Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Give Them the Keys!

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

(Go to the Mullings Update page for the
latest from Florida)

At about 10:00 pm last night this went from being a legal issue to where it started - as a political issue.

In the wee hours of the morning, Democratic lawyers in the Green Room at the Fox News studios in Washington were slicing and dicing the decision; on the phone to other lawyers; insisting there was a way to get back to the Florida Supreme Court.

Nope. I've been there. This morning every newspaper in America will have Ron Fournier's AP lead (or some variant of it) at the top of its front page:
WASHINGTON - (AP) A divided Supreme Court reversed a state
court decision for recounts in Florida's contested election
Tuesday night, effectively transforming George W. Bush into
the president-elect. Some Democrats urged Vice President Al
Gore to give up his challenge in America's overtime election.

There might be a semicolon somewhere in the sixty-plus pages of opinions, concurrences and dissentions, but it won't matter. The Democratic cloakrooms in the U.S. House and Senate will be abuzz this morning wondering how quickly Vice President Gore will end this thing.

And if Mr. Gore does not concede then those cloakroom doors will open and Democratic Senators and Representatives will show their statesmanship by urging Al Gore to conclude this so "we can get on with the peoples' business."

On the Hannity & Colmes show early this morning, Alan Colmes was making the point that this was only a five-to-four decision.

"If you truly believe that every vote counts," I said, "then five-to-four is good enough."

It is now time for the General Services Administration to turn over the keys to the official transition office space which has been sitting empty for the past five weeks. The Bush campaign is no more. The transition of President-Elect George W. Bush has begun.

I suspect, before the end of this week, President-Elect Bush will - at a minimum - have set up meetings with the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and the Senate to see if there are some things they can agree on and allow the Members to get off to a good start in January.

After watching the bobbing and weaving all day on television waiting for a Supreme Court ruling, it occurs to me that I might be the only person writing from Washington who did NOT attend law school.

The dire predictions all day on MSNBC, and Fox, and CNN, and NPR that the Supreme Court will forever be tarnished by a 5-4 decision are silly. These are being made by many of the same people who, immediately following the end of the Lewinsky scandal, told us, In. No. Uncertain. Terms, that the 2000 election would be a referendum on the Republicans' zeal to impeach President Clinton.

How many times did you hear anyone mention impeachment as a pivotal issue in this election?

Here was the joke running around Your Nation's Capital yesterday: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas runs into Joseph Klock (the Attorney for Florida's Secretary of State) and says, "Hi, I'm Antonin Scalia."

Actually, the insider's version was: "Thomas runs into Klock and says, 'I'm Scalia.'"

The happiest man in American has got to be Governor John Ellis Bush.

The second happiest person in America is the person who will be the chief fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee. I could write their first seventeen direct mail fundraising letters by noon today.

Speaking of fundraising, I stopped by the Republican National Committee before walking up Capitol Hill to cover the activities outside of the Supreme Court on Monday. I was told that by the end of the year the RNC will have raised over $250 million for the campaign cycle. A quarter of a billion dollars.

When I mentioned this to The Lad, he shrugged: "That's the going price for a Major League shortstop."

There is a television ad running on cable stations which offers "Genuine five dollar coins" featuring the engraved profiles of U.S. Presidents. These coins are "authorized by the government of Liberia," according to the ad. It is not clear to me that these are legal tender in the U.S., especially because the first four presidents are listed as: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Curly Joe.
-- END --

Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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