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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank Griffin who wrote (6403)	11/16/2000 11:53:38 PM
From: ColtonGang	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10042

George W. Bush flunks the test Faced with a choice between cynicism and a higher path, he chooses cynicism. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Gary Kamiya Nov. 16, 2000 \| It was the first real test of George W. Bush's character, the first chance to see what kind of stuff he would bring to the toughest job in the world. And sadly, he flunked it. Vice President Al Gore's offer to resolve the election gridlock by letting the people of Florida decide the outcome, without the divisive prospect of endless lawsuits, represented the last best chance for the two men, and the nation, to extricate themselves not just from gridlock but from gathering cynicism, from a dark, pessimistic vision of what politics and civic life are and what they might be. By rejecting Gore's offer, Gov. Bush allowed base realpolitik to triumph over the higher angels of our nature -- and poisoned the whole process in a way it had not been poisoned before. His rejection was no surprise, but it still came as an almost visceral blow. Until tonight, this movie still felt like it might have a Frank Capra feel-good ending. Now it's strictly on the double-crossing road to film noir. Bush was following his hardball political instincts -- reject, reject, reject. Assume that everything the enemy does is a trick, a P.R. move, a fraud, a Trojan horse. If he's offering it, it must be bad. It's the way politicians think, the way the Palestinians and the Israelis think, the way couples in bad divorces think, the way journalists -- who as a profession are heavy on cheap skepticism masquerading as wisdom -- think. Just turn on MSNBC or CNN for a nauseating dosage of pundits who, drunk on their worldly-wise skepticism, can't see that this is not a game, that in the end nothing less than the principle of democracy is at stake here. Of course Gore's offer wasn't devoid of self-interest. But the point is that it wasn't entirely self-interested. It was also the right thing to do. What Gore did was to ask both camps to abandon indefensible positions. In Gore's case, that was the threat of lawsuits against the butterfly ballot, lawsuits that are ultimately groundless; in Bush's, his opposition to block hand recounts on a variety of specious grounds. Gore's was a genuine offer in which each side would give something up (unlike the transparently self-serving one made by James Baker), because Gore had no way of knowing if he would emerge victorious after a hand recount and receipt of all absentee ballots. In effect, he was saying to Bush, "Enough already. Get rid of the lawyers. You, me and the people, baby. Roll 'em."