Former Watergate figure Dean has read a lot books about the 2000 presidential election, and comes away from all this information with the conclusion that history will write: Al Gore won, George Bush's team stole it from him. As Hunter S. Thompson put it, "Bush didn't actually steal the White House from Al Gore, he just brutally wrestled it away from him in the darkness of one swampy Florida night. Gore got mugged, and the local cops don't give a damn."

This story is such a non-starter after September 11 because we have this huge blame culture in the US. There is a difference between recognizing that Bush is the President and that he should not be the president because he did not win the election. People try to confuse the two and think that the remedy for the Bush team's electoral shenanigans is to remove him from office. On the contrary, the solution is to make sure crap like this can never happen again, something no one is taking seriously at all. If an election can be stolen once, it can be stolen every time.

Almost every student of the election has concluded that the Supreme Court delivered a partisan decision (detectable because the majority ruled in line with its political beliefs but against its own precedents in very similar cases). Dean also writes, "Florida Governor Jeb Bush's behind-the-scenes efforts and influence are still not fully known, but his presence was felt everywhere during the recount, assuring his brother's team a win. Jeb Bush's influence helped open doors for George W. Bush, and closed doors for Gore. This part of the story still remains to be told." Lots of people want to make sure it's not.

However, the huge cry to abolish the electoral college over this is junk science, misplaced outrage from a lot of people who want to skew elections one way or another. For solid proof, read this Discover magazine article from 1996, Math against Tyranny. Note that Discover's search engine moves from time to time; the IP address in that link won't last forever. If you can't find it, go to the magazine's # - Posted to Politics on 1/30/02; 2:29:01 PM - Discuss -