Political Pool

LAST NIGHT, a group of avid politicos sat hunched over a television set in a Smokey room, awaiting the results of eight crucial races for the United States Senate seats. Some smiled, some cheered. Others merely sat and stared into their beer glasses as the commentators tabulated the votes on ballot measures and district attorney races.

The unique electricity of election night was in the air, but this was neither the ordinary setting for such a gathering nor a gathering typical of election night festivities. No one in that room cared very much about who were the Democrats and who the Republicans, who the conservatives, and who the liberals.

No one sitting in front of that wide-screen television knew exactly who he was supporting, I noticed, unless he looked down at a yellow sheet in his hands titled "1982 Senate Pool."

That room was two floors below mine, and the politicos were an overzealous bunch of gamesters posing, for an evening, as concerned citizens, observing the fate of the United States Senate. Their thoughts were directed not toward the Middle East or Nuclear War. Nor were they much concerned with the pressing issue of budget deficits, but on more immediate matters: the two dollars each participant had invested in the pool, and the prize that awaited the winner.

The organizers of the contest had picked the eight Senate races the New York Times had chosen as most hotly contested. There was Moffet and Weicker in Connecticut, Laudenberg and Fenwick in New Jersey, Wilson and Hatch in Utah. And for the clincher, a tie breaker: "Pick the number of the net gain of Democratic seats in the House of Representatives." The winner of all of this, of course, was to win the pot, as well as all the money collected from entrants.

FOR A MOMENT, all of this seemed wrong. Something must be wrong with politics in the 1980s, I thought, if you have to make it into a game to infuse it with excitement. For it used to be that election night was just about the most exciting night of the year. There were two times in an election year that everyone in America plopped down in front of their television sets and waited for something to happen: the first Tuesday evening in November, and the second Sunday in January.

But this year, it seems, in the midst of a seemingly irresolvable strike in the National Football League, we are left with only one such night. If my sporting friends downstairs couldn't have their Staubachs or their Cowboys or Bengals, then they were certainly going to make the most of their Durenbergers and Danforths and Davises. It seems only equitable that in a year in which sports have been mangled by politics, politics ought to suffer a bit from the intrusion of sports.

It used to be that you would support a candidate because you agreed with something or other that he thought. But that seems a bit extreme for this gambling brand of '80s politics. My friends the politicos chose candidates because they could relate to them as they could to, say, football teams. They were winners or they were underdogs or they were perrenial favorites being challenged by upstart newcomers. Politics wasn't discussed quite as much as "coolness" or "upsets."

Maybe this was just an isolated incident. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe all of us who were raised on TV and professional sports are going to see elections as we see sporting events or--more to the point--game shows. Maybe by '88 or '92 we'll be watching "Senatorial Jackpot" or "Congressional Feud." Maybe if we can win a few bucks, the apathetic generations of the '70s and '80s will pay a little attention to who is making the decisions about life and death and war and taxes in this country.

The elections of 1982 are over. The votes have been cast, and most of the results are in. We must turn to the more serious matters of who is in charge now, and where America will go from here. I'm not really sure how the party balance shifted. I wasn't listening much last night. But if I'd only chosen Ted Kennedy '54, and given the Democrats a couple more seats...