Customer Reviews

Bush V. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book can really be divided into two parts. The first part of the book provides reprints of some of the key court decisions in the legal battle that transpired after the Presidential election in 2000. While volumes were said and written about these decisions, most Americans did not read the actual decisions themselves. I did read the U.S. Supreme Court decision of December 12th, which effectively ended the legal confrontation, when it was released and was surprised by the way it was portrayed by the press. To my reading, neither side reported it completely accurately. Other key decisions (including two by the Florida Supreme Court) are included conveniently in this one text without the distraction of the 'spin doctors' to tell you what you should be thinking. As a non-lawyer, I found the decisions to be quite readable and within my grasp.

The second part of the book is two collections of editorials, one set chosen by a Pro-Bush advocate and one set chosen by a Pro-Gore advocate. These make for very light reading and this comes as a bit of a relief. After wading through a 60 plus page decision from the Supreme Court, it's a nice change of pace to read some light "op-ed" columns from prominent national newspapers. However, these are relatively unimportant. Does anyone still care what The Washington Post thought about the election on November 21st? I was struck by how inflammatory the rhetoric was in these editorials. This was true on both sides. I'm not sure the country was well served by the press and I'm also not impressed that these sources are particularly important now.

Conspicuously lacking are the plaintiff's briefs, which are really the core first person materials. While you can surmise the logic of the arguments of each side to some extent from the reply of the court, it would have been interesting to have these materials here.

If you are looking for a single source collection of the some of the court decisions in the disputed election, then you may find this reference useful. If you are looking for insight and perspective into what was certainly an historic time for our country (as I was when I purchased this book), this book falls short. Perhaps, it is just too soon to expect this from a book. While we all know what happened, it will probably be some time before we fully understand what it means.

The only reason this book has any value is because of the opinions from the courts that take up the first half of the volume. The rest of the book is filled with op-ed pieces from various newspapers and magazines, liberal and conservative. They are all pretty much worthless. They are too short to offer any real insight, and instead simply seek to use very abrasive rhetoric to whip their respective troops into a frenzy. Reading the court cases however, is clearly an essential part of understanding what happened in the election of 2000. To me, it is fairly clear that what happened to Gore was blatently undemocratic and unfair, but also completely legal under Florida's statutory scheme. So the fundamental question that the book raises, though it never directly address it, is, should we be pursuing a basic sense of fairness, or strictly adhereing to laws, even when it is apparent that they are not functioning in a democratic way, or to the benefit of the citizenry whatsoever. If you think that op-ed columnists will adequately answer that, think again. But at least this book allows thoughtful readers who want to ponder the question for themselves the opportunity to see some source materials.

I found this book a great read! Having paid close attention to the press coverage and downloading the decisions at the time, I found this book much easier to follow than what I read and viewed during the conflict. While reading this book, I realized how much spin was actually put on the decisions when reported by the press. I chose this book for its balance and I was not disappointed.

Bush V. Gore: The Court Cases And The Commentary focuses on one of the most extraordinary five week periods in American electorial history: The Florida vote count in the George Bush/Al Gore presidential election contest. Bush v. Gore gathers its key text from the landmark legal cases argued in the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Following the legal documents are more than sixty opinion pieces from journalists and scholars on both sides of the political divide. A "must" for students of political science and American electorial history, Bush V. Gore's combination of significant court documents and bi-partisan editorial commentary creates an informed and informative perspective for the unprecedented, highly controversial post-election period with all of its drama, constitutional issues, and outcome.

If you are not saturated with the presidential election saga in the year 2000, then jump into the fray again with this book. Who won what? Why? and Why not?. Miss Dionne re-visits the Florida vote count, and re-count debacle, and gives a fairly interesting assessment of the election process. You know what they say about an educated consumer, well the same applies to an educated voter. Knowledge is power. This is a well researched book. A fine commentary on politics at its highest, most intense, most competitive level.

The Brookings Institution is a rabbit warren of liberals raised for food, who are, it seems, preserved so that the elite can think well of themselves; Nixon contemplated fire-bombing the joint, and ever since its denizens have been somewhat cautious. For some time, neoconservatism has been the real political philosophy of the elites of The Beltway and Manhattan, but for purposes of public relations the pretense is made that we would be liberal if we could, were it not for dose foreign terrorists and dem welfare queens who take advantage of us.

My experience from Eastern academia and elsewhere is that in actuality liberals in our society tread a narrow path and must avoid giving offense to what William Jennings Bryan called, and which remains, the dollar power.

One way in which they do this is by being "fair" and "balanced." Now to some diehard liberals, such as John Rawls, fairness is being just to the least well-off, and is constituted in such deeds as slipping the local wino the contents of the poor-box. However, fairness has been redefined in recent years by neoconservative pressure as "balance."

Thus Bush v Gore, rather than presenting ONLY E. J. Dionne's liberal, pro-Gore viewpoint, presents (1) the text of all relevant court cases and (2) a balanced selection of views from liberals and conservatives.

The problem is that there really is no common ground.

The case for Bush, it is obvious from this book, is incoherent, wrong, and based on force majeure and Gore won the election by the generally accepted standards of modern democracy, which are on record in the United Nations' founding documents and which the US has helped to enforce in Haiti and elsewhere...but not in Florida last year.

Scalia's majority opinion of Dec 12 is incoherent because it has to maintain, against the entire trend of American history, that we really are a Roman republic, in which the vast majority of people have a limited choice of top man every year by grace and favor of successful used-car salesmen; for Scalia leans heavily on his claim that we, the people, are dependent upon the grace and favor of the moneyed bozos in our STATE legislatures for our right to vote.

In this Animal House model the country is run as a toga party by George Bush's fraternity brothers; I mention the Belushi film advisedly because these films manufacture consent to the superior wisdom of dyslexic clowns.

But this model is not Rome, it is at best, Byzantine. In this model our elections become like the ability of the citizens of Byzantium to root for sports teams named after primary colors; a meaningless diversion. Indeed, and as Chomsky has suggested, the programs of the Democratic and Republican candidates are so close together that random numbers may determine how we vote, there being no strong arguments or differences presented, and this, to Chomsky would naturally bias the results toward close ties, with the result that Bush v. Gore was not a fluke; the problem may recur as long as candidates do not present clear alternatives.

The Roman republic was maintained by the collective ability of the Romans prior to Octavius Caesar to maintain, over and above personal appetite, a distinctly Roman legal culture. The Roman stance was that of a Brutus (not the one who killed Caesar but an earlier Brutus) who allowed his sons to be killed rather than violate the Roman Republic's law. The theme was sacrifice of personal advantage to the commons.

The early Brutus manifested republican integrity because he was willing to sacrifice his sons to abstract legal principles. It might seem that the later Brutus had the same integrity (and a superficial reading of the Shakespeare play would indicate that this is so): but Shakespeare ultimately makes Plutarch's point that murder had no place in republican Rome and that Brutus' form of integrity was actually a form of corruption. Brutus and Cassius, after all, violated their own laws by killing Caesar and their rebellion was morally and legally equivalent to that of Spartacus.

The last time republican integrity was celebrated in popular political culture in France and America was not a conservative time at all. It was instead the revolutionary climate of France in 1789, and, to a lesser extent, in America of 1776. The paintings of Jacques-Louis David and Benjamin West celebrated a political willingness to sacrifice bourgeois interest for the greater good. They state visually that if we want a res publica we need men like Marat, General Wolfe dying on the Plains of Abraham, and Brutus catching hell from his old lady for his sacrifice of his sons.

Now, nothing further from modern conservatism could be imagined, which demands that people NOT be made to sacrifice for the greater good of the Republic, or the Revolution. No, in modern conservatism, lesser folk only sacrifice for dear old Enron...not the republic. And the top men are never discommoded at all.

The game is so deeply cynical that many honest American voters are completely unaware of what's being done to them. Liberals who've run "focus groups" to study the opinions of voters have found that many voters are not aware of how far to the right the in-group Republicans have drifted and the minimalism of their commitment to representative government. The Brookings Institution has dropped the ball, for its "balance" and its retainer of Bill Kristol shows institutional cowardice in which the FACT that the election was a bloodless coup d'etat becomes a meaningless opinion.

Before you even think of buying this book, do a little research about who Bill Kristol really is. Kristol is a flunky for rich right-wingers, whose career is underwritten by ultra-conservative, tax-exempt foundations.

Be a smart consumer and an educated reader. Know the bias of an author before you read their work. To review a full report on Kristol's background, go to:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/bill_kristol.htm