Legal wrangle at dawn for experts with velvet hammer

RUPERT CORNWELL sizes up the elder statesmen appearing for both sides

WASHINGTON - It is a duel between Secretaries of State which neither can ever have imagined: brutal politics wrapped in the suave trappings of diplomacy, with the prize of the presidency of the United States for whichever of their clients wins.

The legal struggle for the 25 electoral votes of Florida pits against each other two of the country's most eminent elder statesmen: representing George W. Bush is James Addison Baker III, consigliere to the Bush family for more than two decades. In the other corner is Warren Christopher, official or unofficial adviser to every Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson.

The outward styles differ hugely: Baker with his favoured image of Texan good ol' boy, a pair of black cowboy boots poking out from beneath those immaculate Houston-tailored suits; Christopher with the dour manner of his native North Dakota, which the best part of a lifetime in Los Angeles has failed to change.

But strip aside the trappings and the two men are remarkably similar. Both are in their 70s. Both are top-drawer career lawyers, who would be perfectly happy arguing the other's case if their roles were reversed. Both are adherents of the "velvet hammer" school of lawyering; moderate and reasonable in tone, but iron-hard on the substance.

Above all, both fulfil a vital function in the battle for public opinion, which may ultimately decide this unbelievably close election. Baker and Christopher have gravitas by the shovel-load - indeed in any other circumstance they would be high on the list of any impartial national "wise men." Both camps are banking on them to persuade a cynical electorate that the Florida contest is something slightly loftier than what it in reality is: a no-holds-barred extra-time struggle to win the White House.

Baker talks loftily of bringing "finality" to a process which, he calculates, most Americans are desperate to see the back of - in other words, using the legal system if necessary, securing a definitive result while his man George W. is still ahead. Christopher's case is the knowledge that every fresh count, mechanical and above all manual, is likely to work to Al Gore's advantage.

Everyone knows, however, that were Bush trailing, Baker would be fighting tooth and elegant nail to keep the counts going as long as possible. Were a threadbare Gore lead in jeopardy, Christopher would be trying to cut off any further recount. Instead, he describes the decision of Katharine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State, to insist on today's deadline for certification of the vote, as "arbitrary and unreasonable." In Christopher-speak, that is a declaration of war.

Baker and Christopher are, by instinct, backstage figures, executors rather than leaders. Baker did fight and lose one public election in his life, for Texas Attorney-General in 1978; four years ago, he briefly contemplated a run for the presidency - before realising that his political base within the Republican Party was nil.

Christopher - personally so kind and accessible but hampered by a gravelly voice, lugubrious manner, and almost suffocating discretion - is anything but a man for the hustings and he has never ventured there. Diplomacy and the law at the highest levels are his stock in trade.

Under President Johnson he headed a commission to investigate the race riots across the US in the late 1960s; in 1991 he performed a similar role during the Bush Administration, looking into racism in the Los Angeles police department after the beating of the black motorist Rodney King. Under President Carter he served as Deputy Secretary of State, almost pulling off the pre-election release of the Teheran embassy hostages in 1980.

Then he handled the Clinton transition in 1992, before serving as Secretary of State for the first Clinton term. If only, some reflect, he had been as forceful against Slobodan Milosevic as he has been these past few days against Republican manoeuvring in Florida.

But Baker is his match in experience and service to Presidents, in his case Republican. He managed Gerald Ford's election campaign in 1976, and as chief of staff in the first Reagan term, ran what is considered the most efficient White House in memory. In 1988, he led the White House campaign of George Bush sen, and was rewarded with the State Department, before being summoned back to the White House, three months before election day, in a doomed effort to thwart a Clinton victory in 1992. Now another Bush has called upon the consigliere's services, hoping for a different result.

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