Can Gore Ever Win?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NY Times
nytimes.com
While it all may sound like just partisan
noise coming out of Florida these
days, there's actually a big difference between
how Al Gore and George W. Bush have been
behaving.
Mr. Gore has behaved as if this were the
closest election in our modern history, and
therefore every vote should be counted, recounted and hand counted,
and should George W. Bush win Mr. Gore would have no problem
declaring him the legitimate president. But one has to ask Mr. Bush: Is
there any condition under which you would now accept Al Gore as the
legitimate winner?
I don't think so. Mr. Bush has behaved as if this were not a close election
at all, as if he had won by a landslide, and therefore the notion that every
last vote be hand-counted to determine the winner is only an effort to
steal the election from him — the already obvious winner. And therefore,
in Mr. Bush's view, under no condition can Al Gore ever be deemed the
legitimate next president. By opposing any hand counts with a
scorched-earth media blitz, Mr. Bush has left himself no room to be a
gracious loser. He has left no scenario in which to say: "I lost fairly. Now
let's all rally behind Al Gore."
Mr. Bush needs to remember that he lost the popular vote in the country
and he was ahead in Florida by only 300 votes out of six million before
the absentees were counted. The fact is, this election was too close to
call, and therefore conducting a hand count is both legal and legitimate,
especially when it's being done under the same rules that apply in Texas.
Mr. Gore made a fair proposal to hand-count every ballot in Florida, but
Mr. Bush rejected that. Now that a more limited hand count is going
forward, the Bush team is making wild, unsubstantiated allegations that
the hand counters are engaged in fraud. No doubt there will be disputes,
and mistakes, but there is no proof of systematic fraud. Where Mr. Gore
is vulnerable is on which hand counts to count. Texas law allows for
"dimpled" but unperforated ballots to be counted, and some Florida
counties are doing that. But Mr. Gore needs to think hard about whether
he wants to win on dimples.
Either way, though, the Bush team will smear him. It is out to create an
impression in the public's mind that if Mr. Gore wins by a hand count
then by definition he stole the election.
That is wrong, and so was Mr. Bush's spokeswoman, Karen Hughes,
when she basically accused Mr. Gore of conspiring to have the absentee
ballots of U.S. military personnel not counted, implying that this made him
unfit to be commander in chief. Democrats and Republicans both know
that many absentee ballots are always thrown out. Absentee balloting
historically has been rife with fraud, so there are a lot of technical
requirements — including that a ballot be postmarked by Election Day.
And in this case the decision to follow the strict Florida absentee balloting
rules, as opposed to the looser Federal ones, was set by the Republican
secretary of state, Katherine Harris. I believe absentee ballots from
soldiers should also be hand-counted to divine whether the absence of a
postmark can be excused. But to allege fraud in this regard is utterly
reckless.
Our armed forces, the courts, the federal government — these are the
nonpartisan institutions we need to hold our country together once there
is a partisan outcome to this election. It was out of line for Ms. Hughes to
imply that our armed forces are pro- Republican and that the Democrats
were trying to prevent them from voting. Ms. Hughes might as well have
called Mr. Gore a traitor. It would be like Mr. Gore accusing Mr. Bush
of bigoted motives because he resisted recounts in counties with heavy
black and Jewish populations. You just don't talk that way about the man
who might be our next president.
Mr. Bush needs to remember that there is a difference between what you
can say about your opponent during the campaign and what you can say
about him after the election is over, with the outcome too close to call,
and with each side legitimately seeking to ensure that every vote is
properly tabulated. Smearing your opponent during the campaign is
politics as usual; smearing him during the recount after a vote too close to
call is a threat to our institutions and the next presidency. |
