HISTORY
REPEATS ITSELF – WITH A TWIST
On
November 8, 2000, Gore
supporters stormed into court and declared that the election
in Palm County, Florida, was "illegal." The Democratic party
sent into battle a battery of 75 lawyers to contest the results
– thus declaring their intent to steal the election,
overthrow the Constitution and bluff their way into power.
It is too bad that, on the morning of November 9th,
as a top Gore aide declared "He's
going to come out fighting," and union-led Democratic
party activists – several
thousand strong – surrounded the Palm Beach election
office, screaming "we've been Bush-whacked!" they were not
met with any significant opposition: not from the Republicans,
not from independent Democrats, not from anyone. Only a few
days later, Al Gore's beer hall putsch seems well on its way
to success.
THE
COUP PLOTTERS
The
crisis
that has gripped the American polity since the night of
November 7th augurs the death agony of the Constitution
and the beginning of a new era in American politics: the age
of the demagogue. While the final outcome is still murky,
what is all too clear is that Al Gore and the Democratic party
have launched a coup
d'etat, one that is directed not only at Bush and the
GOP but at the Constitution and our republican (small-'r')
form of government. Let's be clear about what is happening:
in launching a legal and political assault on the apparent
results of the election, the Democrats are seeking to overturn
the legitimacy and authority of our constitutional system.
They are mobilizing every interest group at their command
– from the "K"
Street corporate lobbyists to the NAACP
– in a brazen attempt to seize power. Invoking the battle-cry
of every demagogue in history, "the will of the people," Al
Gore and his supporters on Friday morning brayed: "This
election is not over." What's over is the
golden age of the American republic.
A
FLIMSY PRETEXT
The
Democrats' beer
hall putsch cannot be characterized in any other way,
given the flimsiness of their chief complaint – and the
absurdity of their proposed
solution. They aver that the "butterfly"
automated ballot used in Florida's Palm Beach county was "confusing"
and led some
19,000 voters to mark their ballots twice. But the last
election held in Palm Beach, in 1996, saw some 16,000 ballots
invalidated for the same reason: yet nobody contested that
one. It is also not entirely inexplicable that Pat Buchanan
should have polled 3,407 votes in Palm Beach county, as he
managed to poll 9,515 there in the 1996 GOP presidential primary.
As much as it galls the Bushies, Buchanan is right that "no
doubt some of those votes for me were intended for
Gore," and indeed the
precinct-by-precinct vote totals show a few seemingly
inexplicable clots of Buchanan support in a heavily Democratic
area, but he is also correct in saying: "I think it
stands." Buchanan told
Larry King.
"In
the last analysis, they've got to take a look at who got the
ballots. They have to count them. They have to recount them,
and count the absentees, and when that is done, Florida ought
to certify the winner of the Florida vote, and that's next
the president of the United States. And I hope and pray Al
Gore, if it is not him, has the sense of honor and dignity
that Richard Nixon had when he simply out- and-out refused
to challenge in any way the returns from Illinois and Texas."
THE
WAR ESCALATES
This
happens in every election, a point the Bush high command
is making by pushing recounts in Wisconsin,
New
Mexico, and Iowa. The war against the electoral process
is escalating. The Gore camp is suing on the grounds that
the Palm Beach ballot as designed was illegal under the requirements
of Florida election law, but this is not
at all clear – at least not clear enough to justify
provoking a constitutional crisis and plunging the nation
into chaos.
A
MODEST PROPOSAL
One
more screechy old windbag wailing "I couldn't believe
I voted for Pat Buchanan, of all people!" into
the TV camera and I'm going to gag. After a certain age, people
are discouraged from driving, in some cases they are forbidden
from doing so: isn't it time we applied the same standards
to voting?
A
CONUNDRUM
What
I want to know is how come the Nader voters didn't mess up
their ballots? As you can see from the layout of the
by-now-famous "butterfly" ballot, Nader voters who made the
same sort of mistake that thousands of would-be Gore voters
supposedly made would have voted for Howard Phillips, the
Constitution Party candidate – yet Phillips barely registers
in Palm Beach or anywhere in Florida, garnering well below
half of one percent. The answer to this apparent conundrum
may be that Nader supporters, while not exactly geniuses,
are much smarter than Gore voters.
TRAMPLING
THE CONSTITUTION UNDERFOOT
On
television, we see Democratic party shock troops outside the
Florida state house and around
the country screaming for a "re-vote" – a patently
absurd demand that is not intended to be taken seriously,
but only meant to undermine the legitimacy of the system and
introduce the voice of the mob. A key element of this campaign
is to impugn the integrity and authority of the Electoral
College, an institution mandated by our Constitution and the
last bulwark of states rights and regionalism: calls for its
abolition have already reverberated from the Democratic camp,
notably from Hillary
Rodham Clinton, more evidence – if any were needed
– that the
Gore camp will do anything to retain the White
House, blithely ignoring the rule of law, trampling on the
Constitution, and strong-arming their way to power.
DECERTIFYING
DEMOCRACY
Heading
into an endless series of re-counts and legal challenges,
the action in this ongoing campaign is shifting
to the courtroom – and, from there, into virtually
unknown territory. Al Gore is hoping that a judge will prevent
the state of Florida from certifying the election even after
November 17th, when the last overseas ballots are
received and counted. If that happens, and the election is
thrown into the hands of Florida's all-Democratic state Supreme
Court justices, then two rival slates of the state's 25 electors
will meet, on the first Monday after the second Wednesday
in December – and the new Congress will determine which
slate to accept. In short, George W. Bush will not necessarily
wind up with the 270 electoral votes required to be elected
President.
THOSE
FICKLE ELECTORS
This
can have two possible consequences: a struggle within the
Electoral College, or a change of venue to the halls of Congress,
where, in the House, each state will have one vote. In the
former case, anything – literally, anything – is
possible. At least 25 states have no laws forbidding electors
from voting for whomever they damn well feel like. Who knows
what will come out of the Electoral College's upcoming historic
session? If only a few – as few as 3 – electors
switch sides, the
election could go to Gore.
DEUS
EX MACHINA
It
may go to Gore anyway. As Charles
Lane points out in the Washington Post:
"Only Gore could still be elected if the fight for Florida
is not resolved by Dec. 18, when members of the electoral
college are to meet in the states and the District to cast
their votes.
"The
12th Amendment to the Constitution specifically provides that
an incomplete electoral college can produce a valid presidential
selection, saying that a candidate needs 'a majority of the
whole number of Electors appointed' to be elected president.
Without Florida's 25 votes, that whole number would be 513,
and it would take 257 votes, five fewer than Gore's current
total, to win."
A
BARGAIN BASEMENT PRESIDENCY
Now
do you see the reason for the delaying tactics, the re-counts,
the court challenges, the relentless drive to bog down the
electoral process in a seemingly bottomless mire of lawsuits
and counter-suits? If only the coup plotters can hold out
long enough – using every weapon at their disposal, including
the courts, the media, and the mobs in the streets –
Gore will be catapulted into the White House.
THE
PLOT SICKENS
In
any event, even given that George W. Bush emerges, tattered
but triumphant, as the next President of the United States,
the elevation of his running mate, Dick Cheney, is no longer
a foregone conclusion, for here is what the Constitution has
to say about the election of a Vice President:
"The
person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-president,
shall be the Vice-president, if such number be a majority
of the whole number of electors appointed, and if no person
have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the
list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-president; a quorum
for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number
of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary
to a choice."
BUSH-GORE:
CO-PRESIDENTS?
With
the Washington Senate race still
up in the air, and likely to be so for at least the next
week or two, the possibility exists that the Senate will be
evenly divided – with the Vice President himself in
a position to break the tie! The machinery for a Grand
Compromise in case of a constitutional crisis has always existed,
just waiting for some clever political operative to take advantage
of the right circumstances and set the mechanism in motion.
George W. Bush may indeed make it to the White House in the
year 2001, but the real beginning of the new millennium will
perhaps
be marked by a coalition government. One scenario has Gore
retaining the office of Vice President (or perhaps he will
defer to Lieberman) – and entering into what is in effect
a co-presidency, similar to the
ancient Roman consuls, who always served in pairs. Another
bipartisan scenario: President Gore and Vice President Cheney.
That is the road we are on.
TICK
TOCK
Remember,
the clock is ticking on this one. If the two parties don't
come to some kind of compromise by Inauguration Day –
if the Democratic delaying tactics succeed in tying up the
election in the courts, and the Electoral College and Congress
are so tangled in technicalities that no decisive action is
taken – then all bets are off and America, once known
as "the world's only superpower," becomes the world's biggest
banana republic.
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