instead, the parties emerged from this election closely balanced between offsetting strengths--geographically, demographically and especially institutionally.
"What we have now," said political scientist John C. Green of the University of Akron, "are two plurality parties that can from time to time put together an electoral or a legislative majority."
The election left a political landscape marked by emphatically mixed messages and splintered authority--including divided control of the White House and Congress and a skintight governing majority in the House.
Looking Ahead
While Republicans demonstrated real resilience in retaining Congress against a ferocious Democratic assault, Bob Dole made strikingly little progress in rebuilding the GOP presidential base from the low-ebb of George Bush's resounding 1992 rejection. Indeed, the combined average of Bush and Dole's popular vote--just 39.1%--was the lowest consecutive total for the GOP since the party's landslide defeats at the hands of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936.
"You can't think about this as just a one-time wart on the party," said Tony Fabrizio, Dole's campaign pollster. "It's not that Bob Dole is just the red-haired stepchild of the party; we're going to face these problems in the future."
But while Clinton continued to fill in the outlines of a new Democratic presidential majority--built on a solidifying hold on the Northeast, the Pacific West and portions of the upper Midwest--the party's inability to take back Congress underscored the death of the seemingly permanent Democratic legislative majority that had ruled Capitol Hill for decades.
Third-party politics also appears to have reached a kind of stasis with this election, after offering explosive possibilities in 1992. Tuesday's results demonstrated that Ross Perot faces a low ceiling on his support, but he shows no signs of stepping aside for other voices who might be able to expand the Reform Party's appeal.
Tenuous Grips
