Revenge Is Around the Corner

I'll dispense with the pleasantries in short order.

Al Gore gave a fitting concession speech last night, which, if taken out of the context of his ugly and divisive presidential campaign, might even be construed as dignified. His self-deprecation?the jokes about mending fences in Tennessee and about his not planning on another snippy retraction of his withdrawal?was a nice touch. Gore's comment that he regretted not having the opportunity to keep "fighting" for "those who feel their voices have not been heard" was an obligatory sop to the minority voters he suddenly discovered last summer.

The outgoing Vice President's remarks were marginally superior to George W. Bush's: the President-Elect delivered a predictable address about unity and bipartisanship. He pledged to be every American's president, regardless of party affiliation; there was a gratuitous reference to Thomas Jefferson's similarly close election 200 years ago. Bush's best flourish, by far, was the setting: the Texas House of Representatives, where he was introduced by Speaker Pete Laney, a Democrat.

But it was all frosting. I almost vomited listening to the tv pundits after both candidates spoke. Magically, men and women who've been at loggerheads the past five weeks, issuing opinions on Gore's (or Bush's) mendacity in Florida, turned into sugarplums. This was bipartisan baloney: Bill Kristol, Paul Begala, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews and Doris Kearns Goodwin, to name just several, were unanimous in their cheerful opining that, gee, once the battle is over, the country really does pull together! And what a splendid beginning for a Gore campaign in 2004. Sure. Gore's chances of landing the Democratic nomination four years hence are about as strong as those of Mario Cuomo, the failed New York governor who's made a laughingstock of himself in the last week by actively urging Bush electors to switch their votes when the Electoral College meets.

The veteran conservative columnist Robert Novak resisted the urge to play Santa Claus in discussing Gore's loss. He wrote on Dec. 14: "This is the sad legacy of Gore after 24 years of public life. In the absence of any vision other than lifelong ambition to enter the Oval Office, he will be remembered as the principal cause of the great 2000 deadlock. The costs included ridicule throughout the world, deeper racial tensions, the U.S. Supreme Court forced into the political maelstrom and costly stock market losses."

Bush won. He now has four years to deliver better speeches on meaningful subjects, rather than dispense the window dressing that the conclusion of this weird campaign required.

The New York Times, in its Dec. 14 editorial, bit the bullet and grudgingly granted Bush a holiday honeymoon. Criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court for its "crabbed decision," the paper said: "[Bush's] speech was a promising start in that it drew the right lesson from his precarious victory, with its absence of a numerical mandate."

Does that mean the Times will soon follow Sen. Hillary Clinton in calling for the Electoral College's abolition? Who knows. I believe the out-of-touch Olympians on 43rd St. are so shell-shocked by the final result that New Yorkers might be given a temporary respite from their royal ruminations. On the same day, The Washington Post was more realistic. That pro-Gore daily's editorial read: "Democrats say that Mr. Bush lacks a mandate to carry out his proposals, but he doesn't lack the mandate to try. There is no asterisk after his powers; he is duly the president-elect. We congratulate him on the victory. Time now to turn to the question of how he uses it."

Fair enough.

Half the country will balk at the following opinion, but it's the five U.S. Supreme Court Justices?Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor and Kennedy?who are the real heroes in this historic political standoff. Democrats have bleated in unison that the fix was in down in Florida because the legislature is Republican-controlled, and because of the involvement of Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Bush's brother Jeb?as if the latter's occupancy of the state's governor's mansion had been orchestrated in advance.

In reality, it was the Democratic-controlled Supreme Court of Florida that, spurred on by Gore goons, issued lunatic rulings that could've been written by Bill Clinton. (The President and Gore aren't on the best terms, it's said, but the jolly Arkansan does have reason to fear a Bush Justice Dept.) Had Gore and Bill Daley not insisted on hand recounts in exclusively Democratic counties, the impasse wouldn't have taken five weeks to resolve. I believe that, given a fair manual recount, which wouldn't have involved dimpled chads and partisan workers who ginned up the tally for Gore, Bush would've still prevailed. But maybe not. That's what Gore has to live with.

It was disappointing, but not surprising, that the Vice President didn't take the opportunity last night to disassociate himself from the inflammatory rhetoric of his prayer-session buddy Jesse Jackson. The aging, camera-hogging black leader, who sees visions of Selma, AL, wherever he travels, deserves to be muzzled by fellow Democrats. His rabid drooling in the last week alone should be enough to send the has-been to the funny farm. According to Jackson, Bush engaged in "Nazi tactics"; the Supreme Court's decision was akin to the 1857 Dred Scott case; and the President-Elect is Slobodan Milosevic's soul brother.

Appearing on NBC's Today earlier this week, Jackson said: "[Bush] must overcome the illegitimacy that this court placed upon him... We have difficulty certifying this on moral grounds, but having said that, we must somehow figure out a way beyond our pain to heal the wounds." On Monday, Jackson was even crazier, telling reporters outside the Supreme Court, "We will take to the streets right now, we will delegitimize Bush, discredit him, do whatever it takes, but never accept him."

It's arguable that Jackson once played a useful role in American politics. He's always been a clown and showboat?from his silly rhyming to his exploiting his relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?but years ago he was at least more vital and not as given to fairytale demagoguery. At this point, he knows history has passed him by. That's why he embraced Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, even after the President "disenfranchised" so many of "his people" by enacting welfare reform. He got his puss in the papers. At one time, I'd have thought NAACP leader Kweisi Mfume could've shortened Jackson's leash, but it appears that Mfume's going down the same track, if his allegedly nonpartisan organization's abhorrent behavior during the 2000 election was any indication.

Note to sensible Democrats: There's no reason to fear Jesse Jackson anymore. The man sees George Wallace, long-dead plantation owners and Lester Maddox every time a McDonald's worker forgets the pickle on his triple-cheeseburger. I wish one of the minority party's leaders would say, in public, "Shut up, Jesse!"

New York's media critic, Michael Wolff, is nowhere near as senile as Jackson. In fact, he's a rather smart writer who's brightened that awful weekly's pages for a couple of years now. However, when he leaves the dot.com reservation?and that story is getting old?and strays into the political arena, he tends to make a fool of himself. His Dec. 18 column is a typical example. Wolff claims that Bush stole the election, not an unusual opinion from a liberal New Yorker. But although his piece is bathed in an elitist, Manhattanite, above-it-all sense of irony?"It's possible we don't have elections anymore; we have perceptions"?Wolff makes some irresponsible remarks. That Jeb Bush rigged the Florida result for his brother, for example. Or that James Baker, who was a superlative and clearheaded advocate for the GOP candidate, "sputter[ed] like the Potter figure from It's a Wonderful Life."

He also suggests that Bush is a drunk. Wolff: "Is it possible, for instance, that George W. has fallen off the wagon? That's why he spends all that time out at that remote ranch, and why he looks so addled and walleyed: He's plastered? Who says that was a boil on his face? Who has a boil? That's the mark of a falling-down drunk."

Wolff believes the Texas Governor should've made an offer to Gore early on to undergo a statewide recount. Since Bush won the legally mandated recount, I don't know why he would've, but we're in Wolff's universe now. "But just at the time this offer should have been made," the media critic writes, "W. was, as I figure it, stewed."

Wolff, like many Americans, is pissed at the results, and has flipped his lid.

I did like his sort-of dig at Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who, as Wolff writes, has fixated on the idea that the Bushes are the WASP Corleones. Stupid stuff, I agree?and Dowd, along with colleague Frank Rich, ought to be confined to the ladies' pages of the Times, since they're both hopelessly lost in Hollywood. Wolff does take issue with Dowd's depiction of Bush as Sonny Corleone, writing, "[I]n many ways, he's like Fredo Corleone, sent off to Vegas."

But of course, Sonny was murdered by a rival family, while Fredo was bumped off by his younger brother.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, will now be the country's 43rd president.

I think it's time Michael Wolff returned to recording his cocktail chatterings with glossy magazine editors and musing over the imminent demise of content-devoted websites.

December 14

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