Deciphering the meaning of a national election after the fact is about as exact a science as predicting its outcome beforehand. Just ask the dozens of pundits who confidently foretold Republican gains in both the House and the Senate in this month’s congressional elections. Or ask Newt Gingrich. The Republican speaker, tempted by the prospect of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, bet a good deal of political capital on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But in the wake of an election in which the Democratic party held its own in the Senate and, remarkably, picked up five seats in the House, it was Gingrich, not Clinton, who felt compelled to resign. House Republicans-bitterly split among right-wing libertarians, social and religious conservatives, and more moderate factions-demanded the head of the man who had engineered the dramatic Republican takeover of the House in 1994. Many will call this reversal poetic justice-Gingrich was never one to weep over the fate of his political opponents. And to the extent that Gingrich’s penchant for demonizing "liberals," polarizing political discourse, and delegitimizing government have contributed to widespread cynicism about politics altogether, it is hard not to see his downfall as just punishment.

But the turmoil within the Republican party and the momentary shift in political momentum to the Democrats also reminds us of how mercurial the American electorate has become and how unreliable the conventional wisdom often is. The Republican party remains in control of both houses of Congress, and the popularity of so many ideologically moderate Republican governors as well as the GOP’s enormous advantage in fundraising leaves the Republicans in a commanding position nationally. Yes, the antagonism between Republicans pushing a traditional moral agenda and those content to preach the gospel of low taxes is serious. But any significant erosion in support for the so-called Reagan revolution will be better measured by the results of the 2000 presidential race. Until then, reports of the demise of the Republican party are greatly exaggerated.

Still, as Wilson Carey McWilliams reports in this issue (page 9), the election did bring genuine good news for Democrats after months of pummeling over the Clinton scandals. Appealing to their traditional constituencies with a carefully targeted grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign, the Democrats saw blacks, Hispanics, and union members turn up at the polls in near-record numbers. As a result, Democrats defeated better-funded incumbent Republican Senators Alfonse D’Amato in New York and Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina, took governorships in California, Georgia, and Alabama, and retained important Senate seats in California and Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, for example, 31 percent of those voting came from union households-only 12 percent of the nation’s workforce is unionized. Sixty-three percent of Wisconsin’s union voters pulled the lever for Russell Feingold, the Senate Democrat who championed campaign finance reform and refused to accept "soft" money. Even in the age of relentless polling and TV "attack" ads, shrewd political organizing can make a difference.

To what extent the election was a vote for or against Bill Clinton is hard to judge, but Republicans and Democrats alike read the results as a rebuke of the Starr investigation and the attempt to exploit the scandal for partisan purposes. Denied a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and facing a razor-thin majority in the House, the Republicans are now expected to move ``expeditiously" on impeachment hearings. Or so goes the conventional wisdom. Whether the new House Republican leadership will be able to finesse the impeachment process now set in motion remains to be seen.

Referenda in the states on physician-assisted suicide, gambling, and abortion also produced mixed results. Sensing the potential for abuse, Michigan voters defeated a proposal that would have legalized physician-assisted suicide, leaving Oregon the only place where so-called mercy killing is legal. Assisted suicide is an issue that will continue to be decided on a state-by-state basis. The educational and organizational efforts that proved so effective in Michigan, including those by the state’s Catholic bishops, need to be emulated.

Voters in California, endorsing an indeflectable national trend, approved an expansion of casino gambling. In little more than a decade the United States has gone from a nation where gambling was actively discouraged by law and public morality-and consequently confined to a single state-to the headlong embrace of virtually every kind of "gaming." In promoting their own state lotteries as a way to raise revenue without raising taxes, state governments bear a large responsibility for this. But gambling’s social costs-in ruined lives and broken families, vice, political corruption, and the subtle but real assault on our sense of work and responsibility-are becoming more apparent.

Finally, the 1998 election was another political setback for the prolife movement. Most disturbing, voters in Washington state overwhelmingly defeated a referendum that would have outlawed the most indefensible of third-trimester abortions. It is increasingly hard to imagine any effective restriction of abortion that could be enacted into law in the United States. Equally disturbing is the way many Democratic candidates crudely caricatured and exploited the prolife positions of their Republican opponents. Especially egregious were Charles Schumer’s cynical manipulation of the issue in New York and Senator Barbara Boxer’s outright distortion of her opponent’s views in California.

Among Republicans, the rise of the essentially prochoice gubernatorial wing of the party, most prominently represented by the Bush brothers and New York Governor George Pataki, signals a significant further consolidation of current abortion policy. A majority of Americans are clearly tired of the endless rancor surrounding abortion, and eager to depoliticize the issue. The effort to use the law to restrict abortion looks more and more like a dead end. In many respects, the prolife movement, especially those who resort to inflammatory rhetoric and tactics, are responsible for this ongoing political failure. Until the face of the prolife movement is softened and its language becomes less condemnatory and more persuasive, no significant change in the law or decrease in the the number of abortions is likely.

As Wilson Carey McWilliams reminds us, Americans continue to vote for divided government and remain deeply skeptical of any politics that might articulate some larger "vision" of how we should order our lives together as a people. Given good economic times and limited foreign entanglements, this lack of consensus may suffice for the time being. Governing from the "vital center" is a time-honored American tradition-as well as a cliché. But the spectacle of the Republicans scrambling to find "friendlier faces," and Clinton’s history of backing away from a fight whenever his polling so dictates, raises the question of whether either party can distinguish between governing from the middle and simple political expediency.