Should Power Be Shared?

The election was a tie, some say, so let both parties rule

[YES] No one knows who won the election, but I can tell you what the next Cabinet should look like.

If George W. Bush is the winner, there is no doubt that his Secretary of State should be Bill Clinton, his U.N. Representative Joe Lieberman, his Secretary of Defense former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, and his Secretary of the Interior, unquestionably, Al Gore.

If Al Gore wins, his Secretary of State must be General Colin Powell and his Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Bush foreign-policy adviser Condoleezza Rice would make a fine Gore U.N. Representative, and you don't even have to ask who should be Mr. Gore's Secretary of Education--George W. Bush.

I'm serious--sort of. When I was the Times correspondent in Jerusalem in the mid-1980s, I covered Israel's first non-wartime national unity government, which came about after Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir tied in their election. They actually took turns ruling over four years. I never thought I would see that in America. But we can't afford four years of malignant gridlock, in which the parties are so at odds that the government can't produce any coherent initiatives, at home or abroad.

A national unity government would avoid that. Such a government is deeper than mere bipartisanship. It reflects an electorate so divided that neither party has a mandate for its agenda, so the nation must be ruled from the center.

--THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Foreign Affairs columnist The New York Times

[NO] Certainly, after this super-close and disputed election, the new President must reach out to the opposing party. He might name a member or two to his Cabinet--though we doubt that Bill Clinton would agree to serve a Republican. He should approach the rival party's congressional leaders in a spirit of bipartisanship, and help turn down the volume of partisan disputes. But in our system, a true coalition or national unity government is neither feasible nor desirable.

Why? It comes down to the fact that there's only one President. In a parliamentary system like Israel's, Cabinet members are also members of the national legislature. They have an independent power base, and they answer to the voters separately from their role in an administration. But Cabinet members in our presidential system have no such base. They answer to the President, and ultimately there is no dividing his authority. As Harry Truman said, "The buck stops here."

Also, it is important for one party to take clear responsibility for administering the government so that voters can render a clear verdict on it in the next presidential election.

We've had close elections before, and some of them have given us strong Presidents. In 2001, the new President deserves his own chance to govern.

--C. BOYDEN GRAY former White House Counsel to President Bush, and MARK GEAR, former Communications Director for President Clinton