Manufactured Consent.

• Author: SLEEPER, JIM

How to win back our civic faith after the non-election

POLITICAL AEONS AGO--A WEEK BEFORE January's inaugural rites worked their magic on President-Select George W. Bush--the political philosopher Michael Sandel took to the op-ed page of The New York Times to bolster both the legitimacy of electoral democracy and the legitimate anger of Democrats who remain unpersuaded of the election's integrity and outcome. Sandel assured senators that they could "question Mr. Bush's mandate to implement an ideologically conservative agenda" without having to "dispute his legitimacy as President" or "undermine respect for the institution" itself.

The reassurances were superfluous, not only because the Ted Kennedys and Chuck Schumers knew how to feign combat without them, but because it's too late to forestall a general ebbing of respect for the presidency, the Congress, and of course, the Supreme Court, which has shaken "confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law," as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent. Beltway players and those who would advise them may be smart to hold their cams to fight another day. But how much legitimacy can be salvaged that way? What might it take to restore the credibility our institutions have lost?

Ever since Al Gore made his consummate player's concession on December 13, we have watched professors, politicians, and pundits huff and puff to keep credible the notion that our democracy is more than a shell game. We have watched the inauguration give the new emperor a new suit of clothes, even as politics-by-Internet roused a few thousand demonstrators to wistful protestations of a lost civic love. Only hours after Gore's concession, a rare, forlorn-looking young Republican told a CNN studio audience, "I voted for Bush, but I didn't want him to win this way." There was a brief silence on the set, as if everyone already knew it was Time to Put This Behind Us and Move On, and that the poor fellow had spoken out of turn.

Speaking out of turn, too, apparently, was Pam Iorio, the Democratic elections supervisor of Florida's Hillsborough County; she cheerfully told a reporter, the day the Supreme Court stayed the last official recount, that her canvassing board had kept right on separating "under-vote" ballots that afternoon, the better to tally them expeditiously should the count resume. Inspired by Iorio to a fantasy of civil disobedience, I wondered in a Los Angeles Times column how the court or the Florida Legislature could withstand the spectacle of sheriffs' deputies carting American citizens away from ballots they'd kept counting, in defiance of authority but in affirmation of the principle that democracy should not be palmed off to lawyers, let alone statisticians.

No sooner had I praised her for implying this than Iorio, reportedly contemplating a run for mayor of Tampa, felt moved to "clarify" her views: "There is a feeling that if only hand recounts had been allowed to continue, we would know the truth," she told a reporter the next day. "But the truth is very elusive in this race. And I think what we'll find is that the truth remains elusive." Apparently I, too, had spoken out of turn by preferring elections to epistemology.

Peace By Any Means

"There are no tanks in the streets!" exulted the pundits. But the reason had changed subtly, from public trust in the system's legitimacy to public resignation to the truth that a pivot of civic faith...