"It's important that he - Bush - go ahead now to form an administration," said Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, a Republican. "At least for the evening, and hopefully for good, we have a certified winner."
.
But with more legal arguments pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and Florida judges, Democrats seized on Mr. Bush's call for office space to set up his presidential transition as an act of effrontery that would only stiffen Mr. Gore's resistance.
.
"This election is only going to end when a court of law says the vice president has lost," said Leon Panetta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House. "The Supreme Court hearing Friday will have a huge impact, and it would have been well for him - Bush - to acknowledge that, rather than act as if it were all over."
.
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, fumed that Mr. Bush's comments showed "a fundamental lack of respect for the legal process." Thomas Mann, the senior analyst of the presidency and Congress at the Brookings Institution, said it was "doubly presumptuous" for Mr. Bush to urge Mr. Gore to drop out and to ask the Clinton administration for cooperation in preparing for his inauguration on Jan. 20.
.
For all the rhetoric from Democrats, Mr. Gore faces long odds: He must now win court rulings in both Florida and Washington favorable to his claim that additional ballots in several Democratic leaning counties should be counted the way he wants them counted - and then win enough votes there to overturn Mr. Bush's margin.
.
History offers him little reason for hope: No certified Florida election result has ever been overturned in the contest procedure Mr. Gore is about to launch.
.
And he may struggle not to exhaust the public's patience. A poll taken Sunday night by The Washington Post and ABC News after Mr. Bush's certification found growing public support for Mr. Gore conceding the election. By 56 percent to 39 percent, respondents said they were confident the Florida votes have been counted accurately.
.
An almost identical percentage approved of the Supreme Court agreeing to intervene in the Florida dispute, but the sentiment was reversed when they were asked if the Florida Legislature should take a hand in settling it.
.
Lloyd Cutler, a Washington attorney who served as a counsel in the Clinton White House, called Mr. Gore's chances of winning the court battle "pretty dim," but said the legal struggle will probably go on for another two weeks - until the Dec. 12 deadline for naming Florida's 25 electors.
.
Abner Mikva, Mr. Cutler's successor in the counsel position and a former member of the House of Representatives as well as a federal appeals court judge, agreed that "it is not going to be easy" for Mr. Gore to prevail.
.
"He has a very limited time before the political curtain comes down," he added. "But he has to get some kind of a final decision from the courts."
.
The Post-ABC News poll of 607 randomly selected adults found that two thirds of those in the 60 percent majority who said it is time for Mr. Gore to concede based their answer on the belief the count was fair, rather than a desire to have it over.
.
Fully 57 percent said it was more important for this to end quickly - within a week - than it was for both campaigns to have a chance to make their full cases in court. Of the 40 percent who chose the second alternative, half would wait up to a month, half even longer, for the election results to be known.
.
On the controversy over "dimpled" ballots, the public split evenly, with 45 percent of those polled saying they should be counted as votes and 48 percent saying they should not. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
.
Republicans by the score chorused that it was time for Mr. Gore to concede. "It's time for us to have finality so the new administration can get under way," said Dirk Kempthorne, Republican governor of Idaho. "We have had three major recounts and if there were any major discrepancies in the process, they would have surfaced by now. We have the same ballot in Idaho, and our people are ready to accept the results." WASHINGTON Governor George W. Bush of Texas has moved appreciably closer to winning the White House and has rattled the sensibilities of Washington's Democratic establishment by demanding he be treated as the president-elect.
.
Mr. Bush, who had refrained from claiming victory after drawing criticism for starting transition talks barely 48 hours after the original and achingly close Florida tallies were announced, made an even bolder assertion of authority Sunday night just two hours after the official Florida canvass showed him ahead.
.
At the end of a talk couched in conciliatory language and emphasizing areas of bipartisan agreement on the national agenda, he bluntly said it was time for Vice President Al Gore to stand down and for the Clinton administration to meet with his representatives to prepare for the change of governments. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll suggested 60 percent of the public agrees.
.
The Republican nominee's formal certification as the winner of Florida's crucial electoral votes made the odds longer than ever against the vice president extracting a turnabout victory from his dogged efforts to keep recounting Florida ballots. Even two former Clinton White House counsels said his chances of prevailing are dim.
.
Given that reality, Republicans said Mr. Bush was merely being prudent in beginning to assemble a new government.
.
"It's important that he - Bush - go ahead now to form an administration," said Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, a Republican. "At least for the evening, and hopefully for good, we have a certified winner."
.
But with more legal arguments pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and Florida judges, Democrats seized on Mr. Bush's call for office space to set up his presidential transition as an act of effrontery that would only stiffen Mr. Gore's resistance.
iht.com
. |
