From whom are these calls coming? Mostly from the very same partisans who had planned to use the Electoral College to win. Journalist David Frum reports that a number of Democratic Party activists who had penned opinion pieces before Election Day defending the Electoral College asked that they be pulled once it appeared Gore might win the popular vote.
Hillary Clinton, with characteristic modesty, declared, not long after winning a Senate seat in a state in which she has never lived, that the Founders had it wrong: the Electoral College must go.
Far from discrediting the Founding Fathers, this election vindicates them. Without the Electoral College, this mess would have no resolution whatsoever.
More to the point, without the Electoral College, the states, already too weak, would become even weaker, while the press in metropolitan enclaves, already too strong, would become stronger.
Bush carried much of the country; Gore carried the country's newsrooms and salons.
Gore's power play is unsurprising on one level. He is a product of the 1960s, the ethos of which justified every means for the sake of “progressive” ends. The rule of law didn't matter then — why should it matter now?
Given how Gore is clearly compromising himself in order to reach the White House it is safe to assume he would also compromise himself to stay there. This, in a perverse sense, is his strength over George Bush. Gore is willing to use weapons Bush, out of honor, won’t.
Let's hope that the Constitution, though close to shreds, serves as Bush's shield.
The difference between Al Gore and his mentor Bill Clinton is one of degree, not kind. Clinton is a good snake oil salesman; Gore is a transparently bad one.
Consider Gore's explanation last week for holding the nation hostage: he simply wants to safeguard the “integrity” of the democratic process. The “contest,” you see, doesn't interest him. It smacks of his boss’ noble explanation for doggedly fighting impeachment: he wanted to safeguard the integrity of the Constitution. His legacy, his place in history, had nothing to do with it.
Now the vice president piously says that he wants to “improve” the tone of the debate over this election. He has requested a meeting with George Bush to heal the national divide.
Who is he kidding? He is the one dividing it. Like a criminal who drops his gun after exhausting all his ammo, Gore is suddenly interested in comity and unity. This, even as he dispatches lawyers and functionaries to engage in endless ward heeling.
What Gore calls civility, Latin Americans call good old-fashioned vote stealing. No number of recounts will satisfy him. Hence we have seen from his side appeal after appeal after appeal, just like in the impeachment drama.
Gore's message, stripped of its patriotic pabulum, is this: Keep counting until I win. To Bush, Gore's message is: I will gut this out until you fold.
Predictably, the Washington-New York commentariat has largely swallowed Gore's sanctimony. They remain strikingly unconcerned that the manual vote recounts being insisted on by Democratic operatives in Palm Beach, Florida, have long been used to swipe elections from Republicans, according to a number of GOP veterans of hand-recount election-upsets. Instead of exploring these charges, the media are now busy pressuring Bush into accepting yet another recount.
Why in the world should he? We've already had one, two, in some cases three or four, counts. A manual recount at this stage is an open invitation to mischief. Machines may err, but they don't cheat.
Chris Lehane, a Gore aide, called Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris a “Soviet commissar.” He should know: he and the other Gore apparatchiks are doing the Soviets proud, seeking Kangaroo courts to overturn democratic results.
The voters don't count, Joseph Stalin said. But the vote counters do.
For how much longer will the American people tolerate Gore’s crassness? Do they really want as president of their democracy a man who lays waste to democratic institutions in order to win the office?
Again, none of this should surprise us. Gore belongs to the most corrupt administration in American history. He has learned from the master, whom he once placed in the pantheon of America’s Greatest Presidents, just moments after that president had been impeached for lying about an affair with an intern not much older than his daughter.
Just as Clinton “saved” the Constitution by resisting impeachment, expect Gore to claim, in his trademark pious and pedantic manner, that he “saved” democracy by refusing to accept the results of the election.
Sober historians will say he helped destroy it.
