Crippled Inside: Gore's Yellow-Bellied, Narrow-Minded Hypocrites
But the harm to the Vice President's case was done: Klain was speaking for the entire Gore postelection campaign when he exulted about the progress made in shrinking George W. Bush's slender lead in Florida's vote tally. Make no mistake about it: Despite all the pious rhetoric upchucked by Gore and his minions about democracy and the principle of every American's vote counting, this entire charade is simply a cheap political exercise in getting a candidate elected.
Gore has no real interest in the rights of individual citizens. Otherwise, he wouldn't have tossed those men and women confused by the "butterfly ballot" over the side so early in the legal tussle. The Palm Beach County protest was merely a convenient way to stir up the media, and was a decoy for Gore's real mission: manufacturing votes after the polls had closed. All the rhetoric about Holocaust survivors forced to vote for Pat Buchanan?on a ballot designed by a Democrat?made a terrific story line for naive reporters, but was never really an issue. That Gore would stoop to such pandering, however, was simply another indication that he'll do anything to win.
Gore has wrapped himself in the mantle of the civil rights movement, and is exploiting the issue of the "disenfranchisement" of black voters in Florida. Never mind that he, along with triple-agent Dick Morris, was the man who finally convinced Bill Clinton to enact welfare reform. Gore also, during the fall campaign, exploited Bush's refusal to take a stand on the Confederate flag's flying in South Carolina. Never mind that, although he was Vice President for eight years and had ample opportunity to pressure that state's government to act on the controversy, it didn't become an issue until his presidential quest.
This self-absorbed, and possibly psychologically damaged, man does not belong in the White House. This country's political culture has never been so debased?not during Watergate, not during Clinton's impeachment?and Gore is directly responsible.
What better example of the Vice President's cynical, and unimaginative, strategy than his prayer session with Jesse Jackson last Friday night, after Florida's divided Supreme Court gave its national counterpart, not to mention Judge N. Sander Sauls, the finger by injecting its own bias into the election? But, hey, it's only Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris who's "partisan."
I understand that the country, as we've been told ad nauseam by the pundits, is split 50-50 between Gore and Bush. But if a truly neutral observer were to observe the chaos that's taken place in Florida since Nov. 7, there's not a chance that the Democrats would emerge with a clean image. If the process were motivated by fairness, what logic could've compelled the 4-3-split Florida Supreme Court to order a recount without eliminating the previous Gore-enhanced tally in Broward County and starting anew in that heavily Democratic part of the state? Why would the disputed Palm Beach County votes, which reached the Secretary of State after the court-imposed deadline of 5 p.m. on Nov. 26, be included? Why would no set of uniform standards be dictated for the recount demanded by the court?
Much foolishness has been written about the ostensible contradiction of the GOP's seeking federal redress during this controversial election. But the Bush team has been forced to litigate the case to the fullest extent, abandoning the traditional conservative philosophy of favoring states' rights over that of Big Government. What was Bush supposed to do? Roll over for Gore's mendacious power-grab just so he could remain ideologically pure?
That's what Bill Daley and Gore counted on. The Democrats are so accustomed to winning by judicial chicanery that it's no wonder that the U.S. government's third branch is considered by many to be an instrument of the NAACP and AFL-CIO's will. Perhaps they really believed the myth that Bush was playing video poker in Crawford, TX, while they were busy collecting tainted votes in Broward County. And maybe the Gore team was heartened by the media's denigrating portrait of Bush as a lightweight who relies on "Daddy's" team of old white men to do his scutwork. (For some of the media, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice?at least for the course of this campaign?changed skin color.) That's hogwash. As Charles Krauthammer wrote in a Dec. 8 Washington Post column: "When challengers win the presidency they routinely draw senior aides from the previous administration of the same party. When Clinton won in '92, he chose many high officials, including his secretary of state, from the Carter administration. Reagan drew liberally on Nixon appointees."
At the risk of repeating myself, Bush was no Bob Dole: realizing that Gore would exhaust every method possible to alter the results of a state election that had already been decided several times in the Governor's favor, he had no choice but to wage a scorched-earth campaign of his own. As Bush's advisers have said, they didn't want to "win ugly," but if that's what it'll take to thwart Gore's brazen effort to steal the election, that's what they'll do. I have no doubt that Jeb Bush would go to jail in contempt of court to further his brother's cause. He'd become a national hero, and rightfully so.
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On Sunday, Lanny Davis, the former Clinton White House counsel who embarrassed himself nightly during the Lewinsky scandal by defending the President, suggested that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia consider recusing himself from the pending litigation. As it happens, Scalia's son, Eugene Scalia, is a partner in the Washington office of the firm that also employs Ted Olson, the Bush lawyer who will argue in front of the Supreme Court.
The younger Scalia has not worked on the Texas Governor's case.
Yet on Monday's edition of Today, this question was troubling to cohost Katie Couric, who asked an NBC correspondent about the possible conflict of interest. It goes without saying that another, and more significant, question was not raised. On Dec. 1, when the U.S. Supreme Court first admonished its brethren in Florida, it was revealed in the audiotape provided to reporters that Justice Stephen Breyer, a Clinton appointee, slipped up during the hearing and betrayed his own partisanship. While questioning Katherine Harris' lawyer Joseph Klock, Breyer said: "And now the secretary has certified a winner. And therefore, I guess, whether we win?whether your side, the side you're supporting wins or loses, it doesn't change that."
Draw your conclusions from that brief snippet.
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I won't go on much longer. As I write, on Monday, Dec. 11, this electoral travesty is far from over, yet before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, there's not much new to say. On Thursday, at 4 p.m., go to nypress.com for a Web-exclusive analysis of the week's events. Even if the court rules in Bush's favor, I fully expect Gore's war room to goad (or bribe) other state legislatures to create further havoc.
However, I'd be remiss in not pointing out the hysterical, if not atypical, reaction of The Nation to the current impasse. In its Dec. 25 editorial, The Nation urged Bush electors to switch their vote to Gore when the Electoral College meets. In an argument favoring the abolition of that body, the editorial pleads: "Let's be clear: We are not urging them to vote for the popular-vote winner because we support Al Gore. We are urging them to cast such a vote because it would be the right thing to do?legally, morally and politically."
That's about as believable as Bill Clinton's emphatic, finger-waving declaration in early 1998 that he never had sexual relations with "that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
I do get a boot out of reading The Nation. There's frequently intelligent commentary contained therein, but the oft-stated premise that the magazine is a watchdog for the oppressed in this country, the Rainbow Coalition of forgotten citizens (extra points if you're a "person of color"), is fairly laughable. I don't know for certain the exact racial make-up of the weekly's staff, but there's no doubt that it's predominantly white. And affluent. There's editor/heiress Katrina vanden Heuvel; Christopher Hitchens, who's a regular on the DC cocktail circuit and a contributor to many publications, including the free-spending Vanity Fair; Alexander Cockburn, who draws considerable checks for his freelance writing (including from New York Press) while living in a bucolic California town; and longtime Nation mainstay Victor Navasky, who I'm sure doesn't sup on ramen noodles each night.
But let's not forget Eric Alterman, who never misses an opportunity to trash media titan Rupert Murdoch. The Australian-born mogul is an unabashed capitalist, whose political preferences are often dictated by what suits his business interests. I have no beef with that; aside from men of pure conviction like the Berrigan Brothers, Murdoch has a lot of company.
Such as Alterman himself. In addition to contributing to The Nation, Alterman also writes lunatic essays for MSNBC's website, the latest of which, dated Dec. 9, is headlined "The Day Democracy Was Defeated." I'll spare you the details, but it'll come as no surprise that Alterman, Upper West Side populist, was distressed by Saturday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Naturally, he questions the "legitimacy" of a possible George Bush presidency, because the candidate's father appointed Clarence Thomas (no mention of President Bush's blunder in elevating David Souter to the court), and the candidate's brother is Florida's governor (again, no mention of the Democratic make-up of that state's Supreme Court). "Calling such a country a 'Banana Republic,'" Alterman grandly writes, "would be unfair to both bananas and republics."
As Alterman is, like many on the left, utterly without humor, maybe Jay Leno or Jerry Seinfeld helped him out with that joke.
But more seriously, while Alterman is a broken record when it comes to trashing Murdoch, he apparently sees no inconsistency in accepting fees from MSNBC, which is owned by that well-known bastion of progressive politics: General Electric.
DECEMBER 11