11/11/00 9:55 a.m.
Baker’s Folly?
The Bushies may be about to make a very serious tactical error.

Robert A. George is an editorial page writer
for the New York Post------------------------------------RAGGEDmail@aol.com

lection 2000 (perhaps hereinafter forever known as "Election Uh-Oh") moves ever further into, shall we say, "unmapped territory" ("uncharted waters" is too much of a cliché; besides, don't we regularly speak of an electoral map?). However, the Bush effort — as represented by Jim Baker — might be about to make a very serious tactical error.

On Friday, one day after Gore campaign chairman William Daley threatened legal action — while the recount was still going on — Daley lowered the rhetoric. Evidently, he must have been getting more than an earful from worried Democrats. The plunge that the stock market took during Daley's Thursday press conference must have told many people in the campaign that bringing lawyers into the electoral process would be politically unwise and a public-relations nightmare.

So Daley modified his tone Friday to just focus on the recount. Late Friday, however, word got out that Bush had approved Jim Baker's going to court to prevent the hand recounting of ballots in Palm Beach and three other counties. The hand recount is perilous territory for Bush, since it gives the ballot counters wide latitude to interpret every mark and indentation on a ballot. As NRO's Washington Bulletin notes, "This, obviously, opens many opportunities for vote fraud. Republicans will be wise to have well-paid lawyers monitoring this whole process."

That's a good idea. But Baker's plan to seek a court order blocking the hand recount has all the potential to blow up in the Bush campaign's face. Such a move would take the GOP off the high road. At a moment when the Gore camp is toning down the rhetoric and the lawsuit talk, a Bush "first-use" of a court order to shut down a recount is a bad move. Yes, the Democrats have had lawyers on the ground since Wednesday, but they (not counting Christopher and Daley) have been largely out of sight. A public demand for a court order by the Bushes will be viewed suspiciously.

Aside from scrupulously overseeing the hand recount in the selected counties, the Bush campaign should — as sharp-eyed NRO reader John Beckwith suggests — demand hand recounts in select GOP-leaning counties. There could be just as much chance of finding "unpunched" ballots there as in the Democrat areas.

The side that unleashes the lawyers first — in the electoral process — will lose the public relations war.