***** New York times 1 April 2001
The Making of the President, 2000
By GARRY WILLS
The Republicans won, he [Jake Tapper, the author of _Down and Dirty_ reviewed here] argues, less on the merits of their case or the intelligence of their conduct than from a fanatical single-mindedness. He stresses, for instance, the way Baker and his allies trashed hand recounts, misrepresenting the fact that the Texas law Gov. George W. Bush signed allowed all the things Baker was attacking in Florida -- establishing the intent of the voter from partial detachment of a chad, from light visible through a chad or from indentation (the notorious ''dimpling'') of a chad. The Democrats backed off when accused of inconsistency -- e.g., of insisting on technicalities where absentee voters were concerned, after they had said that voter intent should outweigh technicalities where the machine vote was concerned -- while Republicans brazenly stuck with their symmetrical-but-reversed inconsistency (going for intent with the absentee votes and for technicalities on the machines).
A clearer, better organized picture of what went on in Florida is contained in ''Deadlock,'' the simple chronicle put out by the political staff of The Washington Post....The Post team keeps its eye on the principles that made sense of all the swirling events. The Democrats needed to find some way to take a lead in the votes, however temporary or contested that might be. Once that happened, the whole dynamics would change -- the Republicans would stop saying the election is over, we cannot afford to prolong the process, we cannot change the rules. Knowing this, the Republicans had to do anything to stop the Democrats from taking a lead, no matter how small or contestable. Their strategy was to stall, prevent and disrupt. The Post quotes one of the Republican activists, Reeve Bright, on what he calls his ''mudballing'' tactics: ''You draw it out. You keep it from happening. You throw up every roadblock. You get the flu, whatever you have to do.'' That was the mission on which Tom DeLay and other congressional Republicans sent their staffers to do paid-for service in Miami. The raucous crowd that tried to intimidate the Miami-Dade counters refused to give names to reporters, claiming they were just ordinary citizens upset at the ''theft'' of votes; but Al Gore, totally involved in the details of the fight, had no trouble identifying people in the news photos he studied with his staff and advisers:
''The Miami protesters included a policy analyst in House majority whip Tom DeLay's office, a majority chief counsel on the House judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice, a political division staff member at the National Republican Congressional Committee, a former House Republican conference analyst, a former aide to Tennessee Sen. Fred D. Thompson, a Bush campaign staffer, an aide to Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.), an aide to Chairman Don Young, (R-Alaska) of the House Resources Committee, a legislative assistant to Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and a former aide to former Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa). These weren't ordinary Miamians taking their case to their elected officials.''
When early recounts made Bush's lead dwindle precipitously, there was a scramble to add votes on his side of the ledger. Jason Unger, a Republican lawyer, rushed requests to 13 counties to recount military votes before Thanksgiving (he called it his ''Thanksgiving stuffing''):
''The time would come when the margin between Bush and Gore dipped briefly to just 154 votes. Without his Thanksgiving stuffing, Bush would have fallen behind. Gore would have had a lead of 22 votes -- a lead that could have changed the entire public relations dynamic.''
The single imperative of the Republicans -- to keep Gore from ever nosing ahead in the count -- gave their actions a compelling simplicity. They must oppose any count whatever that might shift votes to Gore. They had to discredit hand recounts (though mandated by Florida law in contested elections and recognized as superior in accuracy by most states). They would plead lack of time (while eating up time by stalling). They would obstruct the counting that did begin. They would file nuisance lawsuits. They would try to move legal action to favorable venues. (When the absentee ballots of one county ended up before a black woman judge, they tried five different ways to block her -- calling for her to recuse herself, asking an appeals court panel to dismiss her, then going to the entire appeals court when that did not work, trying to have the case consolidated with one before a more favorable judge and then calling for a jury trial to prevent her from making the decision. She ruled in their favor after all, but they were not going to take that -- or anything -- for granted).
Nothing was overlooked. There was a fallback position, a fail-safe provision, for any contingency. If nothing else worked, the Florida legislature was ready to step in and name its own slate of electors. Appeal to the United States Supreme Court was foreseen from the outset -- federal issues were injected early on to prepare for that. Theodore Olson, an ideological friend of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist, a man who had himself argued before the Supreme Court 13 times, assembled a team of former aides to these three conservatives to advise him. Everything was aimed at those friends of last resort.
There was a total discipline in what was said or done on the Republican side. James Baker, as commander in chief, was continuously present in Florida, while William Daley, Warren Christopher and David Boies left the state whenever they could. Christopher's role was that of Hamlet's father, who ''with solemn march / Goes slow and stately by.'' Gore was interfering from a distance, changing horses in midstream (removing Laurence H. Tribe from the second Supreme Court argument), suspecting secret plots where the opposition's strategy was open and obvious. He thought the mayor of Miami, whom he had cultivated in the Elián affair, was sabotaging him. Republican governors were flown in to denounce recount procedures that their own states observe -- while, on the other side, Joe Lieberman publicly undercut the effort to disqualify absentee Bush votes without postmarks. There is no doubt what Republicans would have done if put in that situation. The Post team shows what the Democrats were doing while Jason Unger was collecting his ''Thanksgiving stuffing'':
''Why didn't Gore's lawyers hold firm in their fight against overseas absentee ballots that had no postmarks?
''Gore's running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, couldn't take the heat politically when pressed about it on television. Nor could Gore's Florida chairman, Bob Butterworth. Both retreated from the campaign's decision to contest those ballots when confronted with a public relations uproar. Had Gore's team held firm, Bush might not have been awarded the extra 176 votes he ultimately received -- and that might have let Gore slip ahead in the count at some point.''
If Republicans were loyal to a fault, Gore had forfeited that kind of loyalty with his frequent switches of staff and strategy and personality -- most of them reflecting his conflicted relationship with Bill Clinton. The Post team assumes that he was sincerely concerned for Elián González when he opposed the child's being returned to his father. It is more likely that this was another case where Gore wanted to distance himself from the Clinton administration, which supported the return. Gore foolishly thought that by doing that he could better Clinton's 40 percent support from Cuban-Americans in the 1996 election -- while in fact he got only half of that. The muddled tactical thinking, like Gore's shifting personae, had to do with his need to cleanse himself from what he felt was a contaminating association with Clinton.
By contrast, the Republicans' hypertrophied loyalty reached even into the sacred precinct of the Supreme Court. The Bush team was counting on that. Antonin Scalia showed an indecent urgency to stop the voting with his instant response to the call for a stay on Dec. 9. The reason he gave was that a continued vote count threatened ''irreparable harm to petitioner, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.'' Since when has protecting a possible president from hypothetical future criticism been a task of the Court?...
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/01/reviews/010401.01willst.html> *****
Yoshie