11/29/00 4:35 p.m.
Contra Kinsley
It’s hard to see his logic.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

ichael Kinsley's latest column, carried both in Slate and the Washington Post, expresses outrage at the Bush campaign's attempts to pressure Al Gore into giving up his right to contest the certified Florida election results. He points out that Team Bush spent every day before the certification arguing that Gore was out of bounds in demanding any delay in certification because the proper course for him would be to wait for certification and then contest the election.

Now, Republicans are saying that it's unprecedented for a presidential candidate to contest the election and condemning Gore for doing it. Is this tactic "staggeringly dishonest," as Kinsley says? It's hard to see how.

Republicans aren't denying that Gore has a legal right to initiate a contest. They're saying that, as a matter of political morality, he shouldn't. This is not a sudden tactical reversal. During oral argument nine days ago before the Florida supreme court, Joseph Klock, Katherine Harris's attorney, said that a contest was the legally appropriate route for Gore to take, adding that the only reason Gore was trying to avoid having to contest the results was political. ("If the voting is certified, everyone can then proceed with a contest. The difficulty is the political problem that's created.") The political risk for Gore was precisely that he would come under the criticism that he's coming under now.

Of course, Republicans might not be having as much success with the no-contest argument if Gore had initiated a contest earlier. Which he could have done, had he not gotten the Florida Supremes to delay certification.

Bring the War Home
When Republicans come back to town, they ought to exercise some oversight over the Clinton administration's refusal to do its part to facilitate President-elect George W. Bush's transition. Sure, some Florida court could give Gore the upper hand again. Or a recount could be ordered in Tennessee. Or lightning could strike both Bush and Dick Cheney. At this point, though, Bush ought to be considered at least the presumptive president-elect. The tactical case for making Clinton's foot-dragging the issue is 1) that it looks petty and 2) that Gore looks less presidential any time Clinton's in the spotlight.

Begala's Lame Defense
By now, everybody's heard about Paul Begala's litany of atrocities committed in states that voted for George W. Bush. Now he's saying he's the victim of a "mugging." His critics — he mentions Peggy Noonan, Michael Kelly, and Robert Novak — have, he says, ignored the context of his remarks.

Begala points out that he was responding to Mike Barnicle's comment about the cultural divide revealed by the election results. Barnicle had described that divide as "Wal-Mart versus Martha Stewart" and "Family values versus a sense of entitlement." Begala says that he was only trying to point out that it's too simple to suggest that the Republican heartland is virtuous and the Democratic coasts decadent. So he pointed out that Matthew Shepard had been killed in Wyoming, that "right-wing extremists" blew up a federal building in Oklahoma, etc. (By the way, Timothy McVeigh's letters were actually a confused ramble through several ideologies, including Gore-style hostility to industrialism and support for animal rights.) After listing these crimes, Begala added, "But that's not the whole story, either." Begala says that he was arguing "for a more sophisticated, nuanced view of America."

Nuance? Begala's argument in his original article was that Republicans carried the South because of racism. He allowed that there are a lot of good people in the Bush states — hence Missouri's rejection of Republicans such as John Ashcroft and Colorado's support for gun control. Besides, while Barnicle's comments may have been provocative, there was nothing in them that merited that venomous passage of Begala's. Our guess is that most of Begala's critics were aware of the context of his remarks. They just didn't think that context excused them. And they were right.