Recent polls suggest that George W. Bush and John Kerry are effectively tied in the race for the White House. With students and faculty becoming more vocal as election day nears, the Wilson School sponsored "Elections 2004: What's At Stake?" — a panel discussion featuring politics professor Larry Bartels, politics lecturer Mickey Edwards and economics professor Paul Krugman in Dodds Auditorium on Wednesday.
Bartels, first to take the podium, said there is little distinction between Bush and Kerry's political positions.
There are "very elegant formal theories of electoral competition in which the main implication is that parties have to converge in the center in order to have any chance getting elected and therefore there isn't much at stake in any given election," Bartels said.
"I'm here to tell you that it's an interesting theory, but it's false," he said.
He then noted that there is a strong correlation between income growth and presidential election outcomes, adding that "average growth [has been] a good deal lower" under Republican administrations.
Edwards offered a more centrist position.
Kerry and Bush, he said, are "both American centrists" who will take relatively similar approaches to international and domestic issues.
He added that those who have dismissed either Bush or Kerry on the basis of partisanship "violated the cardinal rule of politics."
"You have to care deeply [about presidential politics] but not let your own emotions get in the way" when choosing which candidate to support, Edwards explained.
Krugman then focused on what he called the Bush administration's attempts to "muddy the waters" by misinterpreting statistics and quotations with their own interest in mind.
Krugman said there were three possible outcomes of the election: "Kerry wins, Bush wins or there is a suspect Bush win," as he claimed was the case in the 2000 election.
"I would prefer a clean [Bush] win to a case where it seems the election was stolen," Krugman said.
After the planned presentations, the floor was opened for questions. However, several students described the ensuing debate as lackluster.
"The level of discussion was disappointingly low," Jim Kapsis GS said. "The audience seemed more liberal than the Democratic caucus from the questions they asked."
Other students were more interested in the figures speaking than in the political opinions expressed by the panel.
Jessica Blankshain '06 said she went to the panel because she is in Edwards' Wilson School task force.
"I just came to hear what he had to say and I was really impressed by his centrism considering his political background," she said.
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