Vote of no confidence

Before joining the UCLA faculty in 1997, Douglas Kellner was at the University of Texas in Austin. As an experienced Bush watcher, he offers this heads up: "The coming Bushgate will be the inexorable and possibly cascading torrent of revelations that will uncover the slimy political and economic history of the Bush dynasty, the particular scandals that George W. Bush has been involved in, the correlation between the contributors to the Bush campaign and his actual policies, and the hopeful uncovering and dissemination of the manipulations, machinations, and possible criminality involved in his theft of Election 2000."

Given the current headlines about Enron's colossal failure and its close ties to the Bush administration, it is not easy to dismiss Kellner's charge as mere Bush bashing by a left-leaning scholar. To the contrary, I found myself carefully rereading parts of Kellner's book where he addresses the media's failure "to pursue George W. Bush's family history, scandalous business career, dubious record as governor, lack of qualifications for the presidency, and serious character flaws."

If Kellner is correct, Enron may prove a calamity for George Bush. Still, if Enron is covered by the mainstream media as poorly as Kellner asserts they covered the 2000 election, Bush will survive it.

Without doubt, the best title of the bunch belongs to John Nichols, Washington correspondent of the Nation magazine and author of "Jews for Buchanan." While his subtitle slightly distracts, it lets you know where he's headed: "Did You Hear the One About the Theft of the American Presidency?"

This diminutive paperback, about six inches by six inches, could be mistaken for a novelty book on Election 2000. And indeed, it is fun and funny, but its humor is deadly -- for the Bush folks.

"Jews for Buchanan" is filled with amusing quips, cartoons and more than incongruous -- but apparently authentic -- e-mail from a recused Florida governor, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush. No presidential election is complete without the observations of gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter Thompson, which can be found in this small volume: "Bush didn't actually steal the White House from Al Gore, he just brutally wrestled it away from him in the darkness of one swampy Florida night. Gore got mugged, and the local cops don't give a damn."

Also, Nichols has included an exclusive interview with Pat Buchanan: "Look, I am not unaware of what 20 years of accusations in the media can do to your reputation. Remember, I worked for Richard Nixon. I heard one old fellow in Palm Beach County say he would sooner vote for Farrakhan than Pat Buchanan."

The delight of Nichols' effort is its brevity, his light-handed but relentless deconstruction of the vital events leading to Bush's Florida victory. This is wit worth taking seriously.

While reading all these accounts, I expected the experience to be like watching Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon," the Japanese film masterpiece showing the varying perceptions that people can have of the same event. Remarkably, this did not happen. The underlying story, told from varying viewpoints and focuses, is consistently reported.

This is not to say that all the books rehash the same account. To the contrary. Take the analysis by two working journalists, both of whom are trained as lawyers: David Kaplan, who is a senior writer for Newsweek magazine, and Jeffrey Toobin, who writes for the New Yorker.

Kaplan's "The Accidental President: How 413 Lawyers, 9 Supreme Court Justices, and 5,963,110 Floridians (Give or Take a Few) Landed George W. Bush In the White House" reports the same events as Toobin's "Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election," but relies on different details, with only a few exceptions. When they happen to deal with the same facts, they rarely disagree, although there are a few irrelevant discrepancies.

For example, both report on an interesting tidbit previously known to no one outside the Gore camp. Al Gore wanted to get Erin Brockovich, who had organized victims of corporate pollution, involved with the recount. Apparently, the vice president had seen Julia Roberts' portrayal of Brockovich, which was on screens everywhere at the time. So Al called Erin.

Kaplan writes that Ron Klain had no problem with bringing Brockovich into the recount undertaking, but deferred to Michael Whouley, the aide who was out collecting affidavits from voters; Whouley, Kaplan reports, thought it would be a disaster. Toobin writes that it was Ron Klain who turned Gore off the idea. The difference is irrelevant, however, because obviously Gore listened to someone, and as a result avoided being savaged by late-night comics who could have found endless material in his hiring of Brockovich.

Next Page: The still-mysterious part played by Jeb Bush

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