Spinning out a farcical fiasco

ROGER FRANKLIN reflects on the most absurd election of recent times.

NEW YORK - It was Winston Churchill who branded democracy the worst of all political systems - except for every single one of the alternatives.

Had he lived to see the cavalcade of low farce and high comedy that has consumed the United States these past five weeks, he may well have developed a belated sympathy for totalitarianism.

From the night of the Al Gore victory, that became a George W. Bush victory, that spawned a stalemate, that finally spat George the Younger on to the doorstep of the Oval Office on Thursday, there is hardly a face in the pantheon of American politics not now covered with egg to one degree or another.

Start with Jesse Jackson's immense embarrassment at being exposed as an orator who cannot handle hecklers - or find one of his trademark rhymes to go with "chad." Then ponder Vice-President-elect Dick Cheney's misadventures with his running mate's dog, the succession of party loyalists who dutifully lined up to admit they were too stupid to correctly fill out a ballot, and the Florida Fiasco has produced no winners whatsoever. And that applies particularly to Bush, whose newly resurgent smirk must surely speak of innocence rather than eagerness for the task of leading a riven nation.

Begin with the blotted copybooks of America's pundit elite: At every point along the tortured road to the final resolution, the experts called it wrong. First, before the votes were cast, it was to be Bush all the way. Then in the immediate aftermath of the election night's confusion, they predicted that Gore would triumph because he had superlawyer David Boies leading his 500-strong legal team. Yet what happened when the $US700 ($1636)-an-hour lawyer made his final appearance before the Supreme Court on Tuesday?

Asked by one of the justices if it would be fair to count votes in Palm Beach by one standard and those in Miami by an entirely different yardstick, all Boies could manage was a tongue-tied silence that eventually produced the profound observation that it was "a tough question."

Anyone who noticed Boies' attire as he strode into the court could not have doubted that the man who vanquished Bill Gates and Microsoft was less than prepared to do his best for Gore. Instead of lawyerly black wingtips, his feet were shod with scuffed sneakers he had evidently forgotten to change.

Having spewed one wrong prediction after the other, the punditocracy has been reduced to noting that there have been no riots or military coups, and that Wall St, while a tad wobbly, remains sound.

Americans are never shy about singing their own praises but, taken at face value, the combined tonnage of barf-bag boilerplate on the nation's editorial pages does not amount to much more than a celebration of the fact that the US is more stable than Serbia, its military is better behaved than Pakistan's, and the country's financial institutions are more reliable than those of Russia. On the whole, not much to boast about - though the same Americans who regard people like America's Cup skipper Dennis Conner and the ghetto strutters of the US Olympic basketball team as genuinely good sports will do so with gusto all the same.

Now ponder the individual casualties.

There was Jerrold Nadler, for example, a left-wing Congressmen of immense girth who represents one of the most liberal districts of Manhattan. Airlifted to Palm Beach to rally Big Apple retirees, his most notable achievement was getting himself stuck in the narrow door of a minivan.

And what about the poor Republican demonstrators, those members of the otherwise Silent Majority, whose sense of outrage drove them to imitate the sort of protesters they have no doubt spent their whole lives detesting? Trouble was, well-bred Republicans do not do the protest thing very well at all.

When a group of neatly pressed Republican lawyers were banned from the counting room by the trio of Democrats who make up the Miami-Dade County's election board, the Bushites idea of a spirited protest was to chant Three Blind Mice while pointing their fingers like country club members attempting to attract the attention of a tardy waiter.

There was no need for tear gas or nightsticks to make them disperse. All it took was a solitary and rather elderly security guard, who explained that he had a bad heart. Gore's spinners called it "a riot" - but the TV footage soon scuttled that line of attack. As one of the participants noted, "How many rioters wear Polo shirts and penny loafers?"

The blue-collar Republicans who gave Jackson a hard time were more vocal. As Jackson darted from one county to the next, yellow school buses of his supporters trailed in his limousine's wake. At times, even the most devoted Jacksonite must have been troubled by the absurdity and inconsistency of the parts they were being asked to play.

On a single day, for example, Jackson addressed a crowd outside the state capitol in Tallahassee - a demonstration that reached its orchestrated climax when the thin throng devoted several minutes to chanting, "Count Every Vote!" Several hours later Jackson led another rally where organisers ordered the crowd not to utter those words under any circumstances. The reason? Inside a nearby courthouse, Democratic lawyers were attempting to have 15,000 postal ballots declared invalid because Republican volunteers wrote the required voter registration numbers on the envelopes in which they were mailed.

Now that it is all over, it is hard not to feel sympathy for Jackson, who went to the wall for Gore until the bitter end. As late as Wednesday - after the Supreme Court's pro-Bush ruling - he was all but threatening riots unless Gore was declared the winner. His reward for going so far out on a limb? In his concession speech, Gore called on America to put bitterness and angry words behind it and unite behind "the President-elect." In other words, "Thanks, Jesse, but you're on your own now."

If Jackson is forlorn, at least he still has his health. The same cannot be said for Cheney, who not only suffered a heart attack which Bush at first denied, but was also upstaged by Spot, his leader's springer spaniel. Addressing the press on Bush's Texas ranch, Cheney had only just launched into his remarks when the pooch decided to add a few of its own. Howling and barking like a thing possessed, Spot ended up all over the nightly news with Cheney as little more than a bit player.

And the final absurdity?

After five weeks of blaming everybody but themselves for the confusion in Palm Beach that cost Gore so many votes, a local party official finally admitted that evil Republicans might not have been to blame after all. It seems the real reason so many elderly Jews voted for Pat Buchanan was because local Democratic functionaries handed out thousands of erroneous how-to-vote guides that instructed recipients to punch the wrong hole.

Given his reluctant enthusiasm for democracy, Churchill would have had a big laugh over that one.

Herald Online feature: Election aftermath

Transcript: The US Supreme Court decision

Transcript: The US Supreme Court oral arguments

Diary of a democracy in trouble

The US Electoral College

Florida Dept. of State Division of Elections

Supreme Court of Florida

Supreme Court of the United States

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