You Won The Election -- Now What?

November 8, 2001 6:00 AM

You Won The Election -- Now What? It's clear that the daunting tasks facing this week's newly elected officials is little different than the fiction portrayed in the 1972 film, The Candidate. Robert Redford starred as an idealist running for U.S. Senate. He never worried much about his campaign promises, because he never thought he would actually win. So when he did, the candidate turned to his manager and asked the question the campaign left him completely unprepared to answer: "What do we do now?" Like Redford's character, the winners of Tuesday's election must now put their campaign promises into action. Was former House Speaker Tip O’Neill right when he said: It’s easier to run for office than to run the office?
posted by flip (4 comments total)

I live in Minnesota, and I voted for Jesse Ventura as Governor in 1998. I've been increasingly embarrassed by his performance ever since. Apparently he and his wife had a similar "oh shit, we won. what now?" moment that election night. The answer to that question was apparently "let's take care of me, first."

Minneapolis city elections this week resulted in a large turnover of incumbents, and I'm hopeful that fresh faces will bring some positive change. But how long will it take for them to learn the ropes and be effective?
posted by CosmicSlop at 6:47 AM on November 8, 2001

Yeah it's harder to be in office than run for office. That's why our elected officials are perpetually running for office and never really doing the business the voters sent them to do.
posted by owen at 7:42 AM on November 8, 2001

To their credit, the NYC mayoral candidates were more circumspect that usual because of the huge deficit facing us. They emphasized that the money simply wasn't going to be there to satisfy everybody, and that some desires (read: needs, as in lower class sizes, higher salaries for teachers, police and fire fighters, etc.) were going to go unmet. Bloomberg was more blunt about this than was Green, in my opinion, but they were both more realistic than we've come to expect in light of the longstanding political tradition of overpromising.
posted by verdezza at 8:32 AM on November 8, 2001

Jeez, flip, you're plagiarizing from Politicalwire! you have to scroll down a bit
posted by Rastafari at 9:42 AM on November 8, 2001