History will focus more on Congress' response to the historic presidential election than on the winner, predicts Michael Thomson, a Northern Kentucky University political scientist.

        The breathtakingly close 2000 election shows that voters are tired of partisan rancor, Dr. Thomson says. It's now up to the almost-evenly balanced Congress to foster cooperation between Democrats and Republicans.

        As a scholar, Dr. Thomson will ask, “How well did Congress handle the message?”

        He wouldn't be surprised to be teaching future classes on how the 107th Congress misread that message. The result may be a vigorous third-party movement that draws heavily from Democratic and Republican moderates.

        Dr. Thomson, an associate professor, was among Tristate scholars who discussed lessons to be learned from the election and brouhaha in the courts.

        The seemingly even split in the election meant something else to Jim North, a professor of church history at Cincinnati Bible College and Seminary. It hides a “bitterly divided nation” in which large majorities of hostile or competing groups vote for one party or another.

        For instance, Dr. North said, a large bloc of voters supported Gov. George W. Bush as most sympathetic to “traditional Christian values.”

        The trend began in 1976 and has bolstered the GOP despite some feelings of betrayal when Presidents Reagan and Bush failed to fulfill those voters' hopes.

        Linda Przybyszewski, an associate professor of American history at the University of Cincinnati, said she'll be teaching about the way that constitutional “relic,” the Electoral College, frustrated the popular will and vote.

        Her classes on intellectual, cultural and legal history also will discuss how the election underlined the faults of the “imperial presidency” where so much depends on the winner although “most of the population wasn't looking for a tremendous amount of change.”

        Neil Heighberger, a political scientist and dean of social sciences at Xavier University, said scholars would be discussing whether some voters suffered “technological disenfranchisement” by imperfect punch cards and other glitches.

        By 2012, Dr. Heighberger said, state voting standards probably will have replaced county choices and most will have adopted some high tech system that includes a hard copy that can be checked if tampering or malfunction is suspected.

        Finally, Dr. Heighberger said he might be lecturing on the U.S. Supreme Court's plunge “into the political thicket” and whether it emerged with any dignity.

        At the University of Cincinnati law school, Dean Joseph Tomain said his faculty would use the 2000 election to examine the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in American government, that court's ability to interpret the law and “how elastic that concept is,” and the intersection of law and politics.

        Dean Tomain said law professors also would be looking at the reputation of the court and whether “the court unwittingly opened a new area of equal protection.”

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Local voters just glad it's over
Lawmakers talk conciliation
Ohio could reap the spoils
Tristate Republicans could win appointments
Kentuckians see friend in Bush
Tristate scholars consider lessons, impact of election
Impact on Abortion
Impact on Education
Impact on Environment/energy
Impact on Health Care
Impact on Social Security
Bush electors in the Tristate