Criticizing Gore's tactics
Mike Marchand
Questionable Freedoms 2000
Recently I've taken some heat from my Democratic friends about my last column three weeks ago, which predicted that George W. Bush would win the presidential race comfortably. I politely reminded them of my qualifying statement: "barring a colossal screwup or a massive 11th hour comeback by Gore." It's testament to how right I was that both happened and Gore still managed at best a tie.
"Why a tie, Mike? He won the popular vote!" Yes, barely, but how did he accomplish it?
Somehow, a quarter-century old expunged misdemeanor offense committed by George W. Bush was leaked to the press just five days before the election.
Of course, Bush himself is to blame for not defusing the bomb before it was armed. And while there's no clear evidence that the Vice President or his staff had anything to do with the release, the timing was perfect.
First, Gore had been losing in the character battle. In an instant, the burden of proof of character defense fell on Bush for something that happened 25 years ago. Al Gore's shady campaign schemes over the last eight years and his inventive knack for details over the last few weeks were forgotten.
Second, with Bush's DUI occupying the news' front burner, Gore had a blank check to say whatever he felt like, and he cashed it. He mercilessly maligned George W. Bush on his experience and intelligence. He blatantly distorted figures in Bush's platforms ... again.
He used scare tactics on seniors, falsely claiming that the Bush Social Security plan "threatens current benefits." He told a primarily African-American audience that Bush's Supreme Court appointments would reenact the three-fifths clause. An NAACP-sponsored commercial aired which implied that Bush somehow "killed" James Byrd "all over again."
Generally, Gore was only slightly more cordial than a claymation version of himself on a recent "Celebrity Deathmatch" that killed my buddy "Weird Al" Yankovic by sucking his brain out through his eye socket.
Then Gore got lucky: The networks' premature and wildly incorrect awarding of Florida's 25 electoral votes to him on election night had all but sealed his victory — until they retracted it. But when they called it, polls hadn't yet closed in battleground states like Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin — even Florida itself. When they recanted, the polls had closed nearly everywhere.
As the night wore on into early morning, Bush's slight but significant lead in every one of those states — and in the nationwide popular vote — slowly dwindled. While it's impossible to tell whether the announcement that Gore had won Florida was the cause, it seems odd that the voting trends would suddenly spontaneously reverse after midnight.
Now Gore and his cronies are back in Florida, demanding that the "will of the people" be satisfied. Carrying their unofficial and meaningless 200,000-vote "mandate" with them, they're making arbitrary demands based on nonsensical claims.
First, they condemned the ballot in Palm Beach County, despite the facts that it was designed by a Democrat and approved by a bipartisan panel, and that copies of it were mailed to every registered voter and that Democratic officials even called voters reminding them that Gore's hole was three down, number five.
They've claimed that 19,000 people were confused enough to double-punch the ballot, proof of its confusing design. So even though, say, primarily Republican Duval County (the Jacksonville metro area) has a little more than half the people of Palm Beach County but 26,000 disqualified ballots to Palm Beach's 19,000, only the votes in Palm Beach County should be recounted to "determine the intent" of the voters. But the results will more than likely only "determine the intent" of the counters.
"Technicalities should not determine the presidency," says Gore campaign manager William Daley. But after the will of the people of Florida has shown three times that George W. Bush has won, his victory now hinges on Democratic bottom-level county election officials correctly determining the "technical" difference between a "swinging chad" and a "pregnant chad."
There's a word for this kind of duplicity. The first five letters spell "bulls" but the last three don't spell "eye."
If Al Gore were honestly concerned about "the will of the people" he'd begrudgingly honor the vote that has thrice shown that he has lost. If he cared in the least, he'd apply Florida law, which demands a recount when the margin of victory is less than one-half of one percent, to the whole nation, where his margin is less than one-quarter of one percent. But he might lose on larger recounts. So he focuses on Democratic strongholds, trying to squeeze every last vote he can and not stopping until he wins.
Vice President Al Gore has spent the last two weeks lying, scaring, race-baiting, bullying, bulls-uh ... eye-ing, and litigating. It's clear that he'll say or do — or sue for — anything to become President.
And he might very well still succeed.
Mike Marchand is an off-campus senior English major whose column appears every other Monday. He was shocked not to have received any letters of opposition to his last column, so he would like to point irate Gore supporters to his e-mail address, Marchand.3@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, November 20, 2000
