Vote of no confidence

Both Kaplan and Toobin report on the inner workings of the Gore and Bush camps. Both found Gore far more restrained than Bush, for Bush's operatives had only one goal in Florida -- winning.

While Gore wanted to win, he did not want to offend anyone in the process. The Bush team could not have cared less about who they offended. Maybe Gore should have hired Brockovich, for she doesn't work on a leash. And her arrival in Florida might have given a freer rein to the entire Gore team.

David Kaplan concludes that George W. Bush became president because of a fluke, a series of aberrant events, and because he got lucky. Jeffrey Toobin thinks that Gore lost Florida because he was overly concerned about elite opinion makers, men and women who write the editorials for the New York Times and the Washington Post, rather than with doing what was necessary to win. Kaplan's writing is highly entertaining; Toobin's eloquence flows beautifully. Either or both might have been bestsellers had Osama bin Laden not let loose his twisted wrath on America.

Of all the books reviewed here, however, I found none more enjoyable and informative, from a very different perspective, than CNN senior political analyst Jeff Greenfield's "Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow! Inside the Strangest Presidential Election Finish In American History." This is a look inside CNN's Election 2000 coverage.

Greenfield tells how CNN and the other news organizations mistakenly called the winner of the presidential race not once, but twice. He provides a feel for the off-camera drama of covering this historic election, showing both the show business side of television news, as well as the backstage nitty-gritty of anchors and analysts cramming their heads, or notecards, full of interesting facts and figures to fill the airtime. Greenfield makes no effort to justify the goofs, rather he reveals how they so easily happened.

Greenfield explains how exit polls work -- or sometimes don't work -- how TV news organizations (CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and AP) underwrite, at a total cost of $33 million, the gathering of exit poll information by Voter News Service. Each news organization has its own analyst who evaluates the VNS data, along with a small percentage of actual voting returns, to make the call on the winners and losers, usually within minutes of the polls' closing.

While exit polls have strengths (they are directed at actual voters with fresh memories), they also have weaknesses (they do not always include sufficient absentee ballots, which must be accounted for based on samplings that can be flawed). Florida, it became clear after the fact, was statistically too close to call.

Jeff Greenfield, who went to Yale Law School with Sen. Joe Lieberman, addresses both legal and political matters. His writing percolates, particularly when he reconstructs what he was thinking during various crises and events. Unfortunately, this terrific book is flawed by the failure to include an index.

I could easily fill another book with what I gleaned from the Election 2000 books that now fill my shelf. But you should know a few bottom-line facts I learned from my reading. For these, the evidence is overwhelming, and the conclusions are inescapable, if not irrefutable:

• Al Gore, to win in Florida, should not have restrained his Florida team, worrying unnecessarily that the establishment elite would be unhappy with him, for if he had taken the attitude of his opponent -- Bush was prepared to tie up the election indefinitely, if necessary -- he could have prevailed in the Florida recount. He had more actual votes than Bush, not to mention more voters who were disenfranchised by Florida election errors. In truth, he won the Florida vote, but lost the recount.

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  Understanding the 2000 Election

  By Abner Greene
  

  Buy this book

• Florida Governor Jeb Bush's behind-the-scenes efforts and influence are still not fully known, but his presence was felt everywhere during the recount, assuring his brother's team a win. Jeb Bush's influence helped open doors for George W. Bush, and closed doors for Gore. This part of the story still remains to be told.

• The U.S. Supreme Court's intervention into the Florida recount was pure partisan politics, driven by the court's conservative majority, and their actions resulted in one of the high court's most shameful decisions ever.

• Finally, until we modernize our presidential election processes and procedures with new laws (and, if necessary, a constitutional amendment to abolish the outmoded electoral college), another presidential election debacle could easily, and very likely will, occur again.

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