Burning issue: Can Boren keep the fire stoked?

The Oklahoma Editorial
Burning issue:
Can Boren keep the fire stoked?

CALL it Electoral College Syndrome (ECS). It's a condition affecting many Americans just before and just after a presidential election.

They suffer from the indignity of having a president chosen by a plurality of voters rather than a majority — something that happened twice with Bill Clinton — or having a president lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College vote — something that happened with George W. Bush.

The politicians who gathered in Norman on Monday may experience a condition related to ECS. They sounded all the right notes in appealing for national unity. This happens when the country is thought to be too divided — as it has been during the Clinton and Bush presidencies.

Then they go their separate ways and hope someone pays attention to them after "normalcy” returns.

With Electoral College Syndrome, calls for elimination or reform of the Electoral College system are oft-heard. These symptoms seem to disappear about the time a new president is sworn in, only to resurface almost four years later.

Calls for national unity this year are backed by a genuine desire for more civility. Coming as it did between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, the Norman gathering didn't seem to get much notice.

If the effort ends here — as the effort to change the Electoral College systems ends as quickly as it begins — little will have been accomplished. If University of Oklahoma President David Boren and his co-enthusiasts for civility are determined to keep this fire burning, they must keep putting fuel on the flames.

Already the impression has been made that the effort was bipartisan in name only, that this was a gathering of moderate and liberals and exclusive of conservatives.

People say they want unity just as they say they don't like negative campaign ads. That negative ads keep coming is a testament to their effectiveness rather than their popularity.

People say they want to elect a president directly rather than officially voting only for a college of electors, who actually choose the president. Yet a system that's served this country for so long is stubbornly resistant to change, especially when demand for change wanes so quickly.

Variants of Electoral College Syndrome are easy to spot and include the recent clamor for burying power lines. This happens each time major storms leave people in the dark for an extended time. The further we get from the storm, though, the quieter the clamor becomes.

Boren's challenge is to sustain interest in his mission of restoring civility to American public life. "Hear our plea! Bring us together!” was Boren's appeal.

Perhaps a place to start is a rollback of bipartisan campaign finance "reform” that's led to the development of groups that are among the most divisive in history.