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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
A VIEW FROM HERE
by deb weiss
Judy's Bottom Line
December 14, 2000
As I watched Mr. Gore's most recent reinvention (Concedin' Al), I was not
moved to rise above mere partisanship.
Nor did I give in to the temptation to say magnanimous things about the
vice-president's last hurrah, or opening gambit, or whatever on God's good
earth that was supposed to be.
EMAIL: DEB WEISS
You know the pack drill. "Eloquent." "The best speech of his career." "He
said all the right things."
Forgive me. Stripped clean from its context, perhaps, it was an admirable
speech: but I just don't seem to be able to strip it clean from its context.
Sure, he pleased the press (talk about a safe bet). Reporters emerged from
their deep mourning over the U.S. Supreme Court's loss of stature to praise
him with lavish, soggy excess.
For balance, mind you, an hour later they would 'diss' Mr. Bush's speech with
equal zest.
Unmoved by his pleasant rhetoric ("I was not elected to serve one party, but
to serve one nation," just didn't do it for them), some reporters attacked
Mr. Bush for his lack of polish, others for his presumptuousness in putting
forth his own agenda, instead of promising to let Tom Daschle make all the
really big decisions, which would have shown a Proper Humility.
Dan Rather demonstrated his keen journalistic skills by noting not just once,
but many times, that Mr. Bush had used a teleprompter.
You can't fool old Dan, so you'd might as well not try.
CNN's Jeff Greenfield -- who lends a kind of bumbling bookish amiability to
the art of the political smear -- was especially hissy over Mr. Bush's
affectionate tribute to his wife.
"Laura's active involvement as first lady has made Texas a better place,"
said the president-elect, "and she will be a wonderful first lady of
America."
Mr. Greenfield bridled at this, convinced it was a veiled attack on Hillary
Clinton. (Perhaps someone should put a little Prozac in the coffeepots at
CNN.)
Here's the thing about Al Gore: no amount of graceful oratory can erase the
fact that it was his own sheer shameless hunger that plunged the nation into
five weeks of hell.
"Tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our
democracy, I offer my concession," the eloquent Mr. Gore intoned last night,
quite forgetting that in the 35 days leading up to that moment, he had
wilfully strained our unity as a people to the screaming point, and left our
democracy subtly but profoundly weakened.
Under his active stewardship, we were subjected to whirlwinds of propaganda,
tidal waves of disinformation, torrents of smear, cascades of litigation --
and a contemptible racial calculation that has now taken on a life of its
own, threatening to isolate black Americans from the nation's institutional
and cultural mainstream more invidiously and thoroughly than old Jim Crow
ever did.
Eight minutes of shapely rhetoric could not undo the damage. We'll be paying
for Fightin' Al's hubris until we're old and grey.
So you'll forgive me if I don't join in the hallelujah chorus. All I feel
just now is a kind of exhausted relief, combined with a nervous notion that
Mr. Gore's brigades may yet dream up some way to steal this thing.
Jesse Jackson and John Sweeney aren't finished with us, after all -- nor are
the nation's establishment journalists, those brazen Friends of Al, whose own
institutional reputation has taken such a hit it's little wonder they're
trying to divert us with attacks on the Court.
I have a vision.
It's Inauguration Day 2001, a blustery, snowy day. Pundits in black armbands
talk amongst themselves, peevishly recalling the fair weather that attended
Mr. Clinton's two inaugurations. "A very different day today, Claire (deep
sigh)." "It certainly is, Tim."
Howling winds beset the paid rioters who've been shipped in to disrupt the
ceremonies (they will later sue the Bush Administration for numerous
frostbite injuries: Alan Dershowitz will represent them).
Meanwhile, back at CNN's Washington studio, Judy Woodruff is hard at work.
Her left eye twitching from nervous strain, her cheekbones gaunt, her hair in
disarray, she is poring over that Court decision with a magnifying glass
borrowed from the chad-hunters of Palm Beach County, in search of the elusive
loophole that might allow Al Gore to sprint onto the platform at the eleventh
hour, elbowing Mr. Bush aside and smacking his own covetous hand down on the
Bible.
Judy, you see, knows what's really at stake here.
Forget the highfalutin' talk about the founding fathers and the equal
protection clause and the sanctity of the vote.
For Judy, the bottom line is this: barring some miracle, come January 20th,
she and hubby Al Hunt Junior -- whose Wall Street Journal has been such an
invaluable asset to the Clinton slime machine -- will no longer be on the
White House "A" list.
It's that simple. Really, it is.
Here's the good news. There's a scrappy, durable man on his way to the White
House -- a shrewd player with a highly evolved instinct for survival, who
beat incredible odds to achieve this victory.
Having seen the game played against his father, he knows what to expect.
And having outfoxed the foxes once, he just might do it again.
At least, here's hoping.
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