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Three questions tell the whole election story
Adele Ferguson
Political Columnist |
All anyone had to do in a sensible world to figure out who carried Florida, Al Gore or George W. Bush, was ask three questions.
Questions, incidentally, which I never heard asked of any of the Gore spinmeisters who cluttered the airwaves, including five Sunday talk show appearances by would-be veep Joseph Lieberman the day before the Florida Supreme Court's hearing.
1) Who had the most votes on election night?
2) Who had the most votes after all 67 counties recounted their totals?
3) Who had the most votes after the overseas ballots had been added to the pot?
There is no answer other than George W. Bush, which means George W. Bush carried Florida, and since Florida's 25 electoral votes give their recipient the necessary 270 for the presidency, George W. Bush is the president-elect.
To call the results of the Florida vote into question because of machine-rejected ballots would be to call into question the results of the election nationwide, because from one corner of this country to another, voting machines have kicked out improperly executed ballots.
Allowing a handful of counties selected because of their heavily Democratic turnout to add to their totals what election workers interpret to be the voters' intent, without a prior suspicion of fraud rather than error, invites national chaos.
A further question might be why Florida let its election lapse into a state of limbo when the usual practice, as is done here in Washington State, is to certify the election first, and then take up any recounting or challenges. You don't start a second count of the votes before you've finished the first, except, I guess, in Florida.
But we have at last seen the real Al Gore in the closing days of this election. A lot of jokes have been made about his reinventing himself. He's tried to display the folksiness of Will Rogers but the Al Gore who failed to condemn the outing of Bush's 25-year-old drunk driving arrest or the character assassination of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris is the real Gore -- mean, vengeful and willing to do anything for the prize he seeks.
The driving charge contributed, I'm sure, to a last minute loss of votes for Bush because of the spin the Gore camp put on it, that Bush was a liar because he hadn't told us about it specifically, although he admitted to a drinking problem in his youth.
Asked about it, the statesman Gore said he'd rather talk about issues. What he should have said was that he deplored the airing 25 years after the fact, that everybody has done something in his youth that he was ashamed of, so let's stop this kind of thing and get down to the issues.
As for Mrs. Harris, Mata Hari got better treatment. OK, so she was co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida. So What? She hasn't done anything beyond obeying the laws. Our secretary of state, Ralph Munro, was co-chair of the McCain campaign here and I didn't hear anybody calling for him to recuse himself from any of his duties.
Gore's people showed the same kind of nastiness in blasting Mrs. Harris as a crook, etc., that they did when they were Clinton people protection that other paragon of statesmanship and gentlemanliness. Remember when I told you that if Gore followed Clinton into the White House, it would be a continuation of the real Clinton legacy of lies and character assassinations against anyone daring to oppose them?
History would record a Florida Supreme Court decision easing the way into the White for Al Gore as politics, not justice. Bush was the man Florida elected.
(Editor’s Note: Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.) |
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