Robert Scheer | The Nation

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-US terrorists, destroy
every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush
Administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as
an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation
still takes seriously.

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the
Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators
of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by
Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes
the United States the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime"
for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by
the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on
drugs that catches this administration's attention.

Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading
anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which,
among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies
in Africa in 1998.

Sadly, the Bush Administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at
a time when the United Nations, at US insistence, imposes sanctions on
Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.

The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily
trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban,
who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to a continual
reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment
of women?

At no point in modern history have women and girls been more
systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of madness
masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates their
fundamental human rights. Women may not appear in public without being
covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the
burkha , and they may not leave the house without being accompanied by
a male family member. They've not been permitted to attend school or be
treated by male doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing
medicine or any profession for that matter.

The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an
extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing all
behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown. It is this
last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush White House.

The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at
the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and
cash from the Bush Administration, they have been willing to appear to
reverse themselves on the growing of opium. That a totalitarian country
can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising. But it is
grotesque for a US official, James P. Callahan, director of the State
Department's Asian anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban's special
methods in the language of representative democracy: "The Taliban used a
system of consensus-building," Callahan said after a visit with the
Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very
religious terms."

Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't obey the
theocratic edict would be sent to prison.

In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on
the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it's
understandable that the government's "religious" argument might be
compelling. Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the
farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That's because
the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the
Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a previously tolerated quick
cash crop overwhelming.

For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the United States is
willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan
economy.

As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven Casteel admitted, "The
bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their country--or certain
regions of their country--to economic ruin." Nor did he hold out much
hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which require
a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer
exists in that devastated country. There's little doubt that the Taliban
will turn once again to the easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to
stay in power.

The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war
zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our
long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates
the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession.

A writer in Slate, commenting on the New York Times's recent two-part recap of the Wen Ho Lee case, observed that "Robert Scheer, who seeks full exoneration for Lee, will probably be disappointed because the Times concludes that Lee's behavior, while not demonstrably criminal, remains suspicious." This must be a reference to my October 23 Nation article and my numerous Op-Ed pieces in the Los Angeles Times questioning the presumption of the New York Times that former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee was guilty of the most nefarious of spy charges.

Since Lee was never charged with spying and the case ended with a plea bargain to a relatively minor charge of mishandling classified data, it would seem that Lee does not require exoneration. To my mind, it is the New York Times that should seek forgiveness for smearing Lee as a dangerous spy by continuing to presume him guilty until he is proven innocent beyond the shadow of the Times's doubt.

In its two-part series, reported in the main by the same reporters responsible for the original stories, the Times never once critically examines its reliance on government leaks and sources. Much of its reporting seems to rely on one former Energy Department official, Notra Trulock, who now does PR for the right-wing Free Congress Foundation, and who was the subject of much controversy within his department, including allegedly spitting on an African-American colleague who dared differ with him. While the Times recap finally admits that Trulock was just about alone in the entire defense establishment in believing that China stole plans for the W-88 warhead and/or has manufactured such a weapon, he is still treated gingerly by the Times. Is it possible that Trulock, who is writing a book about the case, could embarrass the newspaper by disclosing the details of his relationship with the Times as it puffed so much smoke suggesting a national security fire?

There is, of course, no fire. China still has a puny nuclear force of twenty liquid-fueled nuclear-armed rockets, and if it wanted to bankrupt its society by engaging in a nuclear arms race with the United States, there are plenty of former Soviet scientists now on the job market. The Russians mastered the secrets of weapons miniaturization, much ballyhooed by the Times, three decades ago.

Unfortunately, instead of seriously examining its own culpability in this case, the Times's recap is another smear based on what the paper defines as Lee's odd behavior. The two main instances the paper offers of suspicious actions are so ludicrous as to raise questions about the acuity of its top editors. The main one is that a Chinese nuclear scientist whom Lee had met during a lab-approved visit to China publicly embraced and thanked Lee when the Chinese scientist later visited the Los Alamos lab. If Lee were a spy for China, why would that Chinese scientist so dramatically blow Lee's cover by publicly embracing him?

The bigger problem for the Times is that its journalists have spent the better part of two years trying to convince readers that Lee was a spy for Communist China who turned over our top nuclear secrets--"the crown jewels''--and that as a result, the balance of power between the United States and China fundamentally changed. The purpose, often stated by those pushing the hard anti-China line, was to allow China to threaten Taiwan without fear of US retaliation because of China's nuclear weapons strength.

However, the latest twist in the Lee case, laid out in the Times epilogue, is that the FBI and other intelligence agencies no longer believe that Lee was a spy for the Chinese Communists. Instead they have come up with the theory that he was possibly working for his native Taiwan all along, as did the Washington Post, based on the fact that he has a bank account there (never mind that it contains only $200 and that Lee visits relatives there). That the Times can pass along this new theory with a straight face attests to the newspaper's institutional arrogance. In the government's case against the Taiwan-born Lee, it was always a matter of once a Han, always a Han. Even the Times in its recap concedes that the government went awry in focusing on Lee because of his ethnicity, but it refuses to admit that the newspaper, in a major way, was complicit in railroading Lee.

Capitalism is falling apart. Tires explode, utility rates
skyrocket, pharmaceuticals kill patients, telephone service is a mess,
airports are gridlocked, broadcasters rip off scarce airwave spectrum for
free and salmon in the Northwest are becoming transgendered and unable to
breed. Even successful dot-commers are an endangered species.

Yes, Virginia, we do need government regulation. Not to build
socialism but to save capitalism, because the market mechanism left to
its own devices inevitably spirals out of control. Recognition of that
reality has guided this country to prosperity ever since Franklin D.
Roosevelt pulled us out of the Great Depression.

But in recent decades, conservative economists and their fat-cat
corporate sponsors have led us down the yellow brick road of
deregulation. Getting government out of the market would free creativity
and investment, leading us to the magic kingdom of Oz, where all would
prosper. If anything went wrong, the wizard of Oz--a k a Alan
Greenspan--would make it all better.

Well, in real life, Greenspan is a competent fellow, but he knows
better than anyone that, while fiddling with interest rates can modulate
the business cycle, it is hardly an adequate remedy for all of the
problems of a modern economy. Setting the interest rate does not ensure
safe water, air, tires or medicines.

Suddenly we are confronted with a series of crises resulting from the
deregulation craze, from energy policy to telecommunications, from
financial markets to food and drugs. In 1996, the California Legislature
deregulated the energy market. The result is now bordering on the
catastrophic, with utility companies demanding enormous rate increases or
they will declare bankruptcy.

Those are the same utility companies that a scant four years ago
assured Californians that deregulation would lead to sharply lowered
energy prices. Today, the bright spots in California are the publicly run
utilities, which are not part of the deregulation scam and which, in
places like Los Angeles, remain solvent and supply relatively low-cost
electricity.

The same thoughtless rush to deregulation led the US Congress, also
in 1996, to deregulate the telecommunications industry. The result has
been across-the-board chaos in the once-efficient telephone industry:
mergers of the AOL-Time Warner sort, which seriously threaten to destroy
the free marketplace of ideas through corporate concentration; ballooning
cable costs; the giveaway of valuable airwave spectrum to broadcasters;
and the grabbing of blocks of phone numbers, creating a false area-code
shortage.

Last year, Congress passed the Financial Services Modernization Act,
which ended a sixty-five-year ban on the merging of banks, insurance companies
and stock brokerages. One consequence is that those companies also can
merge your financial, medical and credit records to market your personal
profile--the most sweeping invasion of personal privacy in the nation's
history.

The deregulation virus is wreaking mayhem everywhere. Last week, the Los Angeles Times carried a devastating investigative story on how the US Food and
Drug Administration transformed itself into a partner of the
pharmaceutical industry instead of its time-honored role as watchdog over
the production of medications. The Times concluded after an exhaustive
two-year investigation that the "seven deadly drugs" that were approved
after this expedited review process was in place are suspected in causing
more than 1,000 deaths.

The mad cow epidemic in Europe and the genetic altering of US foods
are both stark reminders that the rampant changes in economic production
induced by scientific breakthroughs are particularly demanding of
government scrutiny. Yet at a time of such change, the free-market
ideologues have done everything they can to leave the public unprotected.

Those true believers in unregulated markets are abundantly represented
in the forthcoming Bush Administration. They will be buttressed in their
zeal to further dismantle government protection of the consumer by a vast
army of lobbyists, who provide the main financial backing for both
parties. For example, AT&T, which has pushed for much of the
telecommunications deregulation, is the largest donor to the Republican
Party and the second largest to the Democrats. The Financial Service
Modernization Act passed with overwhelming bipartisan support after the
most lavishly funded lobbying effort ever.

What this all adds up to is a compelling argument for mitigating the
corrupting influence of corporate money over our political system.

Passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill would be
one place to start. The revival of the consumer movement is another. We
need more, not less, regulation in the public interest.

Throughout our history, when corporate greed has gotten out of hand,
the public has demanded that government act. Let this be one of those
times.

Some reasons (personal and political) for applauding Colin Powell's new appointment.

Wait until next season. I've already started practicing my
chad-punching, and I suggest the same as therapy for all who feel ripped
off by the collusion between the US Supreme Court's right-wing
ideologues and George W. Bush's lawyers to prevent an accurate Florida
vote count. The electoral process will survive and Bush may even learn to
do the job, but the price of his victory is the court's denigration.

It took a non-ideological Republican appointee, a near-extinct breed
in the GOP, to puncture the outrageous hypocrisy of the Antonin
Scalia-led majority that defined a fair recount by the singular standard
that would leave Bush the winner.

In his dissent, John Paul Stevens wrote the indelible postscript to
this judicial farce: "Although we may never know with complete certainty
the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the
identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence
in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

The so-called court conservatives simply had no sense of shame or even
proportion. Think of the conflicts of interest we learned about only in
the last few days: Clarence Thomas's wife is helping the conservative
Heritage Foundation recruit workers for a Bush administration, and Scalia
has two sons associated with key law firms representing Bush--one a
partner of Theodore Olson, who argued Bush's case before the high court.

It's also common knowledge that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor indicated a desire to retire, but only if
Bush won and could replace them. In that event, Bush would likely appoint
Scalia as chief justice.

Common decency, let alone judicial integrity, should have left the
court's majority more hesitant in acting as agent for selecting the next
President. Instead of taking the high road and leaving the matter where
it belonged with the Florida Supreme Court--according to the federal high
court's own oft-avowed states' rights precepts--Scalia and company
insisted on halting the recount. Why? Because there wasn't time to do it
right. But whose fault was that? Bush's and the US Supreme Court's.

Had the statewide count of disputed ballots been allowed to fairly
conclude, it would have shored up our next President's legitimacy. If
Bush had won the electoral vote after a fair count in Florida, it would
have taken the sting out of his ascending to the presidency despite
losing the national popular vote.

The US Supreme Court's heavy-handed intrusion was as destructive of
confidence in our political system as it was unnecessary. As Justice
Stephen G. Breyer wrote in dissent, the majority ruling represented "a
self-inflicted wound--a wound that may harm not just the court but the
nation."

Never again will a President's appointment of a federal judge be
viewed by the public--and more important the Senate, which must confirm
it--as a neutral, nonpolitical act. Recall that even such hard-line
ideologues as Justices Thomas and Scalia were confirmed with votes from
Democratic senators who thought it important to give the President the
benefit of the doubt. Next time anyone of discernible ideological bias is
nominated, there will be unprecedented senatorial gridlock. For that
reason, the real test of the Bush presidency will be his appointments to
the federal courts.

It is the same test faced by his father: Will they be true moderates,
such as Justice David H. Souter, a man capable of complex legal thought,
or another Thomas, whose most sentient act is to look to Scalia, then
vote? What a sad comment that the man who replaced Thurgood Marshall as
the only African-American on the court should now, in helping to block
the recount, so brazenly mock Marshall's lifelong crusade to insure the
sanctity of the black vote.

In any event, the court has handed the nation George Bush as
President, and we can live with that and even entertain hopes that he
will rise to the occasion, despite an obvious lack of preparation. Deep
down, if one can presume such a thing, he seems a decent sort. If he just
keeps in mind that most of the voters rejected him, he might resist Tom
DeLay's ultra-rightists in the House and pursue a moderate legislative
course. In any case, now that Joseph Lieberman will retain his seat, the
Senate will be evenly divided, and centrists of both parties will be
calling the shots.

But what we cannot live with is an even more politicized judiciary
dominated by right-wing ideologues. The GOP's far right will want strong
proof that its aggressive campaigning for Bush is rewarded, and its prime
goal is complete control of the federal judiciary, which is why Senate
Republicans blocked scores of Bill Clinton's judicial appointments.
However, if Bush attempts to reward his rabidly conservative backers by
placing their favorites in high positions in the federal judiciary, he
will tear this country apart. And next time, his opponent's chads will be
punched so forcefully that even the Supreme Court won't be able to save
him.

We know what they're afraid of. Cut through the Republican verbiage
that has clogged the airwaves and courts and you find one simple but
disturbing point: They fear an accurate vote count because it might prove
that Al Gore has the votes to be fairly elected President.

That's been their concern since election night, when they began their
drawn-out process of obstruction, and if they succeed in once again
killing the manual count through their US Supreme Court appeal, George
W. Bush's victory will stand as a low point in the annals of American
democracy.

The indelible impression left on our history will be that Gore won
both the popular and electoral vote and that he and the voters were
cheated out of that victory by a US Supreme Court dominated by
political ideologues appointed by Republican Presidents. If the Justices
cared a whit about the sanctity of the vote, they would have let the
manual-counting process decreed Friday by the Florida Supreme Court
continue. If that had resulted in a Bush win, we should all have
gracefully acknowledged his victory.

Bush, who lost by more than 330,000 in the popular vote--what most of
us grew up thinking of as the real election--may now squeak by with an
electoral college win resulting from a ruling by the right-wing-led US
Supreme Court. During the campaign, Bush cited Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas as his judicial role models, and he has been amply
rewarded. Legal gobbledygook has replaced reason when the mere act of
fairly counting the votes of the citizens is halted to suit the political
agenda of the party that appointed the majority of the Justices.

In a close election, a manual count of all votes not counted by the
antiquated voting machines is a statutory mandate in many states,
including Florida and Texas, and should have been the common-sense demand
of both candidates in Florida. If that simple standard--accurately and
fairly counting all of the votes to ascertain the intent of each
voter--had been asserted in a bipartisan manner, there would have been no
reason for the subsequent confusion and the never-to-end questioning of
the legitimacy of our next President.

Instead, unprecedented rancor will mark the next years of our
politics, mocking all efforts at bipartisan cooperation. This will be
particularly true in battles over the judiciary, which, more than ever,
will come to be viewed widely as a partisan tool.

The Florida election will always be too close to call in a manner that
would leave partisans of both sides totally satisfied. Whoever loses will
feel ripped off, but the denigration of the Florida Supreme Court and of
Gore's legal challenges by top Bush Republican spokesperson James Baker
has gone too far. Twice now he has smeared the motives of Florida Supreme
Court justices for daring to come to conclusions not to Baker's liking.
Yet he reached a new low Friday in disparaging the right of a
presidential candidate--who has won the national popular vote and is only
three electoral votes from victory--to ask for a judicial review of the
obviously deeply flawed Florida election results.

Get real. Both Baker and Bush know they would do the same had the
results gone the other way. Yet they self-righteously abandoned civility
when the nation most needed it. There are no villains in this election,
only imperfect machines and people, but the Bush camp has vilified the
Gore camp for daring to seek a fair adjudication of such matters.

We are still a nation of laws, and it was unconscionable for Baker to
blast Gore for appealing to the Florida state high court at the very time
Bush's lawyers raced to the federal courts in an unseemly departure from
the GOP's commitment to states' rights. In Baker's view, the problem is
not that we have a razor-close election and flawed voting procedures, but
rather that Gore dares to assert his legal rights: "This is what happens
when, for the first time in modern history, a candidate resorts to
lawsuits to overturn the outcome of an election for President. It is very
sad. It is sad for Florida. It is sad for the nation, and it is sad for
democracy."

Hogwash! What is sad is that tens of thousands of African-American and
Jewish voters in Florida were systematically denied their right to vote
by poorly drawn ballots, malfunctioning voting machines and unhelpful
voting officials. What is sad is that election officials in two counties
turned over flawed Republican absentee ballot applications for
corrections by Republican Party officials but did no such favors for
Democrats.

What would be most sad--indeed, alarming--is if a partisan US
Supreme Court proves to be an enemy of representative democracy.

The Oakland Raiders lost by one point Sunday, and it was all my
fault. My concentration as their most fanatical fan was broken by
constantly switching to CNN to watch overpriced lawyers in a
mud-wrestling contest in the Leon County Circuit Court. What was I
thinking? How could my priorities be so screwed up?

The Super Bowl is still a prize worth pursuing, but the presidential
race doesn't matter anymore. The declared winner of that contest will be
the loser, done in by the unrelenting hostility of the opposing crowd
jamming his signal-calling. Even his most ardent supporters, with an eye
on the 2002 Congressional elections, are anxious as they watch their man
kill the clock. Whichever way the Florida skirmish goes when it's finally
over, for the next two years, George W. Bush and Al Gore will smash
repeatedly, for little or no gain, into a very crowded center.

Sure, I'll continue to be outraged at the Bush franchise for pulling
off a bogus victory in Florida, giving their man the title despite being
357,852 points behind in the national score. But after mulling this over
while I wait for the pundits' parking lot to clear, I've concluded this
rigged defeat will be good for the Dems' team, which will come back all
the tougher to win another day. Back to the practice field to work on
that chad-punching!

Anyway, it's time to turn off the TV and get a life. I just can't
watch any more of those instant replays of disconnected chads and folksy
judges. Enough with the coaches' appeals to the refs to see if man or
nature, i.e. the ground, caused the fumble.

Gore did fumble, but he's played much better in the postseason, and
even though he's almost a sure loser, he's a cinch to be be re-signed by
the Democrats as their chief signal-caller for the next season. If Bush
remains sulking in the locker room, as he has in the past weeks, his
performance as President will leave the fans demanding Gore's return.

The good news is that recruiting for the progressive side is going
very well. Hillary Rodham Clinton may have to redshirt for a few years
while she learns the ropes, but I'm betting on her to be leading the
league in no time. Trent Lott should have been thrown out of the game for
his un-sportsman-like conduct suggesting that Hillary might be hit by
lightning before she was able to take her place in the Senate, but it
will only make her a stronger force. Then there's Maria Cantwell, who
pulled off a big one for the Dems in Washington state last week, which
the league finally certified. With four first-round draft picks who are
strong pro-choice women added to the Senate, it's the end of the season
for overturning Roe v. Wade. Beginning with abortion, in fact, forget
any serious sweep to the right on social issues, or you can kiss
Republican chances goodbye next time.

Cantwell's victory brings the Dems up to equal strength in the Senate
if Bush is president, and ahead by a lone Republican vote if Gore should
pull off a miracle and claim victory (thus taking Joe Lieberman out of a
Senate seat that would go to a Republican). In either case, a single
defection, say of John McCain, who has already stated he won't be
following Lott's game plan, could change the outcome.

The big play in the next Congress will be a McCain-Feingold campaign
finance reform end-run that neither Lott nor the House Republican
leadership will be able to block. That's a rule change giving the fans in
the cheaper seats a say, which Bush wouldn't dare to veto.

If the Republicans can still count the trainers' fingers, they know
that the unexpected pickup of four Democrats in the Senate and the
popular vote victory of Gore secures Bill Clinton's place as a
hall-of-famer. Bush only did as well as he did because he stole from the
Clinton playbook.

That should put Tom DeLay and his right-wing cowboys in the House out
of contention no matter who's the president. Remember that guy Gingrich,
who used to play for them? In the end, he was nothing but trash talk;
even the Capitol groundskeepers forgot his name.

Sounds like a lot of wait-until-next-year hype? Maybe, but, remember,
I'm a Raiders fan. We know nothing ever goes as expected, not even the
name of your hometown. We know this is no time for false confidence,
because the refs are always against us, and the owner of our team has a
way of selling us out just when we think we could be on a winning streak.

We know that if the Dems don't continue to play aggressive ball, and
instead fall into some cowardly prevent defense, they could still fold.
Then it'll be time to trade Gore.

In Texas, vote-counters routinely count a dimpled chad as a vote
for the candidate because it clearly establishes the voter's intent.

Three weeks ago, that sentence would have been gibberish, a sure sign
that the writer had lost his mind. But I offer it today as the key point
in the debate about who should be President and as proof positive that
the Bush camp is being, to put it politely, disingenuous.
Both Texas and Florida law hold that a voter's intent is all important
in determining how a vote is counted. An indented ballot--the now-famous
dimpled or pregnant chad--has been interpreted in states, from Texas to
Massachusetts, as proof that the voter intended to vote for a particular
candidate.

All the Florida Supreme Court has done, by a unanimous vote, is to
affirm that the manual count is legal, just as it would be in Texas. So
what's the fuss? Why are all of the Bushies yapping about the possibility
of a stolen election, given that what county election officials are now
doing in Florida has long been the common practice in their candidate's
home state?

George W. Bush is acting as if he believes the presidency is part of
his natural inheritance. Otherwise, why wouldn't he gracefully play out
the hand that the Florida Supreme Court has dealt and accept Al Gore's
offer to agree to support the decision of the voters as announced in four
days, a decision that is still most likely to go Bush's way?

Even with the dimpled chad ballots included, Bush may be the next
President, ambiguous though his victory may be. He did, after all, lose
the national popular vote by more than 250,000 votes, which would make
him the first loser since 1888 to squeak through in the electoral
college. But our system requires that, if that happens, he be granted the
awesome powers of the presidency, in which case we should all give him
the respect due to the occupant of that office.

By endorsing the manual count, the Florida Supreme Court made the best
of a bad situation. The Bush team is solely responsible for not
exercising its right--after Gore asked for recounts in several
counties--to request hand counts in those counties where Bush could have
picked up more votes. Instead, Bush and his aides have done their best to
obstruct the fairest way to recount legitimate votes in disputed
counties, and they have muddied the waters with their attacks on manual
counting as some sort of Democratic plot. It isn't, as demonstrated by
the widespread use of this device to check the fallibility of machines
throughout the nation. Imperfect, yes; devious, no.

And what about the other voting irregularities in Florida, most of
which seem to have cheated Gore? The case of the Republican campaign
helpers in Seminole County who were allowed to work in the registrar's
office--some up to ten days--adding required information to thousands of
absentee ballot applications that would have been disqualified; the
flawed butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County; the tens of thousands of
ballots of black voters around Jacksonville that were rejected because of
a confusing ballot that led to double-punching.

The Gore campaign decided against asking that the outcome of the
election be held up pending an investigation of those cases. Gore also
stated that he wouldn't accept any electoral college votes cast for him
by Bush electors in any state, and will willingly accept the results of
the count underway in Florida as a final disposition of the presidential
race, no matter the outcome.

The Bush camp appears ready to accept that result only if its man is
the victor. Toward that end, it is willing to trample on the cherished
Republican principle of states' rights by appealing to the US Supreme
Court to overturn Florida's highest court. It has also threatened to use
Florida's GOP-controlled state Legislature to undermine the court, making
a hash of the principle of an independent judiciary.

The Bush blitzkrieg against the Democrats for exercising their right
to ask for a manual count betrays the bipartisan cooperation that Bush
promised during the campaign. It is neither candidate's fault that this,
the most closely contested election in over a century, has proved so
difficult to call.

Bush probably will win the electoral battle, but he will only emerge
as a true winner by taking the high road now and joining Gore in pledging
to be bound by the vote totals as reported to the secretary of state in
keeping with the Florida Supreme Court's order.

When George W. Bush spokesman James A. Baker III termed the fight
over the Florida vote recount "a black mark on our democracy," he
couldn't have been more wrong. At the time he said it on Sunday, Bush was
ahead in Florida by a mere 288 votes, and of course the full recount,
required by Florida law, is in order, as a federal judge ruled Monday.

Anyway, since when is political tumult and democracy a bad mix? Never
in our recent history has the vitality of our democracy been on such
splendid display, and it's disheartening that there are so many
frightened politicians and pundits panicked by this whiff of controversy.

What's wrong with a bit of electoral chaos and rancor? The
post-electoral debate over a rare photo finish is just the stuff that
made this country great. People should be outraged if their votes were
improperly counted--the founding fathers fought duels over less.

We have lectured the world about the importance of fair elections, and
we cannot get away with hiding the imperfections of our own system. Not
so imperfect as to require international observers for a full-scale
investigation under UN supervision, yet controversial enough to fully
engage the public. An election that once threatened to be boring beyond
belief has turned into a cliffhanger that is now more interesting than
reality-based TV entertainment. Indeed, it is reality-based TV
entertainment.

Never since John F. Kennedy eked out a suspicious victory over Richard
M. Nixon in 1960 has the proverbial man-in-the-street been so caught up
on the nuances of the electoral process. People who didn't even realize
we had an electoral college are now experts on it. But instead of
celebrating an election that people are finally excited about, driving
home the lesson for this and future generations that every vote counts,
the pundits are beside themselves with despair.

What hypocrites. They love every moment of increased media exposure
for themselves, while darkly warning of the danger to our system. Their
fears are nonsense. What is being demonstrated is that the system works:
Recounts, court challenges, partisan differences are a healthy response
to an election too close to call.

The fear-mongers hold out two depressing scenarios, one being that the
people will lose faith in the electoral process, and the other that
whoever wins the election will be weakened for lack of a mandate.

As to the former, the electoral process has never seemed more vital;
some who voted for Ralph Nader may be second-guessing their choices, and
states such as Florida and Oregon with primitive voting systems will no
doubt come into the modern age, but apathy has been routed, and next time
around, the presidential vote count will be the highest ever.

True, the candidate who finally wins will be weakened. He should be.
An election this close hardly provides the winner with a compelling
mandate, particularly if it is Bush, who may win the electoral college
majority while Al Gore is declared the winner of the popular vote. If
that turns out to be the case, Bush ought to tread with caution.

Compromise is good when not only the President is without a mandate
but so, too, the House and the Senate because of their razor-thin
outcomes. The country has come through eight incredibly prosperous and
relatively peaceful years, so why the rush to march down some new
uncharted course? Later for privatizing Social Security, a huge tax cut
for the super-rich and a $160-billion missile defense system--three mad
components of the core Republican program.

As for the Democrats, with or without Gore as President, it will be
the season for nothing more ambitious than damage control. With Gore, the
main weapon of reason would not be bold new programs that Congress would
ignore, but rather the threat of a veto to stop Republican mischief.
Without Gore, the responsibility will fall on the Democratic minority in
both branches of Congress to engage in a principled holding action
preparing for a congressional majority in 2002.

Odds are that Bush will be the President presiding over a nation that,
by a clear margin in the popular vote, rejected him for Gore. If Bush
wins the office, his challenge will be to prove that the moderate face he
presented during the election is truly his. If it isn't, and he attempts
to be a hero to the right wing of his party, he will wreck the GOP.
Clearly, future political power resides with the vibrant big cities and
modern suburbs, the sophisticated hot spots of the new economy, which
went for Gore, and not the backwater rural outposts that turned out to be
Bush country largely because men remain obsessed with their guns.

The lesson of election 2000, no matter the final photo-finish
outcome, is that, for better or worse, the Democratic Party is the only
political home for those with a progressive agenda. That was recognized
by the overwhelming support for Al Gore among union workers, racial
minorities, lower-income people and voters who want government to be an
active agent in preserving the environment, empowering minorities and
women, protecting personal freedom and guaranteeing, as Hillary Rodham
Clinton promised throughout her campaign, that no child is left behind in
this prosperous nation.

It is elitist in the extreme for Ralph Nader to scorn the judgment of
those who make up the core constituency of the Democratic Party: labor,
women's rights activists, minorities, civil libertarians, gays,
environmentalists. What contempt he showed for his longtime allies, going
into Florida on the last day of the campaign to denounce Gore in terms
harsher than those he used for George W. Bush. Nader's nearly 100,000
Florida votes likely has cost Democrats the White House and with it the
veto power President Clinton has used to protect the very people that
Nader was bamboozling.

Does Nader really believe that Bush, if he prevails, would push for a
minimum-wage increase, earned income tax credit, affirmative action, food
stamps, Head Start or child care--programs that represent the margin of
survival for so many? Will Nader, now back in his role as consumer
lobbyist, not be begging Democratic stalwarts Ted Kennedy, Hillary
Clinton and California's Rep. Henry Waxman to hold the line on a
Republican Congress as it betrays patients to the big health care
corporations?

If Bush has the White House, will Nader not look primarily to a hardy
band of Democrats to save the environment? Easy to deride the Democratic
politicians who, yes, do depend on fund-raising to survive. But can Nader
deny that it was Rep. Phil Burton, the late Democratic political boss
from San Francisco, who did more than anyone to save the redwoods and to
convince urban people of their stake in preserving the rural environment?
Burton was only one of many liberals who have fought the good fight that
Nader demeans.

If I sound angry it's in part with myself for having at times in the
past fallen for the siren song of what appears to be a purist politics
but ends up being mischievous when it's not downright destructive.

What Nader did was to impulsively betray a lifetime of painstaking,
frustrating, but most often effective, efforts on his part to make a
better world. He is a good man who went very wrong and who now seems to
find solace from his egregious error of judgment by getting drunk on his
own words. The day after the election wreckage he had helped to cause, he
was more arrogant than ever in his condemnation of the Democratic Party
as evil incarnate.

It is nothing of the sort. The Democratic Party, for all of its
contradictions and shortcomings, is the essential arena for progressives
to fight for their programs, just as the Republican Party provides that
venue for the Christian Coalition, which rudely rejected Pat Buchanan and
kept its troops in the GOP.

Nader should have done the same. Following the lead of the enormously
successful Jesse Jackson campaigns, he should have run in the Democratic
primaries, shaping the party from within. Jackson recognizes what Nader
willfully ignores: We have had party realignment. The white "Dixiecrats"
of the South are now all in the Republican Party, leaving the Southern
Democrats in Congress disproportionately black.

But it is not just African Americans who need the Democratic Party to
fight for their interests. It is also true of Latinos and new immigrants
who have found the Democrats to be their main ally in campaigns for
amnesty and in waging legal battles against anti-immigrant legislation,
such as California's Proposition 187.

Women of all races and classes also vote disproportionately for the
Democratic Party because it's committed both to a women's control over
her own body and to a level playing field in the job market. Perhaps the
most significant group making its home in the Democratic Party is
organized labor, which under the inspired leadership of the AFL-CIO's
John Sweeney has finally reemerged to take on Nader's nemesis: the titans
of the corporate world. Gore won the popular vote and the key
battleground states in the North largely because of the grassroots
organizing of labor.

By sticking with the Democratic Party, most of the people Nader has
devoted his life to helping proved smarter than he was in the crunch.
They dared not risk losing hard-fought gains to follow Nader into the
quicksand of a third party. It is time for Nader to stop playing the Pied
Piper and come home.