10 Years Ago Today

How many of you remember what happened 10 years ago today?  It was Election Day in 2000 and the race was close between George W. Bush and Al Gore.  On the Friday before the years-old drunk driving story about a young W had come out and his poll numbers began to collapse over the weekend.  Although the story didn't mean a hill of beans in terms of his ability to be president, some of the wishy-washy independents bolted because they felt they'd been betrayed.  Without that story (which interestingly enough broke on Fox News) W would have probably cruised to a pretty easy win.  It wasn't to be.

I was nervously optimistic that day that the era of Clinton would be over and W would restore some decency to the Office of the President.  I had voted by absentee ballot so I wouldn't have to worry about getting home from meetings in San Diego in time to make it to the polling place.

My last meeting was about 3:30 at the home of a pastor in Imperial Beach, CA, south of San Diego and not far from the border.  We met in his living room and as we talked he had Fox News on TV as the first returns started coming in from Kentucky and Indiana, the two earliest states to close.  Both went to Bush.  A good start, but not unexpected.

As I drove the 80 miles back north after the meeting I began to hear other calls coming in as parts of the East began closing their polls.  It was going to be close.

At home I watched Fox as I got ready to head out the door to dinner.  My wife was in Colorado Springs all week for a visit with other high school counselors to the Air Force Academy, and I had arranged to take the kids to have dinner with my parents at a nearby restaurant.  Just before we were to head out the door the fateful...and wrong... call of Florida for Gore came in.  I was almost distraught because I knew that by losing Florida it was going to be very tough for W to pull together enough other states to win.  At the restaurant the adults were all pretty quiet as we pondered the ramifications of an Al Gore presidency.  I still shudder at the thought.

After dinner we started to make the short drive home and an amazing thing happened - they took Florida away from Gore!  I couldn't believe it.  In all my years of election watching I had never seen a network call a state for a candidate only to take it back an hour or so later.  W was still in the race.

Other states began to go W's way.  He lose Pennsylvania and Michigan, but surprisingly got West Virginia (which usually didn't go for Republicans), Arkansas (Clinton's home state) and Tennessee (Gore's home state).  And the numbers in Florida were looking pretty good.  At no time during the vote counting was Bush ever behind, and at times he was quite far ahead.

Then came the big moment - Fox called Florida for Bush and those 25 electoral votes put him over the top.  He was declared the winner and next president of the United States.  My earlier distress had turned to joy, and even though it was 12:30 am by that point in Colorado I called my wife to give her the good news.

Little did I know.

As I watched with great glee the scene in Tennessee where Gore was to give his concession speech things seemed to be dragging out.  Where was Gore and why wasn't he conceding?  As it turns out he had already called W and conceded, only to call him back and unconcede!  Another first.  And with major egg on their faces the networks once again took Florida away and put it back into play.

Now what?

By the end of the night W had a little over a 1,000 vote lead in Florida, but before the results could be certified there would be a mandatory recount which of course was followed by 36 days of court challenges, press conferences, absurd moments by the dozen, outrage and triumph.

If you're too young to remember, or have forgotten the details, I highly recommend Bill Sammon's book At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election, that I've linked above.  Fascinating reading for political junkies, and I guarantee you it will raise your blood pressure more than once.

I can still remember many times during those days how my mood seemed to hang on the latest court ruling.  I had a friend who hadn't really followed politics all that much, but he was so enraged at what was going on I'd get calls from him several times a week just to share the misery or joy of the latest piece of news.  Even though Al Gore's way to the White House was pretty much blocked at every turn, there was still this nagging feeling that somehow he was going to steal it away from us.

Finally the Supreme Court, which is usually loath to get involved in state elections, had had enough of the shenanigans of the all-Democrat Florida Supreme Court and their willingness to retroactively change election law and put an end to our misery.  On Wednesday, December13th, I was at Saddleback Church preparing to sing in a Christmas music service.  An hour before the concert Gore made his concession speech, which was played on the big screens in the church auditorium for the waiting crowd.  To quote President Gerald Ford from another time, "our long national nightmare was over".

That whole Florida episode was bad for America and shame on Al Gore and his handmaidens in the media.  Even though Bush never once trailed in the vote count or during the many recounts, the meme was put into the minds of America that somehow Bush stole the election.  After all, he ended up with 500,000 fewer popular votes nationwide (thanks in large part to the early and incorrect call in Florida which dampened GOP turnout both in the Florida panhandle and other western states) and the notion that Bush was somehow an "illegitimate" president became the journalistic standard.

Bush didn't get the transition time he would normally have gotten, and the ill will in Washington made his early days more difficult than they needed to be.  He never got the "honeymoon" most presidents get during the first months of their administration.  In fact, he didn't really get his honeymoon until 9/11.

I hope we never see another presidential election like that one.  Presidential races are probably always going to be closely fought affairs with small percentages separating winner and loser, but I don't ever want to see the country go through an ordeal again like we did in 2000.