The Electoral College Try

As our electoral dysfunction carried over into December, the question for most Americans became not how it would all end, but if.

O.J. Simpson searched the entire state of Florida but was unable to find the real president. “Dream Teams” of lawyers crept creepily across the landscape, like alligators carrying briefcases. Politicians and attorneys assembled en masse, in the most frightening get-together since the Frankenstein monster met the wolf man.

On television, two things were continually being counted--the number of votes legally cast for each of the candidates, and the number of American flags standing behind them. According to an unofficial hand count, Dick Cheney currently leads in most of the flagpole polls, but Al Gore was reported to have a new shipment of star-spangled banners being transported north by Ryder rent-a-truck.

George W. Bush kept busy building a new Cabinet, relieved upon being informed by an aide that it would not involve any carpentry. He also maintained his post-Election Day policy of not uttering a single word aloud that wasn’t written for him in advance.

Joe Lieberman sounded despondent in interviews, possibly because he may have to return to his seat in the Senate and abandon his plan to pressure Hollywood into making nothing but sequels to “101 Dalmatians.”

His running mate, who understands where nice guys finish, remained reluctant to graciously accept defeat. Comparing machine-counted ballots to supermarket items stamped with price codes that often malfunction, Gore demanded that bags of votes be delivered to Tallahassee, pausing only for the question: “Paper or plastic?”

*

OK, so this election has made us all as punchy as a Palm Beach butterfly ballot. Some of us have just wanted it over, final, official, no matter what the result, as with anything that drags on interminably without a winner, like prehistoric mammoths butting tusks, or Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky playing chess.

With impatience born of boredom, Americans--even Democrats after a while--have acted as if Vice President Gore should just say, “Well, we gave it the old electoral college try,” and congratulate Gov. Bush with a big sloppy hug, as if the Texan deserves to go down the runway wearing a tiara while the Tennessean should just concentrate his energies now on being voted Mr. Congeniality.

How sad that Americans’ attention span could be so short that we would grumble about being asked to wait a few weeks longer, until, for example, 10,750 ballots from Miami-Dade County invalidated by machines could be counted by hand. Particularly when that county was either too lazy or too corrupt to continue a manual count after the Florida Supreme Court gave it permission to do so.

Vested interests aside, did Americans honestly believe tedium was a sufficient reason to call the whole thing off and raise Bush’s right arm in victory? Just because an objectivity- challenged woman who worked for Bush’s campaign chose to use (abuse) her authority as Florida’s secretary of state to proclaim him the winner and new champion?

It depends, as usual, on whom you’re asking. A poll (yes, yet another one) made public Friday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported that when asked between Nov. 20 and 26 whether Bush won the election fair and square--the word they used was “legitimately”--54% of those surveyed said yes. In a poll taken Nov. 27-30, however, only 48% said yes.

One can’t blame Americans for being mixed up. It’s been tricky in 2000 to even separate the liberals from the conservatives. Musical lyrics and movie mayhem made Tipper Gore and Sen. Lieberman squirm, while Gov. Bush prior to 40 was a rapscallion who frequently didn’t let good sense stand in his way of a good time.

*

Also letting her hair down in the 1980s was Lynne Cheney, wife of Dick. She wrote a bawdy little novel that is being re-released just in time for Christmas.

“The Body Politic” is reportedly a fanciful tale of a 59-year-old Republican vice president who kicks the bucket from a heart attack while engaged in hanky-panky. (Dick Cheney is 59 now and has had four heart attacks.)

“It Takes a Village” this ain’t.

Political spouses do the darndest things. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s wife was once fined for reporting to Customs a much lower than accurate total for clothes she bought on a trip to Paris. Who knows, maybe Katherine Harris certified that total too.

Dick Cheney’s well-being is of concern to the American public, and he isn’t even in office yet. During the years George W. Bush’s dad was president, Americans knelt and prayed for his robust health, dreading the vapid veep who waited in the wings.

Now it’s Bush fils we need to say a little prayer for, because for all we know, Cheney will drop out by Inauguration Day, in favor of somebody for whom nobody voted.

*

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to: Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com.