Recent commentary from National Journal:
Legal Affairs: Bush vs. Gore -- A First Draft for the Justices to Consider, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (December 6, 2000)
We're judges, not magicians, and so we are in no position to somehow anoint the legitimate President.
Media: Tidal Wave? Don't Bet on It, by William Powers (December 6, 2000)
Why the hot news of a liberal columnist declaring his independence from Al Gore cooled quickly.
The Campaign: If Gore Loses, He Needs to Be More Than Magnanimous, by Carl M. Cannon (December 6, 2000)
Should he fail, the Vice President needs to work to repair the breach this challenge has caused.
Media: The Great White Board, by William Powers (November 22, 2000)
Before memories of Election Night (and the nets' by and large miserable performance) fade to black, a last look at Tim Russert's low-tech white board and why it was such a hit.
Political Pulse: The Cost of Victory, by William Schneider (November 22, 2000)
Each candidate has to make a political calculation: how much is winning this election worth?
Legal Affairs: It's About More Than Which Judge Has the Last Word, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (November 22, 2000)
Neither literalism nor originalism nor postmodernism can substitute for the old-fashioned quality called wisdom.
The Campaign: Losing the Election Shouldn't Make You a Loser, by Carl M. Cannon (November 22, 2000)
The ethos that holds that the winner takes everything and the loser is a fool is a barrier to statesmanship.
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Political Pulse:Why Al's Losing the Spin War
December 6, 2000
Democrats see this fight over the presidential election as impeachment, Part Two, with Republicans trying to bully them into submission. The Democrats beat back the GOP onslaught once. Can they do it again?
President Clinton survived impeachment because he had public opinion on his side. That's why the Florida spin war is crucial. Al Gore's problem is that he's losing the spin war.
In interviews conducted after Florida certified George W. Bush the winner of its 25 electoral votes on Sunday, a Gallup Poll found growing public impatience. More than 60 percent of Americans said the clash over vote counting had gone on too long already, and they were unwilling to wait any longer. Majorities said that Gore should concede, and they opposed his decision to contest the results. Further, by a healthy margin, people said they considered Bush, not Gore, "the real winner of the election in Florida."
More than half of Bush's supporters said if Gore is declared the winner and is inaugurated in January, they would refuse to accept him as the legitimate President. Only a third of Gore supporters said the same thing about Bush.
You'd think more Americans would be on Gore's side. After all, he's leading in the nationwide popular vote. He makes the claim, over and over, that more Florida voters came out intending to vote for him than for Bush. The Gore campaign argues that the networks' initial call awarding Florida to Gore was probably correct: More voters came out of the polling places believing they had voted for Gore than for Bush. But many elderly and minority voters spoiled their ballots by overvoting or undervoting, and were therefore disenfranchised.
So, Democrats wonder, why aren't Americans more sympathetic to Gore, the way they were to President Clinton during the impeachment showdown?
For one thing, this is about Gore, not Clinton; Gore doesn't have Clinton's seductive charm. Plus, Clinton had a prior claim on public loyalty: He had been elected President, twice, and people didn't like the idea of Republicans trying to undo the popular vote. Also, that fight was about sex, an essentially private matter. This one's about power. Republicans do not have the burden of pressing a claim of dubious public relevance.
Democrats are counting on a backlash against abusive GOP tactics. Such as this charge made by Bush on Nov. 22: "I believe Secretary [Dick] Cheney and I won the vote in Florida. I believe some are determined to keep counting in an effort to change the legitimate result." Translation: Gore is trying to steal the election. Soon enough, Republican protesters were out on the streets.
Democrats were outraged by what they saw as organized intimidation by GOP protesters in Miami. "This is a time to honor the rule of law, not surrender to the rule of the mob," Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gore's running mate, said after the Miami-Dade canvassing board voted to suspend its hand recount. "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't think I have called anything else like this before, but I will now," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said in Miami. "The whiff of fascism is in the air."
But the expected backlash against the GOP has not materialized. One reason is that Bush has gotten most of the breaks. The networks declared him the winner -- briefly -- on Election Night. Now he has been declared the winner, after two recounts, in Florida. "It's over," Agricultural Commissioner Robert Crawford said on Sunday night. "We have a winner, and it's time to move on." Which casts Gore in the role of sore loser.
Because Gore is not a beloved figure, Democrats have to rely on resentment of Republicans -- the same thing that helped save them during impeachment. But there's no Newt Gingrich this time around. Controversial GOP figures such as Texas Reps. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey have stayed in the shadows. Instead, the GOP has sent moderate and reasonable figures to speak for the party in Florida. Such as New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, New York Gov. George E. Pataki, and Montana Gov. Marc Racicot. "We don't castigate the people engaged in this process," Racicot said about the hand recounts. "We just can't allege to you, sadly, that this is a credible process that will produce a trustworthy result."
It's not easy for Democrats to demonize Bush as a harsh partisan. After Florida's certification on Sunday night, Bush cited Thomas Jefferson's view that "every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle." He added: "Vice President Gore and I had our differences of opinion in this election ... but there is broad agreement on some important principles."
Only one figure qualifies as the devil for Democrats: Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. But her makeup was harsher than her rhetoric. "I want to reassure the public that my decision in this process has been made carefully, consistently, independently, and, I believe, correctly," she said on Nov. 15. The Gallup Poll shows the public approves Harris' handling of the situation, 49 percent to 40 percent.
Americans know this was a close election that could have gone either way. That's why there's not a lot of public outrage. What's the impeachment controversy without sex, without Clinton, without Gingrich, and without public outrage? Just a political spectacle.
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William Schneider is the Cable News Network's senior political analyst. He is also a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times, National Journal, and The Atlantic Monthly. His column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C.
For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com.
All material copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
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