-Caveat Lector-
Ominous portents, fighting words
For Bush and the GOP, a stop-at-nothing
strategy could win the presidency and spark
a constitutional crisis
George W. Bush, attacked the Florida Supreme Court ruling Thursday
and signaled his willingness Wednesday to circumvent the courts and
have the matter decided by the Florida legislature and possibly the
House of Representatives.
By Eric Alterman
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
Nov. 22 — The country is approaching a political danger zone whose
potential peril may soon exceed the Republican Congress's 1998
assault on the Constitution. Impeachment, for all its circus-like
qualities, was a constitutionally directed process overseen by the US
Supreme Court. But so bent on victory is George W. Bush that he seems
ready to undermine not only the power, but also the legitimacy of the
Florida Supreme Court. His campaign paints its legal decisions as
merely another political tactic by the Gore campaign to try to steal
his presidency under the cover of manual recounts.
Prepare to enter a political danger zone, in which the law is
debased and politics rule.
BUSH ANGRILY ACCUSES the Florida Supreme Court not of
interpreting the law, but of "rewriting" it and "overreaching" its
powers. He follows on the irate indictment of Bush family
consigliere, James A. Baker III, who attacked the seven justices who
ruled unanimously against the Bush campaign. Baker implied that the
court, which was appointed exclusively by Democratic governors, was
simply stretching its mandate to elect Al Gore.
A REAL STRETCH
"The Gore campaign is working to try to change the counting
rules and standards in the three counties that are still manually
recounting so as to overcome Governor Bush's continuing lead," Baker
complained Tuesday. Bush, speaking the next day, insisted that the
Gore team was working to change the "legitimate result" of the vote
after the votes had taken place, as if the Florida Supreme Court had
no right to interpret the will of its people. This constituted, he
said, "a stretch."
The Bush/Baker war on the Florida Supreme Court appears to be
laying the groundwork for the final result of the vote recount to be
overturned in the state legislature, if possible, and the U.S. House
of Representatives, if necessary. Baker hinted at this when he
suggested that "no one should now be surprised" if Florida's
Republican legislature decides to overturn what Bush oddly called
court's "legalistic" decision. (Bush said he would leave this
decision to Baker.) This would be a truly remarkable turn of events.
To undo the lawful ruling of the Florida Supreme Court,
lawmakers would either have to pass a new, post-facto law to overturn
the court's decision, or simply ignore the vote and choose its own
slate of electors. Either decision would require the explicit
assistance and perhaps even the signature of the Republican
candidate's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; hardly an action that the
rest of the nation can be expected to view as fair or legitimate.
GOING TO EXTREMES
Going beyond the legislature to the U.S. House of
Representatives to claim victory, however, would be an even more
extreme step, making a mockery of George W. Bush's and the
Republicans' entire political philosophy of preferring local control
over all matters to federal authority. Yet we have already heard
House Republican Whip Tom DeLay advise his colleagues in a memo that
it may be necessary to challenge the seating of a Florida delegation
to the Electoral College that does not plan to hand the vote to
George Bush. Al Gore has disavowed any efforts to challenge the
results of an Electoral College vote or "turn" any Republican
electors to his side. The Bush camp has so far been silent on this
issue.
WINNING AT ANY COST
The Bush/Baker war on the Florida Supreme Court appears to be laying
the groundwork for the final result of the vote recount to be
overturned in the state legislature, if possible, and the U.S. House
of Representatives, if necessary.
Some of the more astute commentators on this crisis have
noticed a paradox in the attitudes of the two competing teams. One of
the more personally attractive qualities of candidate "W" was the
fact that he didn't seem too wrapped up in being president in the
first place. He could win, he could lose, but as he said, "life would
go on." Al Gore's ambitions, however, appeared naked and all-
consuming.
Yet each man's party appears to be operating from exactly the
opposite assumptions. Democrats can take or leave the presidency this
time around, and that's putting it generously. Congressional leaders
and party activists believe they will have an excellent chance of
picking up enough seats to control Congress next time around against
a weakened President Bush, and do not see that they have much to gain
from a cautious, centrist, and perhaps fatally damaged Gore
presidency. Republicans, on the other hand, cannot bear the notion of
another four years of the Clinton/Gore regime they have been
desperately trying to overthrow for six years. They will take the
presidency on any terms at all — short of asking Colin Powell and
Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf to lead a land invasion of Palm Beach
County.
THE FEROCITY GAP
You can see the difference in the tepid and rather nervous
support that Gore's efforts have garnered among professional
Democrats. His most outspoken advocates have been outsiders like
Jesse Jackson and Alan Dershowitz, along with Bob Kerrey, who was
himself a bit of an outsider in the Senate and is now retiring to
academia. Nearly every Republican quoted in the media, however, seems
to be fighting a losing battle against a fury so profound that their
language sometimes harkens back to some of the ugliest moments of
Germany's Weimar Republic.
Pundit George Will, reporting as if from another planet,
discerns what he terms "a stunning asymmetry" in the "ferocity gap,"
as "Democrats fight for power with a frenzy born of … material greed"
while the Republicans show nothing but good manners. Here are a few
examples from the past few days of Republican timidity:
A Bush campaign aide in Tallahassee terms the Florida Supreme
Court a Democratic "banana jury."
Majority Whip Tom DeLay calls the court a collection of liberal
activists who have "arbitrarily swept away thoughtfully designed
statutes ensuring free and fair elections and replaced them with
their own political opinions."
Rep. J. C. Watts, fourth-ranking official in the House majority,
labels Al Gore "a candidate who will not win or lose honorably, but
will try to do so through cut-throat tactics that eight years under
President Clinton have taught him."
Former Republican Secretary of Education and Republican pundit
William Bennett insists, "Al Gore is trying to steal this election
[with] … thuggish tactics."
The editors of the Wall street Journal accuse Gore and the Democrats
of planning legally-mandated "coup d'etat."
RUNNING FROM THE FIGHT
Nearly every Republican quoted in the media seems to be fighting a
losing battle against a fury so profound that their language harkens
back to some of the ugliest moments of Germany's Weimar Republic.
How will it all end? My money, I am sorry to say, is on
George Bush. Time.com carried a report over the weekend that Gore's
top advisers, Warren Christopher and William Daley were already
planning to talk him into quitting if the key court rulings did not
go his way. Joe Lieberman was not even willing to risk his safe
Senate seat on this election. They will run away from this fight the
first chance they get. Meanwhile, Al Gore has been too dutiful a
young man his entire life to resist the pressure of party elders to
throw in the towel when the going gets rough and the public's
patience begins to wear thin — particularly when he is looking
stronger than ever for 2004.
SLOWING DOWN THE COUNT
The Republicans, meanwhile, appear to have an endless array of
tactical attacks in their arsenal. Hypocrites they may be, but they
will at the very least be able to tie the election up in knots long
enough to convince wavering Democrats to jump ship. They have already
tried to short-circuit the democratic process through the arbitrary
rulings of a minor party functionary, Bush campaign co-chair and
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, before being publicly
humiliated by the court. They have also contravened their own
statements about the desire to keep the entire matter out of the
courts and in the hands of the "people" by beating the Gore team into
the judge's chambers. Both of these schemes backfired, but an almost
endless array remain to be tried.
The Republicans can purposely slow down the manual count in
Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties to a snail's pace in order to
sabotage their to meet the court-imposed deadline of 5 pm Sunday.
They can challenge every ruling of the Florida Supreme Court in the
11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, and even the U.S. Supreme
Court. The latter may be allowed under a something called the Rooker-
Feldman Doctrine, which allows a plaintiff to go directly to the
Supreme Court when the decision of a state court raises a
constitutional question. They can use their advantage in the Florida
legislature and the governor's office to overturn a new count. They
can ram whatever they want through the Republican-controlled House of
Representatives if all else fails. And no matter what they do, they
will have the support of a significant portion of the punditocracy,
who have come to share their hatred of Bill Clinton and Al Gore with
a vehemence that long ago traversed the boundaries of rationality.
And what of George W. Bush? Will he call off the dogs, stand
on principle as the "healer" he claims to be, and instruct his
brother and Tom DeLay not to use the power of their respective
offices in any way that might forever stain his administration with
the taint of illegitimacy? I beg the reader's indulgence for my last
sentence. After all, I am paid to write political analysis, not fairy
tales.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Alterman is a columnist for The Nation and a regular contributor
to MSNBC.
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