I haven’t heard that, but I like him on L&O.
Alan Rickman…now THERE’S someone I’d vote for. Hell, he could read the phonebook and I’d listen.
Horsepucky. Gore pushed for a recount that would win the election, and he won. The last recourse for Bush was the Supreme Court – Bush filed the appeal, but Gore pushed him there.
And a statewide recount would have been strategic idiocy --Gore had less to gain from a statewide recount than from a recount of the few counties where Democrats had been systematically undercounted. One might argue with the statemanship of such thinking, but you were talking about “fire.”
Right, Bush’s only way to hold onto his “win” was to use all methods available to him to prevent all the votes from being counted.
But you’re telling us that’s Gore’s fault. The power of belief is strong.
re: Gore’s decision in Florida.
IMHO, the Bush team didn’t really think they had the votes in Florida, and subsequent studies have born this out. Gore wasn’t sure if he had enough votes to win it or not, so he did the conservative thing (strategically) and called for a selective recount.
When the networks called Florida for Gore, it created a perception that Gore had won the contest and was going to be our next president. From there on out, the Bush team was fighting to replace that perception with perception that Bush had won Florida. That’s why Bush personally summoned reporters and was see live on television saying that his team knew they had won Florida, despite what the networks were saying. He was fighting to create a counter-perception. The whole drama that played out over the next month was all about reinforcing the perception that Bush had won Florida. Gore’s decision to call for a selective recount played into the Bush team’s “Sore Loserman” storyline. Gore calling for a full recount would have been a show of confidence: “I am confident enough that I have won that I can call for a full recount.” It was calling the Bush team’s bluff. It would have also destroyed the Equal Protection and due process portions of the eventual Bush v. Gore ruling, because everyone’ votes would have been counted in the same manner. I don’t think the Gore team realized the real battlefield was public perception. And the perception that Bush won Florida won out, so the eventual injustice of the Bush v. Gore ruling was accepted.
Of course, IANAL or a political consultant, thank Og, and it’s entirely possible that even if Gore had called for a statewide recount the Bush machine, who controlled many levers of power in Florida, would have found another way to game the recount. But I stand by my proposition that it was Gore’s decisionmaking at a critical time that lost the contest.
Ugh. The whole thing makes me sick, and I have the sinking feeling that I’ve opened up a can of stinking, five-year-old worms that is better left closed.
Tuckerfan, are you sure you’re thinking about Harold Ford, Jr. and not John Ford, the State Senator, whom I am at a loss to understand why he keeps getting elected, except that he’s got the old Ford political machine behind him?
And Cordell Hull was awesome. Wasn’t he the one who called the Japanese negotiators into his office after Pearl Harbor and cussed them out before deporting them?
Yep- Hull also had a lisp, so it was well known in Washington in 1942 that Hull had called the Japanese Ambassador a “thick headed thon of a bitch” to his face immediately after Pearl Harbor.
Yup, it’s Harold Ford, Jr. and he’s currently under investigation.
I don’t remember the details, but there’s also been problems with the funeral home he owns running afoul of the law as well. He’s had a few other scandals as well, but I don’t recall all the details of them.