John Podhoretz is right to say that "a McCain victory in the Electoral College with an Obama popular victory of 2 or 3 million votes at a minimum (somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 percent under this scenario) would provoke a national crisis." It would be a very, very bad situation for our country. Happily, it's unlikely. Nevertheless, the electoral college remains a ticking time bomb beneath the legitimacy of our democracy. Whatever the rationale for its construction, it now exists in stark contradiction to the most fundamental story America tells about itself. But it's very hard to disassemble, in part because the results of the 2000 election would make such a project look like a partisan enterprise. After this election, however, John McCain is likely to need a high-profile cause he can use to recapture his reputation as a statesman. I can think of few better than to join with Obama and call for an end to the electoral college. McCain can explain that in the final days of the election, he glimpsed the possibility of a non-democratic win, and could see what a divisive horror that would be for the country. He could argue that it's anachronistic, and a sad commentary on a political process that's supposed to be about the problems of people rather than states. Along with Obama, he could call for the requisite number of states to adopt the National Popular Vote strategy, which disarms the electoral college by having a coalition of states representing more than 270 electoral votes award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. It would fit McCain well, and be a boon for the country. And it would allow him to transform a campaign that has too often been divisive into a tool for preventing far more dangerous disunity down the road.
