Winner-Take-All Politics Feeds Militarization

by Steven Hill

Throughout the many months leading up to war, most Americans remainedunconvinced that war was the right course, particularly without aUnited Nations endorsement. Yet Congress seemingly did not reflect thenation's mood. There were few voices of congressional opposition, evenamong Democratic Party leaders, despite polls showing that Democraticvoters were opposed to war by nearly two to one.

The reasons for this are linked to the most fundamental aspects of ourwinner-take-all elections. Under the sway of pollsters, consultants,and strategists, Democratic leaders typically bend over backwards notto appear weak on defense. They have made the calculation that thevoters who always vote for them will continue to do so, no matter whattheir stands on Iraq or Middle East policy, because those voters arenot about to vote for Republicans. So these liberal and progressivevoters mostly can be ignored.

Instead, Democrats target their positions in such a way as to attractmore conservative swing voters and independents, those undecidedvoters that determine winners in close races. Polls show this grouphas been evenly split over the question of war.

This is a calculated gambit by the Democratic Party leadership. Someof the Democratic House members would like to be more outspokenagainst the war, but they don't dare buck their leadership. Andwithout a third party in the Congress like a Green Party that isunequivocally against the war, most debate and dialogue came to astandstill long ago.

Consequently, neither Congress nor the president was pressured toreveal how much the Iraqi invasion would cost, even though commonsense said it would be fed by cutting other needed programs, includingthe chances for national health care, prescription drug benefits, andeven adequate funding for homeland security.

But this is nothing new. Winner-take-all calculations always haveproduced bloated military budgets full of pork barrel waste andbipartisan brinkmanship. The story of the October 1999 militaryappropriations illustrates some of the worst dynamics resulting fromour winner-take-all system.

In the spring of 1998, the conventional wisdom in Washington was thatthe military budget would remain steady at about $270 billion per yearthrough 2002, as called for in the 1997 balanced budget agreement. Butthen came the impeachment attack in the summer. By the fall of 1998,key Republican hawks in Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff decidedthat a president facing impeachment charges was ripe to be shaken downfor more military spending. They presented Clinton with their demands,and to save his presidency Clinton took steps to placate this powerfulmilitary constituency.

Clinton pledged a $1.1 billion increase for "military readiness," butin the inevitable horse trading needed to close the deal, Congresstransformed the increase into a $9 billion grab bag of pet porkprojects. GOP Sen. John McCain described it as "the worst pork inrecent memory." The pork included billions more for Star Wars, F-15fighters, helicopters, and more awarded to the home areas of SpeakerNewt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and House MinorityLeader Dick Gephardt. Successive rounds of one-upmanship continuedinto 1999, pushing the price tag beyond what the Pentagon even hadrequested.

Careful analysis reveals how winner-take-all incentives drove thispolicy debacle. First came the impeachment attack--driven byRepublicans in the House selected by their leadership because theyrepresented heavily partisan districts where re-election was assured.Second, the partisan impeachment attack created an opening for themilitary and congressional hawks to shake down a weakened president.Once the pigskin was put into play, successive rounds of bipartisanbrinkmanship upped the ante--and the price tag--creating a pork barrelfeeding frenzy.

Third, just like now with the Iraqi war, Clinton and the Democratsbelieved that, as the 2000 election year approached, theirpro-military positioning helped them with the more conservative swingvoters and insulated them from the charge of being "soft on defense."The real losers were the American taxpayer and those desiring apeacetime economy. The military budget passed in October 1999 was thelargest increase since the Reagan era, even though it already was morethan twice that of the combined military budgets of every conceivableadversary.

Even before September 11, our winner-take-all system offered powerfulincentives for pork barrel gluttony, political positioning, courtingof swing voters, and partisan pit bull attacks that have ensured thatthe militarization of the federal budget has rolled along asbipartisan policy.

Steven Hill is senior analyst for the Center for Voting and Democracy(www.fairvote.org) and author of Fixing Elections: The Failure ofAmerica's Winner Take All Politics (Routledge Press,www.FixingElections.com).

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