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 ar:
What is it good for? If you're President George W. Bush, it's clearly
good for a few helpful headlines. The media finally has released
its comprehensive Florida recount, and everywhere the claim is that
Bush would have won under virtually all circumstances.
It's hard to
believe this is what would have dominated the headlines absent the
chastening of September 11. The media also claim that Al Gore would
have won under a statewide recount. That's the real news. It almost
certainly would have been the lead earlier, because it's the result
that supposedly comes closest to capturing the true intent of Florida
voters.
Everybody dutifully
points out that a statewide recount was never a part of Gore's post-election
strategy, and therefore the ex-vice president would not have triggered
it. Yet all this recounting has been an exercise in fantasy from
the start. It never has mattered what really happened: Bush won
the election, after winning the initial vote count, the machine
recount, the late-arriving absentee and overseas ballots added to
the machine recount, and the hand recount mandated by the Florida
Supreme Court. All this was known before the media started second-guessing
everything in a series of "what if" scenarios.
Gore partisans
now have more ability to claim that under at least one standard
of imposed fairness, their man won. Gore's own statement on the
media recount really admits nothing: "We are a nation of laws,
and the presidential election of 2000 is over. And, of course, right
now our country faces a great challenge as we seek to successfully
combat terrorism. I fully support President Bush's efforts to achieve
that goal."
In other words,
Gore doesn't say he "lost," he simply says the election
"is over." No kidding. But isn't it time, to borrow a
phrase from the Clinton era, to "move on"?
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