Tuesday night, election gods willing, we’ll get the results of the day’s votes in Virginia’s races. Here are my personal rules of conduct pertaining to those results:
- Gloating is acceptable, but only for a few days, and the less the better.
- A margin of less than 10 points is neither a “mandate” nor a “landslide.”
- The expiry of the gloating period coincides with polite, respectful treatment towards the winners of the opposite party as is befitting their office. Were Jerry Kilgore to win the governor’s seat, I would call him “Governor Kilgore” once sworn in, not “Governor Killmore,” “Jerry Boy,” or “Spanky the Banana Boy.”
- Given a non-landslide margin, the winning candidate did not do everything right; the a losing candidate did not do everything wrong. Their campaigns must not be described in such terms.
I may add more rules to this as I mull them over. The Virginia political blogosphere will be a happier place this week if others consider behaving similarly.
What if an election is really close, but one candidate blew a 22 point lead in 2 short months?
Nice post and admirable sentiments, Waldo. Because a governor cannot succeed himself, we have an incentive after the election to limit the partisanship and try to help the new governor get it right and succeed.
Whether it’s Governor Kaine or Governor Kilgore, I know that as a state employee I will work as hard as I can to positively influence his decisions and implement them.
I always use the following Gloat rule regarding bumper stickers:
1. Keep your bumper sticker on for a week if your guy wins, then take it off in prep for the next election and not act so as to gloat
2. Keep your bumper sticker on for six weeks if your guy loses, to keep the faith.
This has always worked for me!
How do you get the damned things off without scratching the paint?
Nice post and admirable sentiments, Waldo. Because a governor cannot succeed himself, we have an incentive after the election to limit the partisanship and try to help the new governor get it right and succeed.
Amen. So if you see me veering from my sentiments, do me a favor and call me on it. :)
I agree, with one exception: I think the polite, respectful treatment of the victors should commence immediately upon concession of the losing candidate.
If Kaine wins, he’ll be Governor-elect Kaine to me for the next couple of months. If Kilgore wins, I would hope he’d be accorded the same respect, immediately.
Otherwise, I’m signing on to the pledge, and encouraging my fellow bloggers on the right to do so as well.
I think the polite, respectful treatment of the victors should commence immediately upon concession of the losing candidate.
If you can pull that off, you’re a better man than I. :) I guarantee I’ll need at least a few hours to be bitter. But, as I wrote, the less the better!
I should point out that Election Day does not spell the end to reasonable criticisms and concerns.
If a candidate has done something that may be illegal, for example, there’s no reason to absolve him come Tuesday. I’m thinking of Bob McDonnell here, but the same is surely true of Tim Kaine and Jerry Kilgore for their mailings, each of which are likely to be subject to investigations by the Richmond AG. Just because Tim Kaine wins the governorship doesn’t make him immune from criticism for legal violations.
I also agree, but your objection with “mandate” is an exception.
Mandate: To make mandatory, as by law; decree or require.
While I had no intention of using the word “mandate”, nowhere have I ever read a definition that says that mandate means overwhelming victory, only legal command (I agree with your use of landslide though).
Otherwise, the rest of the pledge seems very fair. I will hold to the rest of it.
While I had no intention of using the word “mandate”, nowhere have I ever read a definition that says that mandate means overwhelming victory, only legal command
It does — it’s the term most often tossed around after an executive wins. The question is always whether they have a mandate for X, whatever the major plank on their platform was. In 2000, it was widely agreed that Bush didn’t have a mandate for his agenda, because he lost the popular vote. This colored his first term. In 2004, the White House pushed hard to claim that they had a mandate, having won a slim majority. The fact was — as is now clear to everybody in retrospect — that he didn’t have a mandate for his agenda. That has been the major theme, in terms of electoral analysis, of the Bush presidency.
Ref 1
Ref 2
Messrs. Jaquith and Dotson,
For my part, I believe both candidates deserve the respect and common decency of being referred to by their proper names at all times, even during the campaign. They are, after all (whether one disagrees with their campaign tactics or their political agendas), men who have put their personal credibility on the line in seeking public office–to serve the people of Virginia. That is admirable, how ever much one might dislike the person. Especially since both of you have been candidates for public office in this state before, I would have thought you would each appreciate the sacrifice involved–even for Senator Potts.
CR UVa,
You’ll find that, etymologically, the verbal sense of “mandate” to which you refer is novel, compared to the earlier nounal sense. For example, the 1912 edition of Webster’s Unabridged has no verbal sense of “mandate” at all.
The nounal sense encompasses both the legal directive, as pertains to a ministerial act, as you describe and the sense of a “commission”–an authority to do a thing or hold an office. (For example, the Mandate of Heaven was the indispensible blessing from Heaven for the Chinese emperors, without which overthrow of the incumbent dynasty was justified.) In particular, the OED describes the nounal mandate as an instruction of the king empowering a court to hear a suit with a citation to Blount dated 1656. Likewise, a mandate from the sovereign directs a college to elect a fellow, cited to Moryson in 1617.
By analogy, then, the victor in an election sits in his office by mandate of the people. Mr. Jaquith here stretches this analogy a bit far to say that any victor, who has one, lacks a mandate–but the stretch is now common in political jargon, if not by authority.
Clearly, the winner of the popular vote in an election has a mandate to lead — it’s the “has a mandate to do X” — that’s so abused. Should Lt. Governor Kaine win, my temptation would surely be to say “this is a mandate for a fiscally-sound government.” But we don’t know what’s why he won. Perhaps he won for his rhetorical skills, perhaps for his hair, perhaps for his accent. It’s only with an overwhelming victory that it starts to make sense to attribute that victory to a mandate for X.
Reply to #4.
Josh,
Start at a corner and pull the edge at a 45 degree angle. Use WD-40 to loosen the adhesive. It will not hurt your paint.
OK, if you “lawyerly” guys are through arguing over the meaning of the word “mandate”, I’ll agree with Waldo’s proposition.
Very good idea Waldo, and I urge all to abide by it.
Now, has anybody come up with the what the meaning of the word “is” is?