This Election Proves That There Was a Y2K Bug After All

And we thought we’d get through the year 2000 without getting hit by the Y2K bug. The Florida Fiasco proves that the Y2K bug may not have gotten into our computers, but it did get into our politics. The U.S. Supreme Court’s reverse and remand decision keeps a sliver of hope alive for Al Gore--for six days, unless the pressure to concede gets to him first.

The court’s decision is a ball of confusion about standards and nonstandards that legal scholars will be trying to untangle for decades. Before that, however, George W. Bush seems likely to be the beneficiary. But long before any inauguration, the court’s ruling is going to drive politicians and their zealous supporters crazy--or maybe, more precisely, crazier.

Remember the presidential campaign, which ended on Nov. 7 with 100 million or so people voting? That frantic year of electioneering pales next to the frenzy of legaleering that has characterized the last five weeks. And the changing dynamic is reflected in the two clients--once known as candidates Gore and Bush. They’ve changed themselves to meet the needs of their lawyers.

Is the Florida case about counting all the votes, as Al Gore says? If so, why did his Democratic allies, with his tacit endorsement, seek to throw out the 25,000 ballots in Martin and Seminole counties? Or is the case about bringing the country together, as Bush said? If so, why has he been hiding in his Ranch of Solitude in Crawford, Texas?

Grass-roots activists for the two candidates have changed, too. All through the election cycle, it was never hard to find partisans on both sides of the aisle who were more fired up by opposition to the other guy than for their own man. Democrats have been busy building the legend of Republican storm troopers shutting down the count in the Miami-Dade canvassing board; never mind the fact that there were no arrests and that footage captured yuppieish GOPers yelling while a bailiff stood by watching them, clearly not happy, but just as clearly not feeling threatened.

And other Democrats have been turning up the volume. Jesse Jackson predicted, “If this court rules against counting our vote, it will simply create a civil rights explosion. People will not surrender to this tyranny. We will fight back.”

The Washington Times went on to quote Jackson’s comparing the present-day Supreme Court to the court that issued the Dred Scott decision. That case, in 1857, in which the court upheld slavery, helped provoke the Civil War.

Strong stuff? Not as strong, perhaps, as the comments of some Republicans, who see Bolshevism billowing out of Florida. Over the weekend, as reported in the Lynchburg (Va.) News & Advance, Morton Blackwell, the Republican National committeeman for Virginia, said, “These people are basically Leninists. They will stop at nothing to win.” Blackwell added that the battle could get “bloody, figuratively and, I fear, literally.”

Through it all, Bush has done better in the court of public opinion; according to a CBS News poll, Bush’s favorable/unfavorable rating is 51 to 35 nationwide, while Gore’s is 41 to 48. And 64% think that if Bush becomes president, he will have legitimately won, compared to just 49% who think that Gore will have won legitimately. Interestingly, the same CBS poll also asked Americans, “Who do you think more Florida voters intended to vote for?” Forty-one percent said that they thought Gore had more intenders, compared to 38% for Bush.

In other words, people just want the case to be over.

On Tuesday, the Florida state Legislature began the process of picking Bush electors, just in case counting the votes failed to get the result that it wants. The Legislature’s action, of course, will provoke more bitterness, and no doubt more legal action.

Americans are supposed to respect the courts. But the judges and justices on those courts, ruling, and counter-ruling have not helped Americans feel better about what’s happening.

And the presidency, of course, will not soon recover from this foolishness. Whoever wins will have won the office under a cloud, and nothing that Americans have seen since the election suggests that either man, Bush or Gore, has the capacity to lift the miasma.

But Bush is likely to be the man drinking from the seemingly poisoned chalice of the 43rd presidency, and so it will be his extraordinary challenge to part these chad-filled thunderheads, and bring sunlight and sanity back to politics.