A political fiction author couldn’t write what’s happened in the last election of this century. Nobody would believe it. And now we’ve crossed the line from the merely bizarre into the realm of the outright unbelievable.
The cynics are winning, folks.
I unrepentantly supported (and continue to support) the Green Party and its candidate, Ralph Nader, so I have little vested interest in the skirmish between Gore and Bush that recently escalated into a flat-out fight to the death.
Al Gore attempted to resolve the conflict with a simple proposal: let’s finish the recount and whoever wins, wins. Or, in the alternative, let’s recount the whole state of Florida. Yes, Gore’s proposal was self-serving. This is politics, after all. But it’s the best we can hope for if this election is going to be resolved in our lifetimes. After all, Gore has no way of knowing who will win after a manual recount.
But, like one of John Belushi’s characters used to say, Noooooooooooooo we can’t have a solution that simple and reasonable. This is politics, after all.
What really pisses me off is the specious arguments and tactics Bush is using.
Republicans talk endlessly about favoring states’ rights over federal rights. But Bush’s first move was to try to get the federal courts to intervene in a single state’s election process.
Then Bush got on his high horse about manual recounts being less accurate than machine counts and unfair to boot because there are no uniform standards. I’ve been unable to find any evidence that manual recounts are any less accurate than machine counts, and that’s presumably why Bush signed a Texas bill into law stating clearly that manual recounts are preferable.
But the real ringer in this circus sideshow is Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris who also, coincidentally, co-managed Bush’s campaign in Florida. Harris first tried to block the manual recounts and then told the counties doing the recounts that she wouldn’t consider their results because they missed the deadline and ordered them to stop. The Florida Supreme Court ruled against her and the manual recounts continue.
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