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Just when it seemed it couldn't get any wackier in Florida, the Miami-Dade County election board has handed Al Gore what could be a poison pill in his battle to win the state's 25 electoral votes. On Nov. 22, the Gore team was still basking in the glow of the previous night's seeming slam dunk in the Florida Supreme Court -- a unanimous verdict that ordered the continuation of three counties' hand recounts -- when another thunderbolt struck.
Miami-Dade election officials, in the form of a three-person board made up of Democrats representing an overwhelmingly Democratic county, suddenly reversed themselves by deciding that all hand counts were to cease immediately. The stated reason: not enough time to comply with the Florida high court's Nov. 27 deadline for certification of the state vote.
Gore forces immediately announced their intention to go to court to force the recalcitrant election board to resume the count. But now, the Vice-President's legal team is forced to go against the thrust of the state supreme court's decision, which seemed to say that local officials were the ultimate arbiters of whether a recount was warranted.
ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT. If the Miami-Dade shutdown stands -- and with the many twists and turns in this case, no one can say with certainty that it will -- Republican George W. Bush can start packing for that road trip to Washington. Bush's campaign says it still intends to appeal the Florida Supreme Court decision ordering the hand counts to continue in three Democratic counties to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Gore desperately needed to make up ground in Miami-Dade. Without the additional votes he was expecting among 10,000 partially punched Miami-Dade ballots, the Veep has little prospect of overcoming Bush's 930-vote statewide lead.
It's surreal, but picture it this way: Gore and his cronies are sitting in a Chinese restaurant mulling the Bug Guy's Presidential prospects when he cracks open a fortune cookie and reads: "He who lawyers best wins." Riotous celebration ensues. Then, Gore opens a second fortune cookie, and it says: "Beware the poison egg roll. Your future is bleak."
President Bush? To 50% of the voters in the country, those words do not roll easily off the tongue. Bush is viewed as a lightweight, a pretender to the throne. But look on the bright side, ye legions of Bush loathers: Soon, we'll have a traditional kind of President in the White House, and we can resume our traditional torture of the unlucky winner.
In Bush, Americans would gain a kind of accidental President catapulted to the White House by his father, his little brother, and that heavily made-up woman who is Flordia's secretary of state. This is not a recipe for awe as much as fodder for Jay Leno and those cutups from Saturday Night Live.
DOWAGERS IN MINK. Forget, too, the Man From Midland's attempts to style himself as another giant-size cowboy from the mythic West. A Bush victory under these bizarro circumstances makes Bush seem less like a Ronald Reagan disciple than a political Pee Wee Herman, a man who has had the flashlight of fame suddenly beamed upon him in the darkness.
Soon, America will be chortling again over Bush's endearing malapropisms. His penchant for hyper-delegation of authority will instantly be seen as evidence of lingering adolescent laziness. And we'll all come to cherish our new leader's trademark "deer-in-the-headlights" expression as he gazes uncomprehendingly upon the big words some smarty-pants speechwriter has sent scrolling across his teleprompter screen.
Think of all those summit meetings with over-educated foreign potentates that will begin with a hearty, "So, hah y'all doin'?" Think of all those White House barbecues and Republican dowagers wearing mink in the dead of D.C. summer. Think, too, of all those colorful Texans who come East, win the hearts of Washington's glitterati with their down-home charm, and then get escorted out of town on a rail by fickle capital tastemakers when the fascination wears off.
In short, contemplate a world without chad. Kind of heartwarming, isn't it?
Walczak is Washington bureau chief for Business Week Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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