Barbara Ehrenreich has a wonderful essay about how she will always remember where she was and what she was doing the day she realized, fully and finally, that then-President Reagan was, um, not fully tethered to reality at key points. You know how these things go: the political spinning and sloganeering stops being meaningless background noise and begins to sound vaguely sinister; you begin to notice a few dark suspicions voiced by a few of the more iconoclastic pundits; suddenly you're reading the papers or watching TV or surfing the web and you encounter some small detail that hits you with the full force of revelation: "Holy Smoke, that man is a danger to society."

I, of course, remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the day I realized that George W. Bush never did, in any meaningful moral, intellectual, or practical sense, leave the third grade. I was comfortably ensconced at my desk on a dark March afternoon in Iowa, sipping a cup of strong black coffee generously laced with Jameson's--it was, after all, St. Patrick's Day--reading an interview with Bush in the New York Times. The Shrub had just emerged from South Carolina as the Republican nominee-apparent, and was busy trying to scrape the redolent remains of his tactics against McCain off the soles of his shoes. The interviewer mildly observed that having McCain in the race had certainly improved voter turnout, surely in itself an admirable thing. "Then how come he didn't win?" retorted Bush.

Having spent a fair amount of time around small children in this lifetime--having been, actually, a small child myself once--it wasn't particularly hard for me to understand what Bush was saying here: "Finders keepers, losers weepers. So what's your so-called point, dude?" It was simply, I realize now, that I had not yet really accepted what should have been obvious by then, what might have been obvious if some small part of my Midwestern English Teacher's soul hadn't refused, simply, to believe it: that a major-party candidate for President of the United States was incapable of understanding the suggestion that how one wins is as important as whether one wins, and its corollary thought, that how one loses often renders insignificant the fact that one lost at all. To Dubya, the permanent third-grader, winning erases the past. Winning a Monopoly game by knocking your little sister's pieces off the board works just as well as winning the grown-up way. Losing because you refuse to engage in the same creepy tactics as your opponent is still losing, a matter for simple contempt. Larger issues like voter cynicism and turnout and fair process are, like "insurance," just "Washington terms." The whole point is winning.

It has not, therefore, surprised me in the slightest to see Bush, The Man Who Trusts The People, arguing that we really ought to trust the machines instead. Or that Bush, The Man Who Believes in Tort Reform, has run to court at the first opportunity. Or that Bush, The Uniter Not a Divider, is accusing the other side of, among other things, being "unpatriotic" and anti-military by challenging some unpostmarked ballots. Or that Bush, The Man Who Is Running On His Texas Record, is distorting the facts of a vote-counting law he signed in order to make the process sound sinister. Or that Bush, The Man Who Would Bring Honor and Integrity to Washington, sees no conflict of interest in having his cousin call the election for him on a major TV network, or having his tireless campaigner certify the election for him without bothering with such niceties as finishing the counting of votes. As Bush undoubtedly sees it, all those campaign slogans were things he promised to do if he won. He hasn't won quite yet, so we can't hold him to rules that don't apply until afterwards. If we want Honor in the White House, we first have to let him win by any ugly means necessary.

This is the man who, by all credible accounts, drank, drove, partied, snorted, chased "pussy" and went AWOL until he was forty, at which point he piously gave up alcohol and expected the past to therefore disappear. He is now prepared to sue, stonewall, demonize, delay, mud-sling and cheat his way to a technical victory--moral victories being for weenies--in the expectation that once he wins, he will hear "Hail to the Chief" sung with a straight face by a grateful citizenry, the method of the victory conveniently forgotten. Like every other schoolyard bully, Bush always believes that everything will be fine once he gets his way. Like his moral and political soul-mates, the House Impeachment Managers, Bush cannot comprehend the possibility that the public turns queasy when an election looks to be overturned on a technicality. Most Americans didn't really care that Clinton lied about having an affair, and they don't care that some arbitrary deadline has passed in the state of Florida. Democrat or Republican or Other, most Americans actually see a bigger picture than that, at least the ones who have firmly and permanently left third grade behind. The only picture Bush sees is his own, and that fact has been obvious at least since St. Patrick's Day. If the mainstream media is still trying to figure it out on Christmas, we will have to wonder what grade they're stuck in.

Holy Smoke, the man is a danger to society. The last President we had with this carefree an attitude toward "ratfucking" an election thought that bugging offices and wiretapping phones was just normal political behavior, justified by the necessity of winning. I remember where I was when he was forced to resign. Of course, Bush probably doesn't--1974 would have fallen in the midst of his "I was too drunk to remember" years. -- Doris in DC, 11/23

TRANSCRIPT OF SUPREME COURT HEARING, 12/1/00

JUSTICES SEEM DIVIDED RE ROLE IN DISPUTE, 12/1/00

EMERGENCY HEARING ON RECOUNT SET FOR 3 ET TODAY, 12/1/00

DEMS FILE MARTIN COUNTY SUIT, 12/1/00

GOP APPEAL TO REMOVE JUDGE CLARK REJECTED THIS MORNING
The Florida Court of Appeals this morning denied the Bush campaign's attempt to disqualify Florida circuit court judge Nikki Ann Clark, who is presiding over the trial of Seminole County election supervisor Sandra Goard. Goard is accused of illegally permitting Republican Party officials to fill in 4,700 incomplete GOP absentee ballot requests while simultaneously rejecting incomplete Democratic absentee ballot requests. A similar absentee ballot fraud case in 1997 resulted in the ouster of Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez. The plaintiff in the case is Seminole County attorney Harry Jacobs, who is being represented by Gerald Richman of Richman, Greer, Weil, Brumbaugh, Mirabito and Christensen of Palm Beach, who is acting as lead counsel. "We completed all 18 depositions yesterday," said Richman this morning. "Despite all the actions taken by the Republicans to delay, this case is on track, and are optimistic about being able to meet Judge Clark's objective of getting it tried in a single day, next Wednesday." The defendant's depositions scheduled for Saturday include Harry Jacobs, W. Patrick Westfield, Ronald Paul Livingston, Ken Alteri, and Steve Hall. Depositions are scheduled to conclude on Monday with Robert Poe. Legal issues will be argued Tuesday and the trial will begin on Wednesday. Significant questions arose about Goard's deposition yesterday, including testimony from several county election commission employees indicating that she was quite familiar with the Republican Party officials invited to work out of her office. In her own testimony, Goard denied knowing these individuals. Today an ad hoc organization has been set up to support Harry Jacobs, the plaintiff in the case. The Justice in Florida committee has been organized by Gregg Weiss, a financial planner in Boca Raton along with Craig Winograd, computer consultant in Boca Raton, Norman Smith, a retired business consultant in Boyton Beach and other Floridians. Democrats.com, the largest independent community of Democratic activists on the Internet is also lending organizational support to this effort. The group intends to raise funds to meet the out-of-pocket expenses associated with the suit. The Justice in Florida Committee can be reached at 561-477-0930, on the Internet at justiceinflorida.com or via e-mail at info@justiceinflorida.com. Non-tax deductible contributions will also be accepted at Post Office Box 970446 Boca Raton, FL 33497-0446. --Press Release, 12/1/00

The Daily News' playful picture of Jeb and Katherine, posted yesterday in thaat New York City tabloid, did nothing to quell questions that still swirl around the political bedfellows whose destinies appear to be intertwined around the presidential aspirations of George W. Bush. Reportedly together again for a Tallahassee cabinet meeting, the camera watched the couple "pal around," as talk of a possible future story about them in Newsweek has created a buzz from the desks of The New York Observer (see below) to the microphones of KGO Radio in San Francisco. As you can see from their photo, Jeb 'n Katherine are just two more wacky Floridians enjoying life in the sunshine state, so perhaps, in the words of the immortal bard, all of this talk is "much ado about nothing." --Politex, 12/1/00

"Why is our kinda-sorta chief executive the low man on his own totem pole? We knew that his political nannies told him stuff only on a need-to-know basis. But now that the guy is seconds away from the White House, we learn that his handlers deal with him on a needs-not-to-know basis. Last week in Austin, our Wannabe President George Bush, miniature clone of President George Bush, happily told reporters that Dick Cheney had "had no heart attack." The hospital, the Cheney family and Mr. Bush's press aide, Karen Hughes, knew that Mr. Cheney had, that morning, undergone a heart procedure. But Ms. Hughes did not tell that to her boss before he spoke so rosily and ignorantly about Mr. Cheney's condition. When the election ended, Mini-Me was shocked that he had not won in a landslide. His strategists had apparently failed to inform him that things were getting tight, just as they hadn't alerted him that he was cratering in New Hampshire. Did they not trust him with the information, fearing he might get cranky?

"Mini-Me...seems lost, because he isn't consumed enough with nailing down and planning his presidency. The grown-ups keep sending him off to play. They know he doesn't like messes, he doesn't do serious well and he can't do follow-up answers except to refer reporters to James Baker, his Manchurian operator. So it's best to let him go fool around at the ranch or go to the gym for three-hour workouts while they take care of complicated stuff like the Supreme Court and the trompe l'oeil transition, and while they try to restore Poppy's White House to its original glory, as lovingly as though it were da Vinci's "Last Supper." "The usual case would have been for Dick Cheney to go to all the funerals and George Bush to do all the work," says Rahm Emanuel, a former Clinton adviser. "But it's turning out the other way around." Mr. Cheney was the most reluctant of campaigners. But now we are in the Cheney ascendancy. The Bush team hurried him out of his hospital bed to the microphones because they know he sounds reassuring, mature.

"During the campaign, W. had a swagger, a John Wayne gunslinger pose. But now when he comes out to face the cameras he blinks and shrinks, looking tremulous and frightened, dwarfed by American flags. He struggles to exude authority. He furrows his brow, trying to look more sagacious, but he ends up looking as if he has indigestion. Appearing confused at his own speech, he seems like a first-grade actor in a production of "James and the Giant Peach." Are his blinks Morse code for "Oh, man, don't let that teleprompter break"?... Asked yesterday why Mini-Me had retreated yet again to the Waco ranch, Ms. Hughes said it was "a tranquil place where it's easy to do some thinking and reflecting." W. does not seem to grasp that the president can't delegate the presidency itself. Of course, his aides might not have told him that yet." --Maureen Dowd, 11/29/00

"I’ve felt from the beginning that the ridicule of Ms. Harris’ appearance was sexist, ageist and looks-ist. And perhaps a new phenomenon—makeup-ist..Mascara Marx-ism: the belief, most explicitly articulated in a catty makeup analysis in the Washington Post Style section, that bad makeup decisions are a sure sign of bad politics.... If the makeup matter is a red herring— and I believe it is—the question of Ms. Harris’ naked partisanship and its source is not. Because it has been so excessive and self-destructive, and did so much damage initially to her own cause, it has given rise to some wild theories to explain it. That’s the only way to explain what I’ll call “The Rumor.” The Rumor is also worth examining (or at least mentioning) as an index of the way America is still divided into two nations: Media and Media Consumers. Almost everyone in the media I know has heard The Rumor, and yet only one paragraph about it has appeared in print. It’s an index as well of the partisanship of rumorology. Think of all the rumors about Hillary and Bill the right-wing press has rushed into print without corroboration, up to and including murder. It’s interesting: If it were a rumor about Hillary, you know Matt Drudge would have rushed into print with it. He would have justified it by saying that people at The Times are buzzing about The Rumor but refusing to print it because they’re all liberals. Well, people at The Times are buzzing about the Harris Rumor, and I suspect Matt Drudge himself knows about it. I wonder, why his sudden attack of reticence? Could it be because she’s a Republican?

Personally, I think reporting on rumors and the agendas behind them can be a legitimate subject of journalism, or at least of cultural history. The kind of rumors that fly about in times of national crisis, true or not, are often valuable clues to deeper currents in the national psyche. Someday after someone else prints The Rumor, I may have more to say on the matter. For the moment, I will merely quote one paragraph from a New York Times story on Katherine Harris which, a source at The Times told me, was an oblique and laundered reference to The Rumor—and part of a paragraph from the New York Post. Just to put it in context, I first heard The Rumor when a woman I know called and told me that “everyone at The Times is buzzing about it.” When I spoke to someone at The Times I was told that, yes, in fact everyone was talking about it, and I was referred to the cryptic paragraph in the Monday, Nov. 20 edition of The Times, the third paragraph in a profile of Katherine Harris headlined “A Human Lightning Rod In a Vote-Counting Storm.” A paragraph that read: “She is reviled by some as Gov. Jeb Bush’s ignorant puppet (actually, far more unflattering terms have been used) and heralded by others as an icon of grace and courage.” “Far more unflattering terms”? As in Jeb’s “extremely ignorant puppet”? I’m not going to say any more. I will leave The Rumor—which I’m told is now being investigated by The Washington Post and other newspapers and newsweeklies—buried in those parentheses for now, except to add this item from Neal Travis’ Nov. 22 column in the New York Post: “I hear that some major magazines—and I don’t mean the tabloids—are delving deeply into [The Rumor about] Katherine Harris.” --Ron Rosenbaum, 11/29/00

"When outraged Republicans raised a ruckus outside the Miami-Dade County elections office last week, some protesters at the door weren't local citizens. They were Capitol Hill aides on all-expenses paid trips, courtesy of the Bush campaign. Right up front on television images of the event last Wednesday were Thomas Pyle, an aide to GOP Rep. Tom DeLay, and Michael Murphy, who works for a DeLay fund-raising committee. Doug Heye from California Rep. Richard Pombo's office also was in the fray....Behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida....The biggest contingent appears to have hailed from within the marbled walls of the Capitol complex in Washington....

"In Washington, several GOP aides say the office of Mr. DeLay, the House Republican whip, took charge of the effort on Capitol Hill, passing on an offer many staffers couldn't refuse: free air fare, accommodations and food in the Sunshine State -- all paid for by the Bush campaign. Aides who accepted took advantage of liberal congressional workplace rules that allow them to jump from government jobs to political tasks at a moment's notice by declaring themselves on vacation or temporary leave. "Once word leaked out, everybody wanted in," says one GOP operative involved in the effort. Participants estimate that more than 200 staffers signed on, some spending more than a week in South Florida. Many stayed in Hiltons by the beach and received $30 a day for food, as well as an invitation to an exclusive Thanksgiving Day party in Fort Lauderdale....

"Staffers who joined the effort say there has been an air of mystery to the operation. "To tell you the truth, nobody knows who is calling the shots," says one aide. Many nights, often very late, a memo is slipped underneath the hotel-room doors outlining coming events. On Friday night, one aide received notice that he and his colleagues were welcome to stay in South Florida until "further notice." Bush supporters sometimes outnumbered Gore backers by 10 to one outside the Broward County Courthouse in the Democrat-leaning community. A block to the north, a recreational vehicle festooned with Bush-Cheney signs served as operation central, having recently been transferred from similar duty in Miami....[GOP] camaraderie was on full display at the glitzy Thanksgiving night party featuring free food and libations at the Hyatt on Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale -- "a festive family mood," says one protester. Entertainer Wayne Newton crooned the song "Danke Schoen," until a group of frenzied female fans rushed the stage. The night's highlight was a conference call from Mr. Bush and running mate Dick Cheney, which included joking references by both running mates to the incident in Miami." --WSJ, 11/27/00

FRAMED BY AMERICAN FLAGS AND WEARING A PRESIDENTIAL DARK BLUE SUIT, George W. Bush appeared on television and made some brief remarks this evening. Since he did not take questions from reporters, he didn't have the opportunity to contradict what he read to the camera, as he did in his previous announcement a few days ago. First, he accepted the decision by Katherine Harris, Florida Sec. of State, who has said she wants a job in his administration, that he is the victor in Florida. He lied when he implied that all of Florida's votes have been counted. Secondly, he said that he wanted a bi-partisan administration and would send Dick Cheney to the White House to get the keys to the transition offices from President Clinton. Tim Russert suggested this evening that Clinton will be too busy to see Cheney for a few weeks. Third, he asked Al Gore to drop all of his law suits contesting the election in the name of doing what's best for America. Mr. Bush may be thinking of himself as America, now, but Dem observers have made it abundantly clear that Bush has a long way to go before thinking of himself as somehow expressing the will of the people, having received less popular votes than Gore, and not yet demonstrating that he has even received the popular vote majority in Florida. Fourth, Bush never said anything about his pending suit in the U.S. Supreme Court this Friday, which makes any celebration premature. One question remains for us. Now that Bush has taken his Miama-Dade County thugs out of Florida, does he plan to unleash them on the nation as a whole in an effort to sway public opinion his way in the coming days? --Politex, 11/26/00

This evening at 7:30 ET, Florida Sec. of State Katherine Harris asserted that George W. Bush had won the presidential election in Florida by 537 votes. However, she disallowed the Palm Beach hand count, since it took until around 7 p.m. to complete, rather than the 5 p.m. deadline given to her by the Florida Supreme Court. Palm Beach's Judge Burton reported that the final count had Gore up by over 200 votes. These were lost due to Harris' unwillingness to accept Palm Beach's late report. Dem Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman immediately held a press conference to explain that Harris' count was "incomplete and inaccurate" by any normal standards of vote counting one could think of. As such, Lieberman felt that thousands of voters in Florida remain to have their votes counted even for the first time. Accordingly, the Gore-Lieberman team plan to contest the election Monday morning on three grounds.

First, not only has Harris refused to accept the Palm Beach handcount, but the hand count, itself, was too restrictive in not taking into account how the Presidential slot on the Palm Beach butterfly ballot could be dimpled while the other selections could be punched through. The explanation has to do with the thickness of the book in relation to the presidential selection as well as the easily-clogged tray used to catch the chads that have fallen under the presidential selections. Secondly, the inability of the Miami-Dade counters to look at the 11,000 undervoted ballots while being intimidated by Republican goon squads is being contested. A partial hand count never reported gave Gore an additional 157 votes; a full count of the undervotes would yield a bulge of around 600 votes for Gore. Finally, since Bush-majority Nassau County decided to count the first machine count rather than the legally mandated second count, Bush was given an additional 52 votes that the Dems consider illegal.

In total, then, the Bush lead of 537 votes would most likely change to a Gore lead of at least 415 even without Palm Beach County applying a more appropriate criteria to the undercounted votes. Since most of the counties the Bush team attempted to sue the other day on the matter of overseas ballots have looked at those ballots again and have come up with more Bush votes which have been counted by Harris, a Gore lead created through favorable rulings in the three contested counties could then be offset by having the U.S. Supreme Court ruling prior to Dec. 12 that all of the Florida hand counts were unconstitutional, which is unlikely. --Politex, Sunday evening, 11/26/00

You know that Seminole County law suit that will get a hearing on Monday before Judge Debra Nelson, the law suit that contends Republican operatives finished filling out absentee ballot requests, which is against Florida election laws? If Republican Judge Nelson rules that the Republicans broke the law, thousands of votes would be thrown out and Gore would win Florida and the presidential election. Don't hold your breath, but not because the judge is Republican, but because Judge Nelson, herself, was the September recipient of thousands of absentee votes resulting from applications partly filled out by a Republican operative. I couldn't make this one up, but you still might want to read the entire AP story for yourself. --Politex, 11/26/00

GORE VOWS TO KEEP FIGHTING...

Tell Al Gore He Should/Should Not Keep Fighting

LATEST BUSHISM (DURING QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD)....."The legislature's job is to write the law, the executive branch's job is to interpret it." (VIDEO)

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YESTERDAY'S BUSH WATCH

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BUSH WATCH: THE NOVEL

by Jerry Politex

I drove my silver Audi down Mesa Drive, the spine of Cat Mountain, hung a left at the cat's tail, drove quickly up the hilly, winding 2222 in low gear, took a right onto Balcones Drive, and came to a stop in the rear parking lot of Che Zee.

Another sunny, warm early spring day in Northwest Austin, Texas. The lunch crowd was pretty much thinned out by now, so I had choices of parking spaces. I got out of the car, the turbines winding down, and stood by the rear entrance to the restaurant, a pretty-good place for not very expensive Southwestern food. I didn't have long to wait.

He came into the parking lot in an old, rattletrap Nissan pickup. Paint worn off in places, rusty, dusty, squeaky. I recognized him from the description the moment he got out. Looked to be in his fifties. Grizzled. Kind of rusty, dusty, and squeaky. A stringbean of a guy with pale white skin, reddish hair, which was short but unkempt. He was wearing a black polo shirt with the tail out. Denim shorts that had shrunk to a tight fit over his bony hips, short enough for the front pockets to stick out of the frayed cuffs. A pair of old, once-white but now gray, paint-spattered tennis sneakers. Austin casual for a yuppie restaurant, ten minutes from the glass buildings of the city's burgeoning silicon gulch , a world of high tech hopes in buildings springing up like overnight mushrooms.

"Name's Wayne," he said with a crooked, good-natured smile, coming across the parking lot with his arm outstreatched like a spear, eager to shake my hand. "Recognized you right away, Politex. Good description."

***

It began with an e-mail...

From: Wayne
To: Politex
Subject: Question

I'm a humble writer. Who are you?

I answered back...

I'm a humble writer, too. What's up?

He then replied...

You ever get hungry around lunch? Got a propostion for you.

To which...

Sure. Where? What proposition?

And he...

How about Chez Zee? It's near my house. Any day at, say, 2 p.m. Proposition about Bush Watch.

So I...

Fine, let's do it tomorrow at Chez Zee at 2 p.m. unless I hear otherwise from you. I'll see you at the back parking lot entrance. I'll be wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Medium height. Black hair.

Finally he...

You got a deal. I'm just a skinny old guy with kids in college and a big mortgage. That's what I look like.

***

Wayne squeezed my elbow and placed a long limp fish of a hand in mine.

We went down a darkened hall past the rest rooms into the light of a modern restaurant. Blond wood tables with circular green shaded lamps hanging from the ceiling, waiters and waitresses in black slacks and white dress shirts, order books tucked behind in the small of their backs. We sat ourselves down in the front corner of the restaurant near a bank of windows that ran down the front of the building. We were on Balcones Road, an upscale strip center across the street. Our dinining companions on one side were a circular table of dressed for success laughing women finishing their desert. On the other side were two business men having coffee and somberly sharing numbers and writing them down in small notebooks.

"So, Wayne, you have kids in college and a big mortgage?"

"I know what you're thinking, Politex. Politex, what is that Russian? What?"

"Just a name I made up for Bush Watch. You know, Texas politics. I'm a private person and would just as soon keep Bush Watch separate from the rest of my life. You can call me Jerry if you want. That's my real first name."

"Well, Jerry, lemmy tell you, I kinda like Politex, so I'll call you that. Anyway, yeh. Seeing me dressed like an Austin hippy, the first thing that comes to mind is not a guy with a mortgage and kids in college. Maybe an old geezer selling dope'd be more like it. This is my day off and I just live a couple of minutes from here, so I came as I was. This ain't Dallas. Yet."

"So, what do you do, Wayne?"

Wayne leaned in across the table towards me, under the green lamp over the table, elbows on the place setting.

"Marge and I just got back from UCLA. Youngest kid wants to be a doctor. He's a junior and his grades are pretty good. Little trouble with chemistry, so I don't know. Maybe a pharmacist. Hell, if he decides to be a vet he could go to Aggieland over in Bryant. UCLA's paying tuition and some of the fees and books, so it could be worse. Living in L.A.'s expensive though. Fun to visit. Marge and I like to stay out in Pasadena in a hotel near the Rose Bowl. Very calming there, long as you stay off the freeways." Other boy, we got two, just started law school at UT. and decided to get married. That took up a lot of our time, getting ready for that, not to mention money. It's been a busy spring. So what do you do?"

Wayne leaned back in his chair, a guileless smile on his face, as if to say the ball was in my court, now. A waiter came and took our order. Wayne wanted a hamburger with everything and iced tea. I went for the chicken enchaladas verde with black beans and lime-cilantro rice.

I drank some water.

"I guess you could say I'm between jobs, Wayne. Looking for a second career, maybe. I was lucky enough to sell some software that people wanted, so now I have some time off to look around. So, you're a writer?"

to be continued next Wednesday...

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