Hun-Speak

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November 28, 2000 -- Election Catharsis

I know I promised that I wasn't going to talk about politics any more. Of course, I also figured that we still wouldn't be waiting almost a month later to find out who our next president will be. It wasn't supposed to be this difficult. A close race in a state with plenty of electoral votes made sure that what was an election with a great voter turn-out would slowly degenerate into a legal battle and a public-relations war.

I will state for the record that I am a conservative and I voted for Bush. Naturally, many will say that I have a major bias on this issue. While I do have an obvious bias, my points remain just as valid as if I were a Democrat, Libertarian, or a member of Jesse Ventura's Wrestling Party or whatever they call themselves these days.

There are those in Al Gore's camp who would have you believe that the only place in the United States where there are improperly-filled-out (and therefore rejected) ballots in the whole country is in certain counties in Florida. They would also have you believe that this is a unique quirk of this election. Neither case is true. Ballots get rejected in every election. There are an estimated one million ballots that were rejected nationwide in this election. Why is it such a big deal then? Why should the vice-president of the United States get on national television and plead for patience while people shuffle through chads in a couple of counties in a vain effort to dig up 500 or so more votes?

The spin doctors say that we have to let this legal challenge continue because this is America where Every Vote Counts. We need to hear the Will of the People. So let's drape ourselves in the American flag and Fight for Freedom!

That's all well and good, if it weren't so much rhetoric, and nothing else. Why are Gore and company challenging the count? Because he's really concerned with south Florida voters who have remarkable difficulty voting? Hardly. He wants to be President, end of story. I certainly cannot fault him for that. As a matter of fact, I must give him a certain amount of credit for having the intestinal fortitude to want to run for president. I know there's no way I would ever want to expose myself and my family to the intense media scrutiny that every candidate must face.

Gore has made a mistake in thinking that Americans can tolerate a prolonged court battle. Rightly or wrongly, there are few professions more abhorred in the United States than that of a lawyer. (Just a personal note: I have known many lawyers personally whom I regard as upstanding men and women who do what they feel is right and good. Like all stereotypes, there are always exceptions.) You can't get up before the American people with a straight face and say, "Say, wouldn't it be great if we brought in the lawyers?" They aren't going to buy it.

One sure sign that people aren't buying it is that even the news media is beginning to use the term "whining" in respect to Gore's platitudes and legal maneuvering. Even some people who voted for Gore are beginning to say that enough is enough. We need to let our country move forward, rather than let this descend into a constitutional crisis.

The stock markets are skittish. After all, it only takes a faked company press release to send the Dow Jones into a spiral. Going without a president is causing seizures. The country needs to get back to business.

I also wonder who exactly is footing the bill for these recounts and all the associated legal challenges. Oh, wait a minute, it didn't take me very long to figure it out. I'm paying for it. And so are you. And so is every other tax-paying American. You don't really believe that the Democratic National Committee will be opening up its coffers to help defray the cost of people recounting the votes twice (by machine again and by hand) and having judges hear all these cases, do you?

The really sad thing about all this is that it is making me, and no doubt many others, even more cynical about the whole election process. It's sad that in an election that had one of the highest voter turnouts in history is being marred by this whole fiasco. Thankfully, I know that the American people have painfully short memories when it comes to things like this. So hopefully in 2004 people won't vote with their rear ends and stay in their Barcaloungers instead of going out to the polls.

Is the electoral college an outdated concept? Perhaps. Maybe that's something that needs to be addressed by the next administration. Hopefully the elected officials in the counties where there were voting problems will take steps to eliminate those problems in future elections. And folks, let's start doing that now and not wait until the next election.

I hope that the American people will accept the next president, whether it be George W. Bush or Al Gore, so we can put this whole incident behind us, learn from it, grow from it, and move on. We don't need a four-year lame-duck president.

I suppose that if I get too upset about the election, I can always slip deeper into cynicism and apathy and realize that no matter who the next president is, it will not fundamentally impact my life that much. In two years there will be the inevitable backlash against the president's party in the Senate and House of Representatives elections. Our forefathers had the foresight to make sure that one branch of the government couldn't screw up the country too much. For that we can all be thankful.

At least I feel better now . . .