Gore Gets Gonged Is The Veep Fighting For Democracy ... ...Or Just For Himself? Commentary By CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer

Follow the riveting events of the 2000 presidential election as America's political history is put on hold.

A common observation about this post-election campaign is that the "loser is the winner." But at this point, it sure seems like if Gore ultimately loses, he’ll really be the loser.

CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts on Gore's public relations war.

Divided We Stand

Gore v. Bush Survival Guide

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28, 2000 (CBS) It is both ironic and educative that Vice President Al Gore’s address to the nation Monday night was laced with half-truths.

It is tempting not to take words very seriously right now, since there is so much indigestible verbiage spewing from the candidates, their surrogates and their lawyers (not to mention pundits). But it is instructive to take rhetoric seriously. So let’s decipher Gore’s plea for patience Monday night (which he repeated nearly verbatim on Tuesday, in the sunlight).

"All we have asked since Election Day [is] a complete count of all the votes cast in Florida," Gore said. "Not recount after recount as some have charged, but a single, full and accurate count."

That is just silly. He must really think we’re chumps.

There was, immediately after Election Day, a recount of the votes mandated by Florida law and endorsed by Gore. It was a recount of all the votes, in all the counties. Then, at the request of the Gore campaign and local canvassing boards controlled by Democrats, there were manual recounts in selected Florida counts. Gore wants some of those recounts amended.

So how can he assert that he has not advocated multiple recounts but just one "full and accurate count"? Simple: by defining "full and accurate" as "Gore wins."

This part of a bigger charade where Gore and Lieberman pretend that the goal of targeted recounts in counties where Democrats control the canvassing boards is not to acquire more votes than Bush’s margin of victory.

If Gore’s goal were really a "single, full, and accurate count" he would have demanded manual recounts in all 67 Florida counties. And his forces would not have tried to suppress the heavily Republican overseas absentee vote. And they would not have fought so desperately to make select Democratic counties use select methods for counting ambiguous ballots with "indented chads."

Gore would be better served by giving up the pretense that he wants recounts as part of a national civics lesson. It’s almost as offensive as when Bush pretends he wants to block recounts for reasons of high principle.

"Ignoring votes means ignoring democracy itself," Gore intoned solemnly.

xcept when the ignored votes happen to be, say, overseas absentee ballots.

Gore is trying to have us believe that since there are votes that machines could not count (the so-called "undervotes"), there still hasn’t been a "full and accurate count." And in arguing that he seeks a "full" count not a "recount," Gore is using the same flim-flam semantics he made famous with his "no controlling legal authority" locution.

Gore, of course, does not want all of the "undervotes" in Florida to be counted, just those in three Democratic counties.

Gore and his forces also do not want to acknowledge "undervotes" are a fact of life in modern elections that use vote-counting machines. In Cook County, Illinois alone, the machines were unable to count 120,503 ballots. By ignoring those votes, according to Gore’s logic, we are "ignoring democracy itself."

And what about the 30,602 uncountable presidential ballots in Washington State? The 101,740 in Georgia? The 175,938 in California? The 92,378 in Ohio? Across America, voters who failed to fully impregnate their chads are disenfranchised, unheard voices. Horror of horrors!

"In one county [Miami-Dade], election officials brought the count to a premature end in the face of organized intimidation," claimed Gore.

Never mind that the Democratic canvassing board in Miami-Dade says they stopped they recount because they couldn’t meet the deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court, not because protestors intimidated them on November 22.

Never mind that the canvassing board was unconvinced a recount was needed in the first place. On November 14, Miami-Dade officials completed a sample recount of three precincts and decided a countywide recount was unnecessary. Under pressure from Democrats, the board again changed its position three days later.

"A vote is not just a piece of paper, a vote is a human voice, a statement of human principle, and we must not let those voices be silenced," the vice president declared.

With soaring rhetoric and fuzzy logic, Gore has equated an "undervote" – a botched ballot uncountable by machines and uncounted by hand – with a disenfranchised voter, with a citizen denied rights. Voters do get disenfranchised. Ballot boxes do get dumped into Louisiana bayous and citizens of cemeteries vote in Chicago sometimes twice. But the fact that some ballots can’t be counted by machine or by hand because voters made mistakes is not an unjust "silencing of voices."

Compounding this fallacy, Gore goes on to use a kind of scorched-earth demagoguery:

"And if we ignore the votes of thousands in Florida in this election, how can you or any other American have confidence your vote will not be ignored in a future election?"

Aren’t we being a tad melodramatic?

And doesn’t it now seem that the vice president is willing to risk doing some permanent damage to the legitimacy of the elections process that he claims he is trying to rebuild by "fighting" for a "full and accurate count" in Florida? (I know, consistency is for the small-minded.)

A common observation about this post-election campaign is that the "winner is the loser," meaning the candidate who doesn’t become president will go on to a better political career and a more generous place in history. Given how phony both Bush and Gore have been since the election, it’s an understandable sentiment.

But at this point, it sure seems like if Gore ultimately loses, he’ll really be the loser.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Answers

and Miami has been fully recounted??? I didn't think so. Thus this "story" implodes as the meme inspired crud it is, next.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Let me also add this "reporter" does not have clue one to the historical problems involving the paper-ballot system used in parts of Florida in question. This ALONE is justification for a full manually recount ESPECIALLY focusing on supposed "undervotes" and hanging chads.

Go get some facts Buddy before you post crap like this again. I at least would appreciate it.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Doc:

Yes, Miami was fully recounted. The *entiere state* was fully recounted. Can't you remember? We all followed those counts county by county as they came in. All 67 of them.

What has NOT happened is that Miami be counted yet again, but by different (and changing rules) so as to "fashion" enough Gore votes to win the election. And if Gore isn't allowed to do that, then he claims Bush is "stealing" the election!

This has got to be the damndest semantic dishonesty I have ever witnissed. Whoever gets the most votes is "stealing" the election unless the loser can recount where and how he decides, despite no known mistakes, mechanical failure or fraud, until he finally comes out ahead. And if he gets away with it, then we have a "fair and honest" count!

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Really Flint, have documentation on that?

Don't bother consulting the Florida State Department of Elections, apparently they do not even follow their own Supreme Court and still show Bush with a 537 vote lead.

No surprise though, a group of scumballs have been thumbing their noses to thiscountry for awhile now. Like any of this could possibly matter to a Katherine Harris or GW Bush type. Hell the Republican Party sent their Northern Florida Director to Seminole County to illegally fix absentee ballot apps, I doubt accurate counts mean a damn thing to them.

Keep it up Flint, enough may stick just yet!

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Looks like Doc Paulie speaks half truths just like his man Gore "the Sore Loserman". Once a lier, always a liar!

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Buddy,

C'mon, now, Doc's not a "liar." You know him better than that.

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

Stephen:

You raise an interesting metaphysical question -- if Doc could think coherently enough to lie, would he do so?

-- Anonymous, December 10, 2000

First off, this is NOT our Buddy.

Second off, I wan't the one stockpiling supplies and hanging out on Ed Yourdon's Bookselling Annex(TB2000) last year, Flint was. Course to one like Flint, this indicates to him rational thinking.

I raise issues. I present documentation. I bring forth ideas NOBODY here or on Unks does. Who has said word one about the Seminole Absentee issue beyond Anita's initial link to the Leach deposition? Has the "Liberal Press"? Has anyone in the press even checked to see if Leach's claim that these applications problems existed statewide? If they did, what went on in those other areas?

I present the actual laws in question. I present them in hopes others will be able to see the outright crap spewed by a Rush Limbaugh, or their own local RightWing huckster. Armed with the law, why is Al Gore's initial request even an issue? Does Bush Bimbo even know what the concept DUE PROCESS means? or worse, care what it means.

Flint, grow up.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Flint's take, circa 1999

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

"Yes, Miami was fully recounted. The *entiere state* was fully recounted."

Not according to Bush's standards, that he uses in his own state. Why the hypocrisy? Afraid he might lose?

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

But we're not talking about the law in Texas; try Florida law:

(5) If the manual recount indicates an error in the vote tabulation which could affect the outcome of the election, the county canvassing board shall:

(a) Correct the error and recount the remaining precincts with the vote tabulation system;

(b) Request the Department of State to verify the tabulation software; or

(c) Manually recount all ballots.

Dade did number 5 and found that the system was NOT in error and that a manual recount of all the ballots (item 5c) was not necessary. ONly 19 votes came up for Gore during the initial manual count of 1% of the votes. The 1% came from the most heavily dem precincts, the remaining precincts were won by Bush, hence it would not affect the outcome.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Hahaha! I'm checking in here for the first time in awhile, been away doing computer training for 5 out of the last 8 weeks. And lo and behold somebody's posting as "Buddy (buddy@aol.com)" LOL!

Whether it has anything to do with me or not, I'd like it to be known that I am the one and only buddy@go.com and buddy@bellatlantic.net, and that I wouldn't be caught dead with an email address of buddy@aol.com!!! I hate AOL!

As for the election, I'll only say this. I didn't much like either Bush or Gore before the election, but now I like Gore even less. I think Gore's folks have a rude awakening coming if they think that the election hinges on a recount in a few counties in Florida, or even the entire state. If a recount makes Gore the winner in Florida, it won't mean he has won the election. What about the other 2.5 million "uncounted" votes in the other 49 states? The whole thing will end up in the House, which is as it should be, and Bush will win because of the rule that gives one vote to each state.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Um, isn't CBS News part of the "liberal media"? :-)

(Hi, Buddy...hope you are well.)

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

Patricia:

Yes it is, and that's a very good point. When your *mother* says you're ugly, you're *ugly*!

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000

What Flint meant to say was, "When one's *mother* says one is ugly, one is *ugly*!" Not towards any one in particular on this forum. :)

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000