Al Gorleone
Nothing can stop Chicago Al
In Florida, Gore is prepared to count and sue for as long as it takes
Mark Steyn
National Post
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby put it best in Road to Bali:
He gets his shirts straight from Paris
And his socks from Argyll
Talks like a highbrow
But he plays Chicago style.
That's Al Gore off on the road to the White House: Standing behind the podium at the Vice-President's residence, he murmurs soothing niceties about "the will of the people" and "the rule of law." Good suit, white shirt, blue tie, bless his cotton socks. Lofty, sonorous, vaguely Constitutionesque phrases in complete sentences. Talks like a highbrow.
But he plays Chicago style -- like his campaign chairman's famous dad, Mayor Richard Daley, for whom the Chicago graveyards were always the most reliable constituency. Al and the boys are now playing Chicago style in the Democratic precincts of Florida, which are for the most part one big sun-kissed palm-dappled graveyard. So while Highbrow Al was in Washington solemnly calling on Governor Bush to help him "improve the tone" of this political stand-off, Chicago Al's goons were down south trashing the reputation of Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State, who'd had the temerity to insist on abiding by the election laws. Ms. Harris, the designated Ken Starr of Campaign 2000, is a "hack" and a "Soviet commissar," according to Gore spokesperson Chris Lehane, while, according to distinguished Harvard professor and former O.J. mouthpiece Alan Dershowitz, she's a "corrupt" "crook" who "laundered money." Surely not, Professor. If she was that good, she'd be on the Clinton-Gore team.
Meanwhile, after a co-ordinated offensive by another Dem lawyer, 40% of Florida's overseas ballots, mostly from the military, have been thrown out, mainly by Democratic officials in Democratic counties. It turns out the GI vote is Generally Invalid: If America's brave men and women in uniform are too gutless to spot who's obviously the best Commander-in-Chief, Chicago Al will just have to enforce a little discipline in the ranks. Of course, the Vice-President fully supports the boys and girls on the front line -- the front line in the Florida counting rooms, that is, where elite squads of Democratic canvassing boards are waging their chad blitzkrieg.
Let's hear it for Democratic State Representative Irving Slosberg, who was stopped by police and found to have a Palm Beach County "Votamatic" ballot-punching machine in his car. Earlier, Denise Cote, director of public affairs, had endeavoured to retrieve it, without success. "I asked Mr. Slosberg to return it to me," she said, "and he said no, he intended to use it." That's the spirit, Irv! And let's not forget Broward County, where the manual "recount" is proceeding amid a mountain of fallen chads on the floor. The chad is the little bit of paper next to the candidate's name that gets punched out when you put the ballot in the Votamatic. In other words, if you're just counting existing ballots, there shouldn't be any chads on the counting-room floor. But, whether by accident or design, the little fellers keep detaching themselves from the ballot, thereby creating more and more new votes for lucky Al. Initially, Broward County's canvassing board voted not to "recount," but Chicago Al prevailed on Judge Robert Lee, the recalcitrant Democrat who'd cast the deciding vote, to come to his senses. Likewise with another Dem stronghold, Dade County, which on Friday knuckled under and agreed to "recount." And now that the 60% of absentee ballots deemed acceptable have been tallied, Chicago Al has the advantage of knowing precisely how many hitherto undiscovered "votes" his operatives need to find.
And, if Katherine Harris refuses to be steamrollered by Chicago Al, the Dems are already looking down the road -- to the 538 members of the Electoral College who will formally vote for the President next month. These "electors" are almost all lowly party members being rewarded for their service with a tiny moment in the spotlight. If Bush wins Florida's 25 electors, he'll have 271 to Chicago Al's 267. If three Republicans were to switch their votes, Gore would win. Two of South Carolina's eight GOP electors say they've already been approached by the Democrats. On Thursday, Bob Beckel, a Democratic consultant, was reported by The Wall Street Journal to be "checking into the background of Republican electors, toward persuading a handful of them to vote for Mr. Gore." "I call mostly Democrats, but some Republicans, too," he says, "and ask, 'Who are these electors, and what do you know about them?' I just want to know..." Ah, an inquiring mind is a wonderful thing. "Opposition research," they call it, and everyone does it, but never before to the Electoral College. Still, who knows what might turn up? A bizarre sexual habit, some financial difficulties, the sort of thing that might be useful in a month's time ....
On Friday, Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State to Bill Clinton and now mob lawyer to Chicago Al, announced that, regardless of how the Florida Supreme Court ruled, if the final count was certified on Saturday and Bush declared the winner, the Vice-President would still not concede. Nothing, it seems, can stop Chicago Al -- not the count, not the recount, not the certification, the Electoral College, the inauguration, not Hillary doing her first exploratory "listening tour" of Iowa, not the 2004 New Hampshire primary ... Chicago Al is prepared to count and sue and sue and count and counter-sue and sewer-count for as long as it takes.
What can Dubya do? Well, he could concede. In National Review, John O'Sullivan argues that a Gore victory would be in the best interests of the Republican Party: Al would be a tainted President unable to get anything through Congress and destined to be blamed for the coming recession. I'm not so sure. The lesson of the Clinton Presidency is that, for Republicans, the other shoe never drops. Were Chicago Al to steal enough votes, in three months his cheerleaders in the media would be saying that though he came to the presidency in "difficult circumstances" -- i.e., losing the election -- he's made great efforts to unite the country, stymied only by "strident," "mean-spirited," "partisan" Republicans.
So, on balance, I'd rather Bush played hardball. That would require political nerve, but it would do the republic some service after what we've seen in the last few days. Say what you like about old Mayor Daley but he fixed his votes on election day and under cover of darkness. Chicago Al is fixing this one retrospectively and in the glare of the cameras -- and, as the thoroughly Clintonized Democratic Party should surely have taught us, getting away with it in broad daylight is more damaging to the rule of law than getting away with it in the shadows. This post-election period has been, according to the pious network anchors, a "civics lesson," but it would be more accurate to call it a masterclass in Chicago style. Two years ago, worldly Dems told us not to worry: The corruption was confined strictly to oral sex, and, sophisticated chaps that we are, we could all understand that, couldn't we? Now with hindsight it seems more like a dry run for a more ambitious project.
I find myself thinking these days not of American precedents but Commonwealth ones. A quarter-century ago, following the defeat of a money bill in the Senate, the Australian Governor-General, John Kerr, dismissed Gough Whitlam's Labour Government and invited Malcolm Fraser to become Prime Minister. When Kerr gave him the news, Whitlam supposedly said, "My God, I've got to call the Palace." Kerr told him: "You're too late. I already have."
What Whitlam meant was that, if he'd made it to the phone first, he could have got the Queen to sack Kerr before Kerr sacked him. Maybe. But Malcolm Fraser's victory in the subsequent election suggests how that would have turned out: A citizenry governed by laws tends to prefer hard Constitutional muscle -- Kerr getting rid of Whitlam -- to naked political muscle -- Whitlam getting rid of Kerr. That's the choice on offer here: a President narrowly elected according to the Constitutional pedantry of the Electoral College and a conventional reading of Florida law, or one who barges his way into the job through political thuggery.
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