Fourth in a series of essays I wrote about Election 2000, but never posted until now, just in time for Election 2002.
The 2000 Election standoff provided both sides with a unique opportunity to demonstrate just how presidential they could be. Since Bush ultimately won and assumed the mantle of President, it is instructive to critique just how he managed the situation and behaved while doing it. Suffice to say that he failed in every aspect of this opportunity. Forget for the moment that he retreated to his ranch, away from media scrutiny, and allowed his minions to make his decisions for him. Assuming that he has to take responsibility for these decisions, his performance during the recount was one inconsistency after another. Which should prove that victory itself was more important than anything else.
The cornerstone of Bush's campaign was his tax cut, which he justified in part by claiming to "trust the people," to spend "their" money more wisely than government. Presumably, if people can be trusted with money, they can be trusted to accurately and fairly count votes. Not for Bush. Implicit in all his legal actions to stop the manual recounts in Florida is the accusation that election judges cannot be trusted to count votes fairly and impartially. Despite the fact that for the vast majority of our country's history, votes have always been counted in this manner. Despite the fact that in our country, people are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, not guilty before given the chance to act either way.
When justifying his lack of compassion for death row inmates, signing the execution orders even for those who had reasonable claims of judicial misconduct, Bush replied, "I trust the courts." He thus abdicated his responsibility in the system of checks and balances in favor of a naive belief in judicial perfection. Yet once any court ruled against him during the recount, he would immediately appeal, all of a sudden suspicious of that very perfection he (and his execution victims) had once depended on.
As a conservative, Bush has affirmed that he "believe[s] in states' rights," and approves of conservative judges such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas who uphold these rights. Of course, the question at hand in the Florida recount was how the Florida state law governing how a hand recount was to be conducted would be interpreted. But when the state Supreme Court allowed the recounts to proceed, Bush had no problem appealing to two federal courts, despite the fact that he was expressly asking them to interfere with how a state court interprets a state law.
Throughout the election contest, Bush representative Jim Baker repeated the mantra, "you cannot change the rules in the middle of the game." Fair enough. Except that every time Gore's legal team exercised their right to protest or contest the election result, as provided by Florida state law, the Bush team cried foul. Furthermore, Florida state law specifically gives the appellate courts, during the contest phase, power to remedy an election problem in any manner they choose. When the courts exercised this right given to them by the legislature before the election, the Bush team was outraged. Hypocritically, of course.
After Gore offered to Bush a statewide recount, including Republican-leaning counties, Bush had the audacity to go on TV and claim that he "want[s] the most accurate vote count." When, of course, every move his legal team ever made was to prevent the accurate counting of votes. Since that might show that Floridians wanted someone else. But what purpose does consistency serve when victory is on the line?
The self-serving nature of every single decision made by the Bush team should be a warning signal to every American worried about the state of our democracy. That he was unwilling to admit that machines might make errors, that the overwhelming evidence is that hand counts are more accurate than machine counts, that legislation he signed into law in Texas stated this very belief, is simple and convincing proof that winning was more important to this man than even the foundation of our democracy. God bless us all. We're going to need it.
1:10:10 PM 
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