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Trying to follow the Presidential election standoff is not only getting tedious for the public. It's also dispiriting for the hapless scribes who have to follow the twists and turns of this affair -- convolutions that guarantee that whatever your crack Business Week analytical team has written about the Florida Fiasco is instantly rendered outdated by some stunning new reversal. Bush is up! No, Gore! Now it's Bush again. No, hold that -- it's Gore, or maybe Bush...
With George W. Bush's Florida lead over Al Gore whittled down to 537 votes and state election officials certifying the state for the Texas governor, it's easy to let out a sigh and declare the election over. But is it?
Here's why the fat lady hasn't sung yet: Vice-President Al Gore's lawyers are vowing to force additional recounts in at least four Florida counties. The GOP-controlled Florida legislature has decided to wade into the fray on Bush's behalf. House Republicans, led by that irrepressible cutup, Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas, are itching to do the same. And a fateful appeal is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Given all that, it would be pointless to cover this melodrama in conventional fashion, by reporting developments as they happen. My solution: Just invent a scenario for the next few weeks and see if reality follows suit. Weird? Inaccurate? How much weirder and inaccurate can you get via "normal" journalism? Herewith, my take on unfolding imaginary developments:
-- Within hours of being certified by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Bush, who has quickly changed from his ranch work clothes to a blue pinstriped suit borrowed from legal adviser James A. Baker III, announces that he's claiming the Presidency and installing Elizabeth H. Dole and Oprah Winfrey as his co-Inaugural chairs. The theme for the festivities: "To Stop a Thief/A Time for Healing."
-- Gore, not to be outdone, appears on national TV to insist that no winner can be determined until 14 new county-by-county Florida voting challenges are heard. Gore announces a provisional Co-Inaugural Team headed by former President Jimmy Carter, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, actor Edward James Olmos, and ousted national research labs scientist Wen Ho Lee. The theme: "Feel the Power of the Rainbow/A Time for Healing."
-- A week later, the Supreme Court enjoins Bush and Florida election officials from declaring victory in the state pending its historic examination of the Florida recount. On behalf of the Republicans, former General Norman Schwarzkopf announces a nationwide drive to mobilize veterans, survivalists, gun-show exhibitors, and Army-base PX workers for a petition drive to force county officials to count as valid all absentee ballots from overseas military personnel, regardless of which year the ballots were filled out, whether the absentee voter can spell, erroneous multiple balloting from overstressed U.S. troops, illegible postmarks, no postmarks, and voting choices written in invisible ink.
Within minutes, Gore forces announce that Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, an ex-Navy Seal and Vietnam vet, is forming "Peacekeepers for Gore," enlisting a group of Spanish Civil War veterans, Greenpeace "save the whale" patrol-boat crews, and former Piggly Wiggly Store security guards. The group's objective: keeping disputed military ballots from being used to swell Bush's tally.
-- Though he's officially opposed to manual recounts of state ballots, Bush remains silent while supporters in four other close-election states prepare petitions for possible recounts under the banner of a new "Fair Is Fair" committee funded by Washington GOP lawyers and lobbyists. Asked about the apparent contradiction while pretending to chop wood at his Crawford (Tex.) ranch, Bush strikes a Reaganesque pose, cupping a hand to his ear and shouting "I can't hear you."
-- Bush allies mount a new bid to force Gore to drop his election challenge. A "Concede or Bleed" umbrella group funded by anonymous GOP soft-money donors begins running "Drop out, chump" ads directed at Gore in 15 former battleground states. Appearing in the hastily made commercials: ex-President Gerald R. Ford, '96 GOP nominee Bob Dole, and a life-size cardboard likeness of former President Ronald Reagan.
-- In a high-risk bid to halt mounting calls for his concession, Gore leaks to Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward the tip that Bill Clinton and several of his trusted attorney friends have launched a plan to assess the chances for a possible bid for a third term, citing the nation's leadership crisis and the fact that the words "shall not" in the 22nd Amendment can be open to interpretation. Asked about the hush-hush effort, Clinton brushes aside press questions, smiling enigmatically and murmuring, "It depends on what the meaning of 'shall' is."
-- The Republican-dominated Florida legislature drafts legislation directing that "any Democrat that shall be deemed, accurately or inaccurately, to have won the state of Florida in a Presidential election in any year in which the Governor of said state shall be named 'Bush' is hereby prohibited from winning said state's 25 electoral votes on penalty of death by lethal injection of frozen orange juice." Though Democrats cry foul, the bill is enacted on a voice vote.
-- Ten days after Florida's latest electoral deadline has passed, the U.S. Supreme Court finally hands the election to Bush by declaring that Florida's electoral votes as originally certified by GOP election officials belong to the Republican. Citing the obscure "substitution clause" to the Constitution, as initially spelled out in a long-forgotten 1822 Delaware decision, the high court finds that substituting one candidate for another after the public perception of the previously hailed candidate's victory has settled in is, "while technically within the spirit of the laws of man and mathematics, confusing to the populace at large and disruptive of the general tranquility."
-- Finally confronting the bitter reality of defeat, Gore appears on national TV. "The people have spoken, and more than half of them have spoken for me," he says. "Under the circumstances, any true effort at national unity ought to at least consider the possibility that I should serve in some consultative capacity in a new Administration, possibly by continuing in my current duties." Gore announces he wants to remain as Veep: "I am sure Dick Cheney would be more than happy to resign his number-two spot on the Republican ticket in my favor, an unselfish act that would permit him more time for physical therapy and would allow him to reclaim the generous stock options he was granted by his former employer, Halliburton."
-- Cheney checks himself in to George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., complaining anew of chest pains. In a hastily convened press conference, his doctors announce that "Mr. Cheney appears to be suffering from nothing more serious than a mild case of indigestion, though tests are continuing."
Walczak is Business Week's Washington bureau chief Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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