STOP THE PRESSES

GORE LOSES DADE: No news here, except a confirmation of what the Palm Beach Post found a while back. The real news is that there is now no doubt that, if Gore had had everything go his way in the first three weeks after the election, and if the recounts in his four cherry-picked counties had been completed in full and in time along the lines adopted by the respective, Democratic canvassing boards, then Gore would still have lost. It’s still possible that a full recount of every county, using the most liberal standards available, might still eke out a Gore win in Florida. But in some ways, that’s not the salient point. The salient point is that we should shed no tears for Gore. He had a chance to be a statesman and call for recounts in every county immediately after the second recount kept Bush alive. He blew it, by adopting a Clintonian win-at-all-costs strategy of picking a few friendly counties and trying to win the Clinton way – by cutting corners. It turns out that this sneaky strategy was too sneaky by half and ended up backfiring. Too bad, Al. For me, I see a seamless link between the ethical impulses behind the Pardon Scam and the Florida Recount. To pursue a skewed recount that could never have resulted in a clear victory for either side was the summation of a Clintonian moral compass. It said in a loud voice: “We don’t care what damage this will do. We don’t care about fairness. We care about winning.” The fact that Gore lacked any sense that this kind of strategy was beneath him, that it could embroil the entire system in a crisis for the sake of a tainted victory, is a clear enough sign to me that, in the end, Gore would not have been the antidote to Clinton. He was the continuation of Clinton by other means. A once-ethical man with genuine aspirations for his country was simply another victim of Clinton’s depravity. Thank God he’s not president now.