THIS SUMS IT UP.........Gore makes his last play
By Eric Alterman
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
Nov. 28 — Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military philosopher, called war “politics by other means.” What is happening on our political stage today is war by other means. It makes no difference that, given the weakness of the potential mandate that either man is likely to earn, his ability to implement any of his major campaign promises will be severely restricted. Few battles are fought so viciously as those about power alone.
AS MOST PEOPLE versed in higher math long ago concluded, the Florida vote was a statistical tie. The margin between the two candidates is smaller than the built-in margin of error for both voting machine counters (according to their manufacturers) and natural human failings. On moral grounds, Al Gore is the clear winner. He won the popular vote nationally and clearly would have won Florida too, but for the vagaries of the “Butterfly Ballot.” But declaring a “moral victory,” in both politics and war, is usually another way of saying you lost.
NO MERCY
According to Clausewitz, the greatest error a combatant can make is to show any form of mercy to his opponent. This is true, as well of Bush and Gore, but for the inconvenient fact that neither one can afford to appear to be acting as if it is true. That would cheapen the ultimate prize of victory to the point of near worthlessness. What both Gore and Bush must do, therefore, is wage an all-out war while pretending to be basing their actions on unselfish, patriotic grounds. So far, neither man is succeeding.
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Bush is ahead right now for two reasons: His allies are more strategically placed and his army is hungrier for victory. The fact that Katherine Harris certified Bush’s victory in Florida has nothing to do with the alleged 537 votes he happened to be ahead by according to her count at 5 p.m. on Sunday, not including Palm Beach County.
BUSH’S LEGAL STRATEGY
Harris is a dedicated Bush partisan, who in an otherwise meaningless job (which is about to be abolished), has attempted to use her strategic placement to prevent any form of counting that might conceivably put her candidate at a disadvantage. Had Bush required the manual hand counts, she would have interpreted her legal requirements in exactly the opposite fashion. The Bush legal strategy has been aimed at exactly the same goal. Who among us is naïve enough to believe that George Bush or James Baker had strong feelings before Election Day that machine counts were superior to hand counts, or that state election laws should be overturned by federal courts? It is everything the Bush team can do to keep a straight face as it makes these claims.
Bush’s second advantage derives from the ferocity of his troops, whose soldiers thirst for the trappings of power having been shut out by a man they despise for eight years. And I don’t mean the Republican “rioters for hire” who helped shut down the court-ordered Miami-Dade recount, as useful as they may have been. Not only Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush are pulling for George W, but so too are the leaders of the Florida Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Just about every one of these people has made it clear that they are willing to intervene if necessary to overturn a result they dislike at whatever stage it becomes necessary, the public outcry be damned. Al Gore has few such allies and if he did, they would not be quite so willing to follow him into battle. Many Democrats would prefer a 50-50 Senate and a weak Republican president to a Gore victory. And even if they didn’t, it is the Republicans alone who hold the levers of power.
GORE’S ONLY HOPE
Gore’s best hope is to win enough legal victories to as to make Bush’s decision to use his political advantages to overturn them too painful to employ.
Gore’s only hope is to win enough legal victories to as to make Bush’s decision to use his political advantages to overturn them too painful to employ. My guess is that this is impossible, but there it is. Gore probably has the stronger case counting-wise. Add up the thousands of uncounted ballots in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Broward, and take seriously the credible allegations of illegal Republican manipulation of absentee ballots in Seminole County and a Gore victory, objectively measured, would be near certainty. But the catch is that such a victory can be overturned politically at any one of a number of steps: for instance, the Florida Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
What each candidate’s public statements are designed to do now is to increase the level of pain for the other one to carry out his battle plan. George Bush — who probably would have won by now had he not taken the foolish and counterproductive step of running to the Supreme Court to overturn the recounts and thereby prolonging the drama — is acting as if he is already president-elect. He is nominating transition officers, delegating authority to staff to name his cabinet and issuing appeals to the Democrats to “come together” and “find common ground” on Republican terms. He knows he can win it politically in the end if he has to but he probably fears the political cost of that kind of victory. It would be so much cleaner to win by forfeit.
THE NATION’S PATIENCE
The wild card here is the media, which has the power to portray the process as either fair or debased, and has careened back and forth between the two candidates.
Meanwhile Al Gore is fighting to keep the political oxygen to his campaign long enough to let his legal team win the count. He’s hoping that the nation’s patience lasts long enough for his victory on the numbers to overshadow Bush’s “I am already the president” act. That’s why he spoke on Monday night of the “integrity of democracy” and the “letting the people have their say” as he tried to buy time for his court cases.
The wild card here is the media, which has the power to portray the process as either fair or debased, and has careened back and forth between the two candidates. Most of the members of the press would prefer a Bush victory and have tried to take his side whenever possible, but the naked political machinations of Harris and the Bush team have made it difficult. Media mavens have been predicting a public revolt against the waiting period virtually since minute one, just as they did during impeachment process, but so far no signs of it have materialized. If Gore is to stick around long enough to find out whether he has any chance of getting a “full and fair count” in Florida, he is going to need some vocal and articulate support from the only people who left who appear to have a stake in his presidency: the voters.
As any good Clausewitzian will tell you, when the populations start getting involved, it’s total war. And there is no such thing as a “moral victory.”
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Eric Alterman is a columnist for The Nation and a regular contributor to MSNBC. |
