Eleven years ago today, Al Gore, for one important moment, was the most powerful man in our republic. The day before, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, halted the partial recount of presidential ballots in Florida that Gore had requested. But that did not mean the 2000 presidential election was over. George W. Bush could not declare victory until Gore conceded defeat.
This is our protocol in every presidential election, whether the results are clear on election night or weeks later. Our democratic political system works only when the losers give their consent to be governed by the winners. The first signal that this consent is granted comes with the losing candidate’s concession. At this moment, following a hard-fought election where passions have run high, the concession begins the process of reuniting an intensely divided country. Yet this vital service to the nation provided by losing presidential candidates is seldom appreciated.
It may seem unthinkable that Gore would not have conceded, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, yet he had supporters who urged him to push on and further challenge the legitimacy of the results. He had, after all, won the national popular vote.
In many countries, losing candidates do not peacefully accept defeat, and their obstinacy leads to political chaos, riots and sometimes civil war. Gore understood the risks to America from a prolonged dispute over an unresolved election.
Our democratic political system works only when the losers give their consent to be governed by the winners.
So, on Dec. 13, 2000, Gore choose to begin a process of healing. He did not merely concede, he gave a remarkably upbeat and friendly concession speech and quoted an earlier losing candidate, Stephen Douglas, who pledged to Abraham Lincoln upon losing the 1860 presidential election, “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.”
Most presidential elections are close, with roughly half having been won with 51 percent or less of the popular vote. This even division in our partisan alignment means supporters of either party have a reasonable expectation of victory, so defeat can come as a shock. Despite this, from our first losing presidential candidate, Thomas Jefferson in 1796 (George Washington won the first two presidential elections unopposed), to our most recent, John McCain, America has been blessed with men who have set aside crushing personal disappointment and embraced their responsibility to help maintain national unity.
In a society that worships winners, unsuccessful presidential candidates are considered losers, no matter how successful they were before and after the election. As John W. Davis, the Democratic nominee in 1924 and a brilliant constitutional lawyer, put it after his losing candidacy was vilified, “I believe I have been a fair success in life except as a candidate for president.”
It is often the losing candidate who is prophetic, while time proves that it was the winning candidate who was stuck in the past.
Winning the presidency does not guarantee the winner will leave a great mark upon history; the office has certainly had its share of non-entities. Many losing candidates, though, helped bring into being political dynamics that still define our politics. Men like Henry Clay, William Jennings Bryan, Thomas Dewey, Barry Goldwater and George McGovern have created, transformed and realigned our political parties. Losing campaigns typically are the first to break barriers and expand participation. These include the first Catholic to be nominated for president, as well as the first woman and the first Jew to be named as vice presidential nominees.
Whether breaking barriers or introducing new policies, it is often the losing candidate who is prophetic, while time proves that it was the winning candidate who was stuck in the past. Andrew Jackson is an American icon, yet it was his nemesis Clay who more clearly understood that America’s future was as an industrial power, not a bucolic republic of yeoman farmers. The Democrat Bryan was considered a radical, yet the reforms he advocated — creating the Federal Reserve, enacting pure food and drug laws, granting women the right to vote and enacting a federal income tax — all became law within years of his candidacies. Adlai Stevenson first raised the idea of a nuclear test ban during his 1956 campaign, while Goldwater’s 1964 campaign, which analysts at the time thought had “discredited conservatism,” famously laid the groundwork for Ronald Reagan to be elected 16 years later.
Despite their belief that voters made the wrong choice, our losing presidential candidates have been almost unfailingly gracious, and suffered the wounds of defeat with good humor. Sometimes that humor is self-effacing, as when Goldwater lamented that America “is a great country where anybody can grow up to become president — except me.” And sometimes the humor is pointed, as when Adlai Stevenson was told his erudite campaigns against Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 had educated the country and he replied, “But a lot of people flunked the course!”
Whether the election on Nov. 6, 2012, is a landslide or a nail-biter, and whether the victor is President Obama or his Republican opponent, the loser will have the same power that Gore wielded in 2000 and will be confronted with the same choice every losing candidate has had to make in the wake of defeat: bring America together or widen our divisions. Let’s hope that he or she will serve the national interest and recognize that while he lost an election, history may yet judge his political legacy a success. As Al Gore said in his concession speech in 2000, “defeat might serve as well as victory to shape the soul and let the glory out.”
Scott Farris is the author of “Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race But Changed the Nation.”