The Re-Re-Re-Re-Recount
Are we done yet?

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
November 12, 2001 10:20 a.m.

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"?