Jim, I tend to agree, depends though, minute by minute. I think this is relevant, written by a very savvy Chicago writer, who knows how the Daley machine really works.
chicagotribune.com
BILL DALEY'S IDEA OF FAIRNESS IS
ABOUT WINNING AT ALL COSTS
November 13, 2000
Chicago's Bill Daley keeps saying he wants a fair
resolution to the presidential contest between his
guy, Democrat Al Gore, and Republican George
W. Bush.
That's probably why Democratic Party judges of
elections in Florida are now helping hand-count
paper ballots in key Democrat-rich precincts and
are magically discovering new votes for Gore.
Would the Daley boys be as interested in fairness
if the Orange County California Republicans flew to Florida to do the
counting? Can't Republicans count too?
Imagine if the politics were not presidential, but set in Chicago, a
mythologically tight race, say, between Mayor Richard M. Daley and the late
Mayor Harold Washington.
Would Bill Daley loudly demand a hand recount of paper ballots in the
pro-Washington and heavily African-American 3rd, 6th, 21st, 8th and 34th
Wards? I'm guessing, but I think I could hear Daley's muffled shrieks.
So let's see the political talk for what it is: political talk, and measure it as
such. It's not about fairness. It's about winning.
If it were about fairness, Daley would be demanding recounts in the
Republican Florida panhandle--the Central time zone area that stopped
voting when idiotic TV network bobos told voters to forget voting, telling
voters (incorrectly) that Florida had already gone for Gore.
What will happen over the next few days is that the vote in Florida will finally
be decided and either Gore or Bush will become president-elect.
And I'm sure you want what is fair too. Whether you voted for the Democrat
or Republican, most of us want a presidency that is considered legitimate by
all Americans.
I said most of us want that. But not all of us. Because a few folks obviously
don't care what happens to America's belief in the legitimacy of presidential
elections, just as long as their side wins.
So they'll drag the election through the courts; they'll prod the demagogues to
play the race card and applaud Jesse Jackson for his showmanship; they'll
loudly complain voters were defrauded when they were not.
Actually, Florida voters were defrauded by their own inability to simply punch
a stylus through the properly numbered hole.
You wail and screech, and force your opponent to decide on two courses of
action: Either wail and screech, too, and fight it out in court, or give up and be
bullied out of the White House.
That's what's happening. You can see that, can't you? And after it's over, a
precedent has been set. It will be OK to settle our politics by using the courts
and race-baiting language. It's OK to cloud the issue in order to secure
advantage and win.
Even the late President Richard Nixon wouldn't play that way in 1960. By
1972, he'd learned his lesson and unleashed his own ruthlessness. And
President Gerald Ford wouldn't play it like this either. He had the chance and
didn't.
But Al Gore is playing it that way, and Bill Daley is pulling the strings.
Many Democrats are edgy, including liberals such as U.S. Sen. Robert
Torricelli of New Jersey and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich,
and conservatives such as former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.).
"We'll go through one week of counting, and by then the absentee ballots will
have been counted," Torricelli said on "Fox News Sunday," when asked if
Gore should drop the legal fight. "By next Friday, the pressure on someone is
going to be enormous to accept the results."
While formally supporting Gore, they're also worried that by attacking the
fundamental fairness of the electoral process, he's undermining public
confidence in the business of electing a president.
And people of differing politics understand the long-term danger. Once the
belief in the election system is destroyed by legalism, there can be nothing to
replace it with. Nothing. That's when the suffocating cynicism takes over.
Stimulated by eight years of Clinton/Gore, the impeachment and new phrases
about the "definition of `is'" and "no controlling legal authority," Gore's moves
in Florida guarantee the cynicism will grow like a malignancy.
Repeatedly questioned on various Sunday programs, Daley refused to say
whether his side would abide by the results of the first recount in Florida and
drop the lawsuits over the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County.
"There were terrible injustices based upon the ballot that obviously confused
19,000 people," Daley said Sunday. "And the people of Florida have a right
under their law. ... That's their right. That's the right of the people of Florida."
I admire Bill Daley's Machiavellian touch, especially his use of the ethic of fair
play as a lever for his own awesome ruthlessness.
Daley caught the Bush people unprepared and unwilling to fight. Now they
are fighting back with their own lawsuits, and they'll have to drop their pose
of nobility. Because if the Bush camp folds now, they will be simply validating
Gore's tactics.
Now it's a Bridgeport street fight, on Daley's ground.
And so there's been a wound. And the infection spreads, regardless of the
outcome. |
