THE TRUE STORY OF THE 2000 ELECTION

In 1998 I learned a few things about George W Bush. He had been a successful Governor of Texas and seemed to have plans for America that I could support. As soon as he announced his intention to run for President the attacks started. There was at least six weeks of newspaper stories speculating on whether or not W had ever used cocaine. This seemed excessive to me as there was zero interest in the media about Bill Clinton's cocaine use. Unlike Bush there were five different people who claimed they had seen Clinton use cocaine while he was attorney general of Arkansas. Also, there was a police surveillance tape of Bill Clinton's brother conducting a drug deal and joking about the prodigious amounts of cocaine our President had been known to consume.

Throughout the campaign I felt my candidate was treated unfairly. Although Bush served for a couple of years in the prestigious Texas Air National Guard, long enough to learn to fly jets he was treated like a draft dodger. Again, something that was not considered important when it came to Bill Clinton who was an actual draft dodger. Gore's short stint in Viet Nam as an army "journalist" was treated like superior service to his country.

Bush was called a stupid frat boy while Gore was lauded as a genius and a statesman. All this despite the fact that Bush and Gore graduated from Yale and Harvard, both "C" students. While Bush went on to get an MBA from Harvard Gore never got a post-graduate degree instead he dropped out of law school and later divinity school. Bush had been the chief executive of one of the largest states in our union. Gore had been an ineffective congressman followed by two terms as Vice-President and you know what they say that position is worth.

The Bush bashing went on unabated and just a few days prior to the election Fox News broke a story that Bush had a DUI from twenty years ago. Bush didn't try to deny that this had happened and had always admitted that when he was young and foolish he had behave like a young fool. Also, it was common knowledge that at age 40 George W. Bush had made the decision to quit drinking and by all reports had done just that. Still, this was big news and the media reported all they could about it in the last days of the campaign.

On election day Fox News was the first to erroneously call the state of Florida for Gore. They did so before the polls were closed in the panhandle and all networks followed with the same wrong call for Florida. This allowed the media to create the impression that Gore was winning in a landslide. Folks on their way to the polls in the panhandle heard the news on the radio and went home without voting. People in line to vote heard the news and gave up and went home with out voting.

These incorrect early reports dampened Republican turnout nationwide. It is estimated that the early call in Florida cost Bush 5,000 to 15,000 votes in the panhandle. It is obvious this illusion of a Gore juggernaut cost Bush the popular vote nationwide. The networks had to take the "Gore wins Florida" call back but the damage was already done. Once enough precincts had reported in to make it obvious Bush had won things really started to happen.

I was so relieved, my candidate had managed to win despite the unfair media treatment. Since the final count had Bush winning Florida by less than 1% a machine recount was required but he won that count too. Then Gore and the Democrats launched their attempt to steal the Presidential election. Manual recounts have long been an election stealing tool used by the Democrats when the margin of victory is small. hanks to the voter suppression in the panhandle and some ballot tampering in Palm Beach County the margin was small enough to be overcome if Democrats could control the recount.

I was sick. Every night I would lay in bed thinking "They're going to steal it". Democrats usually demand recount after recount until one results in their win than claim victory and demand all challenges to the results be put aside in the spirit of good sportsmanship. Gambits the Democrats tried included disqualifying as many of the Florida absentee ballots from our service men and women as possible. A memo went our with suggestions for all the possible technicalities that could be used to disenfranchise members of our military. In addition a court case was filed to disqualify all the Republican absentee ballots from one county on a technicalities. If that case has succeeded Gore would have successfully stolen the election.

If the shoe had been on the other foot and Bush was requesting recounts of the three most Republican counties in Florida he would have been crucified in every newscast and news paper in America. Gore was given a complete pass. I can see him now on TV saying "when people vote we should count those votes", right Al how many times should we count them? What a crock!

The Florida Supreme Court got into the act and did everything in their power to help Gore overturn the election results. Everyone focuses on the rulings from the United States Supreme Court which decided 7 to 2 that what the Florida court had done was unconstitutional and then decided 5 to 4 to finally put a stop to this farce of a "recount."

The Democrats spent the next 8 years claiming Bush was "Selected not elected". In the 2004 election they tried again to make the nation believe that Bush was losing big. In Florida AGAIN Democrats flooded certain poll locations when they knew pollsters would be there. Unfortunately for the Democrats the Republicans were ignoring any media reports of early results but John Kerry fell for the ruse. Overconfident that he was on his way to a big win Kerry said that whoever wins they should concede promptly for the good of the country. This made it difficult for Kerry to hold out when it became clear Bush had been re-elected.

The first Bush administration was put at a terrible disadvantage by having their transition time stolen by this bogus recount nonsense. Perhaps if the Bush team could have transitioned in the usual time frame they would have uncovered and prevented the attacks on September 11th, 2001.