Bipartisan Posturing and Forced Evenhandedness: An Election Retrospective

As soon as Al Gore finished his concession speech, it was obvious: we had elected the wrong man for the job. Only too late had Gore revealed his true self, the plain-spoken eloquence, piety, and humility befitting a true statesman. So gracious, and yet so magnanimous. It was truly an Immaculate Concession.

Or so we were told. One would never have thought so much fanfare and amazement could have surrounded a man as predictable as Al Gore. Having appraised his concession as a Great Moment in the history of American politics, the pundits forgot that Mr. Gore had no other options.

Democrats discovered that they had run out of options as well, and George W. Bush was begrudgingly accepted as president-elect. Soon after, however, the tune changed. Assurances came from all quarters of a new spirit of unity. In the name of swing voters and the “disenfranchised,” the pundits solemnly declared, the nation would have to move beyond partisanship and divisiveness.

Imagine the editors of the National Review, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, and The New Republic sitting in a circle Indian-style in Lincoln park, beating on drums and baring their inner children. No more vitriolic summer softball games on the mall; instead, campfires, storytelling, skits!

Bipartisan pledges of bipartisan spirit, however, are likely an indication of partisan animosity. After eight years of Clinton administration scandals and Republican attempts at disciplinary action, crowned by the Florida fiasco, Democrats and Republicans dislike each other with great enthusiasm. As the confirmation hearings of Attorney General-designee John Ashcroft have proved, the proclamation of an era of touchy-feely Congressional good cheer was nothing more than a tactical posture.

Now that we have averted the catastrophe of a Gore presidency, it is time to look back at the election discriminatingly, which is to say, outside the haze of popular media reporting. Though unabashedly liberal by pedigree, the news media like to flatter themselves with the idea that they can be objective. The result: When Democrats behave poorly or dishonestly in conflicts with Republicans, the media pump a thick fog of equivalency over events so that, at the very least, both parties look bad.
A quick perusal of the record, however, shows that rhetoric was consistently escalated by Democrats and their mouthpieces. Recall Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s remark that he detected “a whiff of fascism in the air.” Or that Democrats engaged in savage character assassination to discredit their rivals. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, in one episode, was labeled by top Gore spokesmen Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani as an “obvious political crony” of the Bush family, a “hack” and a “lackey” who was behaving like a “Soviet commissar” by allegedly aiding “an outrageous attempt by Bush to steal the election.” Further, Democrats encouraged the injection of race into the controversy when it was clearly not warranted, supporting Jesse Jackson’s outrageous, though typical, allegations that blacks had been kept from the polls.

That Al Gore ended up losing his post-election campaign is probably a testament to the health of our political institutions. Certainly, it is not a testament to the health of our media. The underlying premise of most popular print and broadcast reporting was that the Florida controversy exemplified old-fashioned partisan hurly-burly. If the Gore people were dishonest, surely the behavior of the Bush team was equally regrettable. Both camps, we were to believe, were equally tendentious, deceitful, and self-serving in their effort to win.

Typical of this kind of forced equivalency was a column by the Washington Post’s David Broder entitled “Both Have Failed Us.” Al Gore has failed us, Broder writes, “in truth-telling. From the beginning, Gore has insisted that his only purpose is to get every vote counted…[but] everyone knows [Gore and Lieberman’s] pursuit of additional votes in three heavily Democratic counties in south Florida is motivated by a belief they can overturn Bush’s margin…If it were simply an exercise in civics, why choose those particular counties-and not the rest of the state?”

And Mr. Bush? “His impatience has shown in his repeated claims that the election was over, even while permissible legal challenges remained unsettled. He was criticized-and properly-for staging an Oval Office scene down in Texas” writes Broder, referring to Bush’s transition meeting with Dick Cheney, Condolleezza Rice, and other potential cabinet members. (Its hard to understand how an “Oval Office scene” can be “staged” in Texas.)

Broder doesn’t give any weight to the vital distinctions between Bush’s “failure” and Gore’s: The Vice President’s actions were legally binding, had the potential to overturn the election, and involved Gore’s honesty problem – a failure of character. Bush’s failure was stylistic and largely irrelevant – he showed “impatience” with the recounts.

But this is typical. The news media pride themselves on being perceived as infallibly evenhanded, even when circumstances warrant a little more judgment. And though George W. Bush won the presidency, the news media continue to win the fight for public opinion.