Co-conspirators

By covering Bush's post-campaign as though it were politics-as-usual, the media are complicit in his attempted theft.

by Dan Kennedy

MONDAY, DECEMBER 11, 10 a.m. - Despite the 24/7 treatment on the all-news cable channels, the Florida fiasco is not, at root, a media story. It's too big, too important, and too fast-moving for the media to be able to shape (and distort) events.

The Monica Lewinsky saga made household names out of Chris Matthews and Matt Drudge, and established Maureen Dowd as the must-read columnist of the late '90s. By contrast, the stars of Post-Election 2000 are lawyers (David Boies, especially) and hired thugs such as Jim Baker and William Daley.

Yet by their very passivity the media have played a role. As of this morning, with the story heading into what may well prove its final day, it's clear that the mess was created, at least in part, by the Bush campaign's brilliant exploitation of the media's institutional need to be perceived as even-handed.

The Gore forces, cynical though they have sometimes been, have focused nearly all of their attention on the need to examine legitimately cast ballots that may or may not contain clearly expressed votes. The Bush strategy has been to stop that effort at every turn, lest the 65,000 ballots rejected during the machine counts turn out to reveal victory for Gore. Sort of gives a whole new meaning to "get out the vote."

Worshipping, as always, before the false god of objectivity, the media have reported on these dueling efforts as though they were equally reasonable, equally moral, equally part of the accepted political game. But think about how different this all might have been if George W. Bush had had this to say after the second machine count:

"I agree with the vice-president that all of the ballots have to be counted. You know, in Texas I signed a law that when an election is this close, the ballots have to be counted by hand. That's the law in Florida, too. So let the counting begin."

If Bush had taken such a step, he wouldn't have been seen as any great statesman; he would merely have appeared to be bowing to the inevitable. And this would be over by now. The Bushies' most startling dead-on insight was that the inevitable wasn't inevitable - that is, that they could brazen it out, and that no one except a few commentators on the left would cry foul.

Indeed, not only has Bush gotten away with it, but it is Al Gore who is generally painted as the obstructionist simply because he's been unwilling to shut it down and go home until all of the votes have been counted.

In a world turned upside-down, wisdom sometimes comes from the least likely sources. Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, of whom I've been critical in the past for his blatant pro-Democratic bleatings, has been razor-sharp in noting that Bush is willing to become president despite having lost the popular vote and despite the very real possibility that he lost Florida, and thus the electoral vote, as well.

On Sunday, the Globe ran two syndicated columns that also cut right to the heart of things. Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect, reviewed the shocking, blatant attempts by Florida Republicans to purge African-American voters from the rolls - from accidentally deleting 8000 felons-who-weren't-actually-felons (first reported by Salon) to failing to equip black precincts with the same technology as white ones to determine whether voters were registered or not (first reported in the New York Times).

E.J. Dionne, of the Washington Post, hit hard at the double-standard that has benefited Bush - the notion that Gore was supposed to concede if the Florida Supreme Court had ruled against him, yet Bush can fight on and on, even if it means having the Florida legislature choose a slate of electors in defiance of the voters' expressed will. As Dionne put it: "Heads Bush wins, tails Gore loses."

Whereas liberal columnists such as Oliphant, Dionne, and Kuttner have grounded their opinions in fact, some conservatives appear to have lost their minds. The Weekly Standard, usually the voice of sane Republicanism, ran a cover illustration a couple of weeks ago of Gore dressed up as Aaron Burr, blowing the smoke off a freshly shot pistol. WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) talk-show host and MSNBC.com columnist Jay Severin regularly refers to Gore as "Al Crack Whore"; last Friday, shortly after the Florida Supreme Court had voted to count the 65,000 rejected ballots, Severin called on the Army to move in and expressed the view - seriously, I think - that Gore should be shot for treason. Washington Post columnist and Atlantic Monthly editor Michael Kelly, more apostate liberal than conservative, began a recent column with this: "It's a tossup as to what is most revolting about Al Gore's determination to vote-rig his way into the White House." Hey, you say vote-rig, I say count; let's call the whole thing off.

Of course, as we all know, there can be a difference between what is right and what is legal. Counting all the votes is what is right, but the Florida Supremes may well have overreached in arrogating that responsibility to themselves. If that's what the US Supreme Court concludes, we should accept that.

Then, too, there are some harsh realities that liberals should enter into their calculations. If Gore wins, his presidency is likely to be a disaster. The Republicans have already signaled that they will make it impossible for him to govern, and Gore lacks the political instincts to rally the public to his side. For liberals, a one-term Bush presidency followed by a Democratic comeback is likely to be less painful, in the long run, than a one-term Gore presidency followed by a Republican, especially if - as seems likely - that Republican would run to Bush's right.

But that doesn't change the central reality of the post-campaign. Bush is willing to steal the election, and it looks like he's going to succeed. By covering this as though it were nothing worse than politics-as-usual, the media are complicit in this theft.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com

More: Phoenix Election 2000 coverage