SOMETHING strange happened to Al Gore between Election Day and yesterday.
The vice president has morphed into an automaton with a cause.
Last night, nearly three weeks after we discovered that an election can hang on a pregnant chad, almost 21 days after America learned that Tallahassee is the capital of Florida, Gore beamed into our living rooms and bars.
His voice rose, then fell. Up, then down, as if the poor man was in a trance.
It was the day after Florida called Gore the loser. A few hours after his henchmen contested this in a Florida court. Minutes after most of America had put away the supper dishes, poured the Scotch and made a toast to President Bush.
Gore appeared sweaty-faced and frantic on the tube.
He sounded as if he were reading. But there was anger in his eyes. Another man might have cursed aloud.
“This is America!” Gore said, and then he chuckled mirthlessly. “When votes are cast, we count them.”
After a day in which Gore’s own supporters said, in large numbers, that he should concede, Al Gore summoned the courage to tell the nation: “Hell no!”
He’d spent his whole life planning to be president and a year planning his Cabinet. He’d spent three weeks orchestrating recount strategy. And this day listening to friends, lawyers, cousins, troublemakers who told him: “But you won the popular vote!”
Why let a little thing like the law ruin his fun?
“That’s all we have asked since Election Day: a single, full and accurate count,” he recited.
He concluded: “Thank you. God bless you and God bless America.”
It was a bizarre end to a bad day for Al. A day dedicated to the last resort of the loser: spin.
Shortly after noon, if you turned on your TV, you were probably greeted by the voice of Al. And Joe. And Dick. And Tom
Four white guys sitting around talking.
Just when you were sure things couldn’t get any weirder. That middle-aged men couldn’t behave any more shamelessly, juvenile and dim-witted than Alec Baldwin, our diminished expectations bottomed out.
It was a staged bit, an electoral theater of the absurd. Al and Joe called from Washington to their good buddies, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and House Speaker Dick Gephardt, who’d just landed in Tallahassee.
“Hey, guys! How are you?” said the vice president.
“Hey, we’re just fine!” Tom replied.
It was a PR stunt in line with President Clinton defining oral sex as no sex, or O.J. Simpson acting out a murder with a banana for a reporter.
It backfired.
This election, insisted Al, was not about who lost or won. It was about “principles.”
Then Al contradicted himself. This election is not just about principles.
“It’s about the principle, but there are more than enough votes to change the outcome,” he crowed.
Make no mistake. This election is all about who gets to be president and who doesn’t.
This race has devolved into nothing more noble than a contest over who can amass the craftier lawyers, the friendlier judges, the superior spin.
Dick Gephardt opined about how sad it would be if, down the road, we found out George W. Bush didn’t really win.
This was the most pathetic spin of all.
As we have witnessed, there are an infinite number of ways to count a Florida chad.
In Broward County, counters determined that if a voter clearly cast his ballot for a straight Democratic ticket – but left even the faintest “dimple” in the presidential column – he must have intended to vote for Al.
The notion that a Broward voter might have left the presidential column blank intentionally was never entertained there.
The standard was different in Palm Beach.
Al Gore wants to win, and that’s his only principle. He wants to count and recount until he wears us down.
But he is losing the war for public opinion. Gore’s own supporters think he should quit.
I voted for Gore. Now I regret it.
Give it up, Al. It’s over.