Vote of no confidence

Posner's less than ringing defense of Bush vs. Gore is typified by his claim that the "decision is not lawless merely because the majority opinion is weak, especially when pressure of time made it impossible for merely human judges to do a good job." But this rushed-ruling argument ignores the fact that each of the four dissenting justices managed to assemble well-reasoned, articulate arguments that eviscerated their conservative colleagues' thoughtless work. Judge Posner's public intellectualism on Election 2000 will disappoint even his most ardent fans. It did me, anyway.

A book that I consider a great "little" find is Fordham law professor Abner Greene's "Understanding the 2000 Election: A Guide to the Legal Battles That Decided the Presidency." This concise volume does exactly what it promises. Greene explains what happened during the various legal proceedings and why.

He offers commentary rather than criticism. This book can serve as a terrific summary reference work for students, journalists and others interested in getting a quick handle on the many legal actions involved during the Florida vote count.

However, for a fuller account of the legal machinations -- and a similarly dispassionate, scholarly and accessible analysis -- there is the work of University of Southern California political science professor Howard Gillman, "The Votes That Counted: How the Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election." Gillman's analysis is often striking, not by reason of his rhetoric, but rather because of his cold logic and lucid arguments.

Particularly powerful (as well as carefully and tightly reasoned) is Gillman's analysis and conclusion -- which is the exact opposite of Posner's -- that the Florida Supreme Court acted in a nonpartisan manner while the U.S. Supreme Court acted in a partisan fashion.

He states: "The five justices in the Bush v. Gore majority are ... the only judges involved in this election dispute who fall uniquely within the category that is most indicative of partisan justice: they made a decision that was consistent with their political preferences but inconsistent with precedent and inconsistent with what would have been predicted given their views in other cases."

Not all the authors discussed here focus on the monthlong festival of bickering lawyers as they carried briefs for either Bush or Gore in and out of Florida and federal courtrooms. The legal activity that culminated in the controversial landmark Bush vs. Gore ruling was not the sum total of the story. Actually, for most authors examining the 36-day Florida vote contest, Bush vs. Gore was merely the story's finale.

Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, succinctly covers the full spectrum. Professor Sabato (with UVA colleague Joshua Scott) introduces an anthology of thoughts and commentary from both participants and observers in "Overtime! The Election 2000 Thriller."

For me, the most interesting essays were those by Gore's legal advisors Ron Klain and Jeremy Bash (explaining what they tried to do) and by Bush's legal advisor George Terwilliger III (explaining his team's efforts), and Jake Tapper's revealing essay, "Down and Dirty, Revisited: A Postscript on Florida and the News Media."

As Salon readers know, Tapper covered the election, including the Florida vote-counting phase. He writes for Sabato about researching his book, "Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency," and reports that when he returned to Florida after it was all over he discovered he "was learning tons. Waaaaaay too much. It was unnerving how much I did not know."

Even more striking, Tapper writes, he was virtually alone as a journalist digging out the details of what had actually happened. Tapper found that once Bush had been elected, his colleagues in the news media turned away from the story. And this was long before Sept. 11.

The failure of the mainstream news media, particularly television news, during Election 2000 is a central theme of University of California philosophy professor Douglas Kellner's book, "Grand Theft 2000: Media Spectacle and a Stolen Election."

Kellner asserts that the mainstream news media "failed in their task of providing probing investigative journalism, intelligent analysis and critique of partisan positions, and independent analysis of the stakes of the combat in the events such as the struggle for the presidency that followed Election 2000." Employing the tools of critical social and media theory analysis (but explaining his findings in lay terms), he persuasively documents the basis of his conclusions, not only regarding the media's failure, but also supporting his contention that the Republicans stole the presidency.

Next Page: "Gore got mugged, and the local cops don't give a damn"

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