WASHINGTON — If Al Gore, Bill Daley, Warren Christopher and their
legion of lawyers succeed in stealing the presidential election from
George W. Bush, it won’t be because they had a telemarketer assemble a
list of “confused” Palm Beach County voters and potential pro-Gore
litigants the very night of the election; or because they shortly
thereafter sent campaign flack Chris Lehane to a Palm Beach strip center
to herd elderly Democrats into signing affidavits attesting to their
“confusion”; or because they muscled ahead with a hand-count of ballots
in Democratic precincts.
And it won’t be because they’ll shamelessly pursue “other options” if
the manual recount still doesn’t wipe out Bush’s lead, even if it means
more uncertainty for the stock market and further erosion of the
retirement portfolios of the very senior citizens whose voting rights
they deign to protect.
No, they will steal the election because Bush and the effete GOP
establishment will have let them steal it. Their first mistake: Counting
on Gore to do the decent and honorable thing and concede victory.
Decent and honorable Republicans should know better by now that
members of this regime do not do the decent and honorable thing. Oh,
sure, they make a good show of it, even enlisting decent- and
honorable-looking chaps like the dapper former secretary of State.
But before Bush could get one leg into his trousers
the morning after the election, Gore’s guerrillas had
already mobilized for all-out assault on Florida,
coordinating with Jesse Jackson and other professional
activists the human leveraging and emotional posturing
they’d need to win the public-relations war on CNN.
While Dubya and Dick joked about what a major-league rectal sphincter
Gore was over coffee and cantaloupe at the governor’s mansion, the
sphincter was looking into ways to raise money for a protracted legal
battle. Bush campaign chairman Don Evans didn’t e-mail supporters a plea
for money to cover legal fees until Sunday.
Whenever Republicans do battle with Democrats, especially this mutant
breed, they remind me of the Redcoats during the Revolutionary War.
Standing on ceremony proved their demise.
They marched I-beam-backed in perfect formation, only to be mowed
down by rag-tag colonists crouched behind rocks and bushes. The
Minutemen, as far as the Redcoats were concerned, didn’t fight decently
and honorably, but the Minutemen won.
Gore has laid a similar trap for Republicans — the trap of decency
— and they have marched right into it again.
With whom did they think they were dealing? Did they not take
seriously their own warnings to voters that Gore would say and do
anything to get elected?
If the final Florida count had been reversed, Bush would have been
content to go back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Not Gore. He’s spent
every waking hour of his adult life jockeying to get within striking
distance of the presidency. He’s not going to let a few hundred votes
stand between him and the Oval Office. It is his raison d’être.
And did Bush and his advisers forget the cheeky pair with whom Gore
has shared power the past eight years? Time after time, Republicans have
expected Bill and Hillary Clinton to do the decent and honorable thing;
and time after time, they’ve done the opposite.
Any other president would have resigned over the Lewinsky scandal to
spare his wife and daughter further embarrassment, if not the country.
Not this one. He shook his finger at us, bullied his own secretary,
smeared lawmakers and prosecutors, lied to a grand jury and even bombed
three countries in a vain attempt to weasel out of it. Rather than do
the right thing, he dragged Americans through a year-long nightmare.
Given that monstrous example of egocentrism, why does Bush think Gore
won’t drag us through another constitutional crisis?
In the case of Hillary, any other wife would have divorced her
husband when his mistress released tape-recorded proof of their affair,
one of many prior affairs. Not this one. She instead went on “60
Minutes” to support him, salvaging his run for president.
Any other first lady would have thought twice about coming to his
defense again when news broke of his affair with an intern. Not this
one. She not only rushed to his side but blamed right-wing conspirators
for making up the whole thing.
After DNA proved her husband cheated on her again, she not only still
declined to condemn him but failed to apologize to conservatives for
falsely condemning them.
Even Democrats have been disappointed. The right and decent thing for
the Clintons to have done after their national health-care plan flopped
was to admit to a colossal political miscalculation, but neither Clinton
has done so. Their overreach cost their party the Congress, yet
Democrats are still waiting for an apology. The Clintons apparently are
too busy blaming their 1996 fund-raising abuses on party chiefs for
that.
These aren’t normal Democrats. They don’t operate by the same ethical
code of any of us. Common decency, let alone statesmanship, is a foreign
concept to them. They don’t resign, apologize, confess, admit wrongs,
take responsibility or compromise.
And they do not concede.
It’s not from such ruthless selfishness alone that they draw power,
but from our eternal hope that, for once, they won’t be so ruthlessly
selfish; that at least in this epic moment, they will finally put the
interest of the country over their own interests.
They count on us counting on them being decent. Our decency is their
life force, and they suck from it like vampires. Bush is the decent son
of a decent family. What greater host than he?
Does the Daniel Penny verdict mean justice is back in NYC?
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