For a minute there, I thought he might actually do it

AL NEEDS TO TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM

For a minute there, I thought he might actually do it. I though Al Gore might just come out last Monday and say “look, I think the result stunk, and I’m still suspicious of the way things went, but I don’t want to cause the country any more pain. See you in four more years.” But noooooo. Gore vowed to stay on and fight the election in the courts, even in the face of dwindling public support for what looks like an increasingly doomed cause. Note to Al: That rumbling sound you hear is the Fat Lady clearing her throat.

Not that Gore and other Democrats might not have a point. When discretionary calls regarding the recounting of ballots and the certification of the election are made by the state campaign co-chair for one of the candidates, it doesn’t take a legal scholar to know that there’s more than an appearance of impropriety there. Five bucks says Katherine Harris, Florida’s Secretary of State, ends up with a nice cozy ambassadorship, say to Bermuda.

There are also a number of disturbing allegations still outstanding, such as the one that Republican campaign officials in Seminole County spent a couple of weeks pre-election “correcting” absentee ballot applications. Seems that a number of absentee ballot applications came in without the required ID numbers. So the county supervisor of elections, who is—surprise!—a Republican, allowed a Republican field operative and another unidentified individual two weeks of unsupervised access in a back room of the board of elections so they could “look up missing voter identification numbers on their computer and fill in the information,” according to the St. Petersburg Times. This despite a Florida law that states that only the voter, an immediate family member, or legal guardian can fill out the absentee ballot request. The Republican response to the charge? “A mere legal technicality.” Sure. After all, I’ll bet they were just trying to determine the intent of the voter.

In addition, I can’t say I was comforted or encouraged by Bush’s speech on the night he was declared the winner. Dubbya seemed to be striving for the Guinness Record book for “most blinks in a sixty-second period.” It actually made my eyelids cramp to watch him. That deer-in-the headlights look Bush gets when trying to look Presidential does not bode well for the next four years.

All that said, however, Al Gore needs to get real. What exactly is it that he thinks a court victory will accomplish? Say a minor miracle happens. Say the courts uphold a legal challenge, they recount the votes and hey presto! Al Gore is declared the winner and takes office. If that happens, the firestorm of hatred aimed at him by the Republican Congress for the next four years will make what happened to Bill Clinton look like a trip to Disney World. Impeached? After the reaming they’ll give him, Gore will be begging for impeachment. He’ll be lucky if some loon doesn’t crash a pickup truck filled with plastic explosive into the inaugural motorcade. (It’s not like the Republicans have cornered the market on loons, it’s just that right-wing loons tend to be better armed.)

Just when the Republicans looked to be doing well thanks to their better-natured, more inclusive, “compassionate conservative” wing, why do the one thing that’s guaranteed to invigorate the party’s dark side as embodied in the likes of Dan Burton, Rush Limbaugh, and that endless stream of slim blonde Republibabes who fill the TV panel shows with vitriol against Bill Clinton? Why set ourselves up for another tiresome series of books with titles like “Betrayal: How Al Gore Single-Handedly Destroyed Democracy”?

Again, the Republicans don’t have a monopoly on hatred and mean-spiritedness, but a few Republicans, good capitalists that they are, have managed in the last eight years to turn hating Democrats into an industry. Frankly, it’s an industry I hoped was about to die a quiet death. One thing I was looking forward to in this election was that, whoever won, the professional Clinton-haters would suddenly find themselves with nothing to do and they’d all have to go out and get real jobs. If Gore does prevail via the courts, these people will be riding the media gravy train for four more years, and I’m not sure any of us can stand that.

So c’mon, Al. Step up and take one for the team. Put on the white hat and forego the White House this time around. Or else you may find out that you’ve won the battle and gotten yourself into an unwinnable war.

Dusty Rhoades lives in Carthage, practices law in Aberdeen, and realizes that there are worse things in this world than a Bush presidency.

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