-Caveat Lector-
Wall Street Journal
Dershowitz vs. Sammon
A look back at an election in which voters voted, then lawyers fought.
BY PHILIP TERZIAN
Monday, June 18, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT
At Any Cost By Bill Sammon (Regnery, 294 pages, $27.95)
Supreme Injustice By Alan M. Dershowitz (Oxford, 275 pages, $25)
As everybody knows, last year's presidential election didn't end on
Election Day and, for some, it didn't end 36 days after that, when Albert
Gore conceded defeat to George W. Bush.
The U.S. Supreme Court finished the marathon legal war to determine the
winner in Florida, but the political battle still goes on in certain
quarters.
At the time, the partisan divide was so broad, and bitterness so deep, that
it was widely believed that the fabric of the country had been dangerously
torn. But what a difference seven months make: Mr. Bush is firmly
ensconced in the White House, Mr. Gore has quietly retreated to Tennessee,
and a series of exhaustive newspaper inquiries have determined that, by the
narrowest of margins and to the surprise of the reporting corps itself, Mr.
Bush won Florida after all. Not everybody is persuaded, but the notion
that there is something illegitimate about the Bush presidency is largely
confined to the more ideologically committed precincts of the left.
Now come two books that probably seemed like a better idea last December,
in the heat of the moment, than they do now.
Bill Sammon, a veteran Washington Times reporter, has produced a solid,
workmanlike account of the combat waged between the Gore lawyers and the
Bush lawyers in Florida and Washington. Alan Dershowitz, the famous
appellate lawyer and Harvard law professor, has issued an impassioned brief
against the Supreme Court and its 7-2 decision that the Florida recount was
unconstitutional. If readers harbor any doubts about where they're being
taken, the subtitles settle them. Mr. Sammon reveals "How Al Gore Tried
to Steal the Election" while Mr. Dershowitz explains "How the High Court
Hijacked Election 2000."
If you believe that Albert Gore had a sense of entitlement about the
presidency, and reacted petulantly when the brass ring eluded his grasp,
then "At Any Cost" will furnish hours of reading pleasure, including a
happy ending. There is very little Beltway wisdom here: No crocodile tears
that Holocaust survivors in Palm Beach might have accidentally cast their
ballots for Pat Buchanan; no worshipful account of David Boies's courtroom
skills or agreement with Justice John Paul Stevens's angry dissent.
It is Mr. Sammon's contention that Mr. Gore, far from patiently awaiting
the verdict of history, orchestrated the strategy to push a constitutional
impasse to crisis, to inflict as much damage as possible on Mr. Bush and
to practice the politics of personal destruction. Does he make the case?
Certainly Mr. Gore was not a passive observer, and no major moves were
made without his contribution. But it is easy to forget the passions of
that interlude, the cacophony of voices, the courtroom antics and media
circus, and it is fair to assume that events pushed Mr. Gore as readily as
he pushed events.
Mr. Sammon is a fine reporter, though, and particularly adept at
translating arcane issues of election law into readable material.
Future chroniclers of this episode will appreciate his industry.
But while Mr. Sammon is candid about his perspective--he admires Mr. Bush
and deplores Mr. Gore--Alan Dershowitz pretends to a scholarly
objectivity. This resolve lasts for two or three pages. And what is
advertised as a critical examination of the Supreme Court's reasoning in
shutting down the Florida recount dissolves, in short order, into a
startling specimen of partisan hysteria. This is a profoundly silly book.
This is not to say, of course, that supporters of Mr. Gore's cause have no
case, or that the court's final judgment squashed opposing arguments. No
doubt the issue will be visited and revisited many generations hence. But
anyone looking for a studious disposition, or reasoned rebuttal, won't find
it here.
Frustrated by his unaccustomed failure in Florida, where he was an
advocate, Mr. Dershowitz strikes out at his antagonists with ill-concealed
rage. For someone who was once the youngest full professor in the history
of Harvard Law School, Mr. Dershowitz adopts a tone in "Supreme Injustice"
that is closer in spirit to Geraldo Rivera's TV show, where many of these
positions were first expressed.
Most distressing is Mr. Dershowitz's early and habitual resort to
name-calling. Lawyers for George W. Bush are presumed to have been
motivated solely by partisan interest, not principle, and the justices who
ultimately ruled against Mr. Gore are accused of corruption and
dishonesty. In one amusing sequence Mr. Dershowitz marshals a host of
academic Gore partisans--Cass Sunstein, Bruce Ackerman, Jeffrey Rosen--to
join him in his fury, while reporting as news the opinions of journalists
Linda Greenhouse, Anthony Lewis and Maureen Dowd.
Less amusing is his repeated invocation of anonymous scholars, unnamed
judges, unidentified observers and nameless Republicans who share his
biases, pass along gossip or describe his targets in derogatory terms.
In one remarkable passage "a professor who is expert in these matters"
explains the conservatism of Justice Antonin Scalia in terms that border on
bigotry: It is, says Professor X, "of the Old World European sort, rooted
in the authority of the Church and the military . . . more reminiscent
of French, Italian and Spanish clerical conservatism than of American
conservatism."
And it doesn't stop there. Quoting a Washington Post story, Mr. Dershowitz
confides that Justice Scalia was sent in his youth to "an elite church-run
military prep school in Manhattan," where one of his classmates remembered
him as "an archconservative Catholic [who] could have been a member of the
curia."
This would all be sad and not a little surprising if it weren't that, as
Bill Sammon recounts, it seems to be Mr.
Dershowitz's habitual style. It was he who described Florida Secretary of
State Katherine Harris a "a crook" and "corrupt" on CNN. You can say
things like that on cable TV, but it stains a book published by the Oxford
University Press.
Mr. Terzian writes a column from Washington for the Providence Journal.
=======================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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