Friday, November 24, 2000 1:33 p.m. EST
Gore Fatigue
The vice president's supporters in the press begin to lose patience with his refusal to acknowledge that he lost the election. Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, writes, "I voted for Al Gore. I did so because I have known him since he was a congressman from Tennessee. I admire his intellect, his seriousness of purpose, his capacity for hard work and study, his political values, his experience and his knowledge. That being said, I now think that under current circumstances he would not be the right man for the presidency. If I could, I would withdraw my vote." In Cohen's view, the postelection struggle has so poisoned relations between the parties in Washington that the country is "in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush."
Andrea Peyser, a columnist for the New York Post, writes: "On Nov. 7, before our great American election system was revealed to be as easily corruptible as a White House intern, I cast my ballot for Al 'Will of the People' Gore. More than two weeks, scores of dubious lawsuits, hundreds of sleazy lawyers and thousands of dimpled chads later, I regret that decision. Now, I want to change my vote to Bush."
And the Tallahassee News, an online paper in Florida's capital, editorializes: "Although this newspaper endorsed Mr. Gore, it is clear that he and his backers are continuing to demagogue an issue long after the horse has left the barn. Now is the time to give up and to go home and to let Mr. Bush run the country for the next four years. Now is the time to stop the charade and the demagoguery and the constant filings in court."
The Miami Herald editorializes: "We recommended Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and continue to believe they would perform ably. But the candidate who prevails in Florida, and thus gains the White House, must have won it fairly and must be seen as having done so in a fair way by both sides." The Florida Supreme Court ruling granting a 5 p.m. Sunday deadline for a hand recount while opening the door to any standard for determining voter intent doesn't meet that test, the Herald says: "As Gov. George W. Bush forcefully noted yesterday, the Supreme Court has changed the rules after the election."
Not all Gore supporters are ready to abandon ship. The New Republic editorializes that there is "something grotesque about these armies of attorneys" that have descended upon Florida. But the magazine that yields to no one in its pro-Gore sycophancy won't say anything harsher about Gore and his lawyers than this: "It would be going too far to impute philosophical glory to David Boies and the other justification artists who have taken over the outcome of the election."
And Salon publishes yet another bizarre hit piece on Gore's opponents. One Bruce Shapiro attacks Bush and Gore for--we're not kidding--having had minor medical problems: "If a close election causes Bush to break out in a boil and Cheney to have a coronary, what will happen in a genuine crisis--in whatever equivalent the new century brings to the Cuban missile confrontation, for instance? What will President W. look like after a weekend at Camp David negotiating between Barak and Arafat?"
Shapiro also defends the Florida Supreme Court's pro-Gore Tuesday ruling on the grounds that it came "after a televised hearing longer and more considered than most U.S. Supreme Court sessions." Gee, if the duration of a televised proceeding is the test of justice, we suppose the O.J. Simpson trial is the gold standard.
Switch the Electors
Here's another nutty idea, albeit not a new one: Gregg Easterbrook, writing in the New Republic, urges the vice president to lobby Bush electors, urging them to switch their votes to Gore. Even Gore disavowed such a tactic in his Tuesday night statement. Slate's Timothy Noah, a Gore supporter, dismisses that disavowal as a mere tactical posture: "The possibility that Bush will goose the Republican-controlled Florida legislature into trying to unseat Gore electors, which James Baker has already hinted at, makes it imperative that Gore be consistent in his 'trust the voter' stance. And that, of course, means being very stern about Electoral College faithlessness."
About Those Pregnant Chads
Despite the claims of the Gore campaign, there's hardly a jurisdiction in the country that uniformly counts dimpled or pregnant chads as votes, The Washington Post reports. The Chicago Tribune reports that one Illinois case that Gore's lawyers made much of in their Florida Supreme Court briefs was mischaracterized by the Gore camp; rather than counting all dimpled or dented votes as votes, the judge in the case imposed more stringent tests. A Wall Street Journal editorial asks: "Does Mr. Gore truly want to become President on the basis of some cards that maybe, sort of, suggest what is delicately called 'voter intent'?" Based on Gore's behavior since the election, we'd have to surmise that the answer is yes--at least if the alternative is not becoming president.
Ahead This Weekend
The deadline for Florida counties to submit amended returns is 5 p.m. Sunday; Secretary of State Katherine Harris has said she'll open her office Sunday to accept them. If the new count still shows Bush winning, Gore has already declared he won't concede, since Miami-Dade County decided not to do it his way.
If Democrats in Broward and Palm Beach counties are able to manufacture enough votes to overcome Bush's lead, look for a 180-degree turn in the rhetoric of Gore's supporters in the campaign and the press. Suddenly we'll hear a lot of talk about the need for "closure" and "finality," about the importance of "respecting the process." Don't believe a word of it. |
