Al Gore Was Right

The most revealing moment in the new HBO movie Recount is the moment at the end when Al Gore tells Ron Klain that the fight is over and it's time to concede. Klain wants to fight on, but Gore overrules him, and Bush becomes president. There are a lot of Americans now, including former Bush supporters, who rue the day Gore yielded, but it is evident from the play-by-play in the film that the Republicans would have preyed upon a Gore presidency with the exact same vengeful, careless, aggressive sense of entitlement that they showed during the recount. If Gore had stuck it out, if the Supreme Court had been publicly shamed for its evident corruption, if the bullies had not gotten their way, then the Republicans would have obstructed the operation of Gore's administration and the nation would have been destroyed from the inside. As it happened, the Republicans got to take charge, and they promptly screwed up in every conceivable way, and so their maliciousness and absolute incompetence was revealed for all but the most obtuse of our citizenry to see. The Bush drug has been a terrible and nearly fatal dose, and we don't know how alive we will be afterwards, but at least it has shown how extensive and serious the disease of Republicanism was. Every Republican in Recount has since shamed and dishonored himself for all to see. It's clear that the recount was the Republicans' last hurrah.

Which is possibly why people like James Baker are said to be pleased with the film. It was a war they won, and even though they did so in unethical (rank partisanship on the Supreme Court) and illegal (Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris purging the voter rolls before the election) ways. Winning to them trumped every other consideration. It is also evident that they learned from their "victory" in Florida that bullying was the way to go, and so they attempted to use the same strategy and tactics in Iraq. The last eight years show that ethics, law, and human decency meant nothing to these Republicans. And their current pleasure in the depiction of their own rottenness shows that they have learned nothing.

I would like to be a fly on the wall in the room where John McCain is watching Recount. In the course of the next few months, knowing that bullying, cheating, and subverting the election might or might not work, he will have to make a choice. He can run an honorable campaign and lose or a dishonorable campaign that shames him. Does he watch Recount and see Warren Christopher as a "wimp" and James Baker as "tough"? Or does he watch Recount and feel the humiliation that every Republican should feel? He is the carrier of the Bush poison now. The sooner he recognizes it, the better off the nation will be.

Comments

[pattyfish]

over

[mbaty]

Isn't it so astounding that we got George W instead of Al Gore. Hindsight has never been so blaring. I mean, between the two of them we picked George! Amazing.

[Lane]

mbaty:

Have you been living under a rock?? We DID NOT CHOOSE GEORGE! That election was stolen. Watch Recount if you don't believe it! But almost every person in this country knows that election was stolen and the second won by rigged computers. The "choosing" of our Presidents is long over. The powers that be in the good ol' boys club chose the next successor to the dictatorship.

[MsLiz]

I keep reading comments that Gore gave up after the Supreme Court. What more could he have done? That was the court of last resort, and Congress had a Republican majority, so the Constitutional route of challenging electors would have been unsuccessful.

[irishgawdess]

Oh gawd. I just had a terrible thought: Jeb Bush as McCain's VP. Oh the irony. And it's not delicious.

[neoprimordial]

Ms. Smiley, I love your work and usually gain from reading what you have to say... (wait for it...) BUT, I have to disagree with you on this issue.

Up until 9/11/001, the one thing W was best known for was taking vacation--more in those first 9 months than many presidents had taken in their entire initial terms.

Consider these numbers:
the 2,974 killed on American soil in the 9/11 terrorist attacks;
the 506 Americans killed and over one thousand injured (and counting) in Afghanistan;
the tens of thousands of Afghani casualties (and counting);
the 4,080 Americans killed and tens of thousands injured (and counting) in Iraq;
the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties (possibly over a million, and counting);
All the Americans who died and the thousands still displaced by the Katrina disaster who could have recovered if not for criminal mismanagement at the federal level.

Multiply the total number of these casualties by, say, three, to get a general idea of just the number of others personally affected by this Bush holocaust, to say nothing of the rest of us.

Gore should have stood his ground, prevailed, and fought the good fight against any and all attacks the opposition would have thrown at him. It's a reasonable bet to say only a relative few would have been killed or injured on his watch if he had. There's no question they'll go after Obama similarly. Should he also give in to their evil?

[Novelene]

Gore was ''right?'' Sorry, Gore was just plain tired and wimped out. That the Republicans would have given him a hard time is no excuse for his decision to abandon the country under the cloak of ''country before party.'' The above states Gore was right to wimp out, because 'the bullies would have destroyed the nation from the inside ' How much worse could that have been than what our Bully-in-Chief has managed from inside the White House? The nation will be ''better off'' as soon as John McCain realizes he should be ashamed of what happened in 2000? Not right, again. The nation will be better off when it realizes John McCain on major issues is no different than Geoerge Bush.

[majormoderate]

did anyone tell this lady it was just a movie...

[iluvsam]

I was in the Florida protests, so I can't watch Recount as I will find myself reliving the whole disgusting thing. I'm sure the Founders have been turning in their graves for the last 8 years. Republicans are just vile in every way.

[thedirtman]

AL GORE ACTUALLY DID INVENT THE INTERNET! Read about it here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-War-On-Intelligent-Thought/lm/R3AZGRFEUZUVGC/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full

To invent does not mean to do so alone, or to do patent-level engineering. It means to think of something, and to be first to act upon it within some role.

[langstonhughesfan]

It was just too painful to endure. I just couldn't stand it. But Laura Dern was brilliant in the role of Katherine Harris.

[certainot]

get rid of the talk radio monopoly and you get rid of the "disease of republicanism" that uncontested repetition is the invisible bat that gives a small minority "bully" the biggest soapbox in the country and the ability to determine what is and what isn't acceptable in the rest of the media. until progressives figure out their local talk radio stations are the "bully's "megaphone and begin picketing and boycotting local sponsors of the GOPs coordinated liars and swiftboaters attacking their candidates and causes they will continue their uncontested assault on American democracy and will continue to be able to use a lazy celebrity media to convince tAmericans they are a social movement instead of a small minority with the loudest voice. until progressives figure this out they will continue to play politics without a front line.

[magen]

I agree, the left needs a Rupert Murdoch.

Arianna????????? Start the cable Progressive News Network.

$$$$

[snesich]

This is a strange and convoluted argument. Smiley is saying that it was good for Al Gore to give up in 2000, even though he had more votes and even though the Republicans stole the Florida vote, prevented an accurate count, and illegally kept thousands of black voters from the polls?

And her logic is something like this: "If Gore had been allowed to assume the office he had won, the Republicans would have been very angry and refused to cooperate, so Gore would have failed. Therefore it was right for him to give up as recent events have proven."

No. This is nonsense. It would have been much better for Gore to persist and do whatever it took, to win what was rightfully his. And our nation, and the world, would have been much better for it.

[neoprimordial]

You put it much more simply than I, although I can appreciate where she's coming from with the justification for Gore not going any further. There's no telling what good might have been accomplished, and what evils prevented, if the Republican witch hunt perpetrated on Bill Clinton had not occurred. She suggests that something similar would probably have awaited Al Gore. So be it. He should have fought to the bitter end. It's getting tired, but it's still applicable:

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle"

or:

All that is required for evil to prevail is for enough good people to do nothing.

[BlueAsh]

Hmmm, it seems you believe this movie is a documentary and that its content can be used legitimately to interpret history.

It would not be a problem for me if you extracted *insight* from the movie and postulated about what would have happened. But to say that the movie *proves" anything is too much of a stretch for me.

Your statement, "it is evident from the play-by-play in the film" should end in something like "shows that the movie's writer and director believe in ..."

I can't believe Huffington Post allows this piece to be posted.

[TrevorAlan]

Remember, this is not the AP, its a Blog. Its purpose is more a collection of editorials than hard news items.


This is this writers interpretation. Other viewers might see it differently. I'm sure no one who made it saw it as documentary, but then if it was well-researched and the events conform to previous news stories (Can you produce evidence of actual INACURACIES in the film?) can help to put into context events we only dimly remember and maybe didn't completely follow.

And even if you don't beleive some of her comments are "proved", I'd argue she makes a good case.

But maybe a ruined Gore Presidency would have been better than 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, signing statement, Guantanamo, Abu Garhib, etc.

[BlueAsh]

I believe, TrevorAlan, you misunderstood my argument. It's not that the author shouldn't interpret the film, but it is problematic when the author uses details from the film as evidence. So whether the film does a good job re-creating a historical event is besides the point. The film may be realistic, but it is dramatization, is it not?

You may like her argument, but she should know better.

[antenna123]

Hey could you use the word bully a few more times?

[1will]

For those that don't know, and I'll guess that's most Huffpost readers, a recount was done. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and several newspapers paid to have the ballots counted. At the end it was proven that Bush won. You didn't hear Jesse shouting this news from the rooftops for some reason but the largely Left Wing newspapers and magazines did report it.
Here are a few links to those covering this story. Amazingly HBO's RECOUNT and Jane Smiley didn't see fit to include something as important as the truth.
www.nytimes.com/pages/political/recount
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/florida.ballots/stories/main.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_recount
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/04/04/florida.recount.01/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-04-03-floridamain.htm

Type the addresses into your search engine. The Huffpost links usually don't work. I'm not giving every single link (too lazy) but the newspapers and media involved in the recount were:
The New York Times
Associated Press
The Wall Street Journal
CNN
St. Petersburg Times
Palm Beach Post
The Washinton Post
Los Angeles Times
Chicago Tribune
Orlando Sentinel
The Baltimore Sun