Another view, from Slate:
The Earthling: Mad as Hell
By Robert Wright
Posted Friday, Nov. 24, 2000, at 11:37 a.m. PT
When this presidential election is over, let the
record show the following:
1) Republicans were the first party to resort to
mob behavior--the storming of the Miami-Dade
vote-counting room that Wall Street Journal
columnist Paul Gigot today affectionately called a
"bourgeois riot."
2) This bullying was quite possibly decisive. The
"riot" itself--coupled with word that 1,000
Cuban-American Republicans were on their way
to join the ranks--seems to have intimidated
Miami-Dade's eternally dithering canvassing board
into canceling its manual vote recount, converting
Gore's chances of winning the election from solid
to slim.
You might think that conservatives would be
slightly abashed about winning a presidential
election through physical intimidation. After all,
for two weeks they had been paying hourly tribute
to the "rule of law." But no--as ever, conservative
pundits seem deaf to all irony involving
themselves. In the very column in which Gigot
celebrates the Miami "riot," he writes, "GOP
lawyers also pointed out that the law--recall that
quaint concept--required that any recount include
all ballots." Quaint indeed.
There has been much comment about the
asymmetrical animus of the last few weeks. While
liberals watch the drama with rapt attention,
conservatives watch with barely contained
outrage. Commentators such as Gigot have
described this contrast with quiet pride. They
seem to take it as final proof that justice is on
George W. Bush's side. (And they wield it, too,
as a kind of threat: A Gore presidency would
mean an ungovernable nation!)
But I have another explanation for the anger gap
between conservatives and liberals: Conservatives
are an angrier group than liberals. It's
conservatives, after all, who have Rush
Limbaugh. Liberals sometimes mourn the absence
of a left-wing Limbaugh, as if this void signified a
spiritual energy crisis. I personally think it's a sign
of mental health.
Similarly, some liberals were no doubt upset by a
New York Times poll shortly after the election
which showed that, while virtually all Bush voters
considered their man the legitimate winner, a
much smaller majority of Gore voters was sure
Gore had won. Again, though, I take this as a
healthy sign--a sign not of some lack of
Democratic commitment but of Democratic
open-mindedness.
Yes, yes, I'm aware of how many Democrats are
as incapable as many Republicans of seeing an
opponent's point of view, of putting themselves in
the shoes of The Other. The extremes of any
ideology will always be a bit off-kilter. But the
fact is that it is Republicans, not Democrats, who
depend on a sizeable bloc of voters whose
defining characteristic is heated intolerance of
people different from themselves (e.g.,
homosexuals).
The post-election conservative outrage isn't
confined to the grass roots. Throughout the
take-no-prisoners chess game of the past two
weeks, the Bush and Gore camps have evinced
clearly different sensibilities. Bush, Baker, et al.,
exuding indignation if not contempt, have viewed
the game as an attempted theft. Gore, Daley, et
al., have viewed it as, well, as a take-no-prisoners
chess game: Each team tries to use the law to its
advantage, and whoever wins gets to be
president.
Incidentally, that's what the rule of law is. The rule
of law doesn't mean that truth and justice always
prevail. It doesn't presuppose that the people who
administer and interpret the law will be devoid of
bias, partisan or otherwise. The "rule of law" just
means that when disputes between people arise,
there is an algorithm for settling them--an
algorithm that, no matter how imperfect in
practice, is at least peaceful. At bottom, the rule
of law just means that disagreements won't be
settled by violence or intimidation, as this election
now arguably has been. (The Miami-Dade
uprising began, according to Gigot, when
"street-smart New York Rep. John Sweeney, a
visiting GOP monitor, told an aide to `Shut it
down,' and semi-spontaneous combustion took
over." Then, according to the New York Times,
the protest "turned violent" as "several people
were trampled, punched or kicked when
protesters tried to rush the doors.")
Gigot seems sure that this use of intimidation was
justified. He sees it as evidence that Gore's
shameless post-election ploys "finally convinced
enough Republicans to fight like Democrats."
Um, could we please have an example of
Democrats fighting in this manner? The closest
Gigot comes is this reference: "True, [the
Miami-Dade revolt] wasn't exactly Chicago 1968,
but these are Republicans."
It's interesting that Gigot has to reach back 32
years for an example, and that his example is a
terrible one (the most disruptive Chicago
protestors weren't Democrats--they were trying to
disrupt a Democratic convention). But it's not
surprising. Though Democrats do a lot of
peaceful protesting, examples of them behaving
like the Republicans did this week in Miami-Dade
County are pretty rare. (Seattle, 1999? Nope. The
demonstrators who got physical are no doubt
Nader voters, assuming they voted at all--and
good riddance to them.)
In the days after this year's election, I was in
Europe, where I took a certain amount of kidding
about America's electoral mess. Foreigners, of
course, are especially amused that the world's
famously litigious superpower has put its fate in
the hands of lawyers. But I didn't feel at all
embarrassed; what foreigners were seeing on
television was the strength of our system: The rule
of law, naturally, involves lawyers. But footage of
Miami's "bourgeois riot" is something I truly am
ashamed for the world to see.
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