Shootout In The Sun

The blow was hard-- and, some would say, low. Last Saturday the Bush campaign trotted out the governor of Montana, the normally mild-mannered Marc Racicot, to make an incendiary charge. "Last night we learned how far the vice president's campaign will go to win this election," Racicot said. "The vice president's lawyers have gone to war in my judgment against the men and women who serve in our armed forces." The Bushies accused the Democrats of running a dirty campaign to disallow the absentee ballots of soldiers and sailors stationed abroad. Chiming in was Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, the hero of the gulf war, who had just returned from a hunting trip with his old commander in chief, former president George Bush. "It is a very sad day," said the general, when soldiers facing "danger on a daily basis" cannot vote because of some "technicality."

Was the latest offensive clever--or desperate? Ever since the election, the Bush forces had seemed outgunned and outsmarted by the Gore campaign in the war for Florida's decisive 25 electoral votes. On Friday, Bush appeared to be losing the legal and PR battle in Florida. The state Supreme Court blocked the pro-Bush secretary of State, Katherine Harris, from certifying the votes that would have awarded Bush victory. A U.S. court of appeals denied a Bush motion challenging the hand recount as unconstitutional. Dade County, with more Democratic than Republican votes, decided to begin its own manual recount. And in Broward County, a local judge gave election officials more leeway in counting votes that were likely to favor Gore. The vice president's flying squad of superlawyers--including Microsoft-slayer David Boies and Harvard Law's media-friendly constitutionalist Laurence Tribe--were everywhere, filing papers and talking fast. Now, by wrapping their cause in the flag, Bush's surrogates escalated a strange struggle that was growing at once more intense and more bizarre.

In some ways, the Bush blast was an eerie replay of the governor's primary campaign. All through the fall of 1999, Bush seemed to be sleepwalking toward the GOP nomination, confidently predicting victory but doing little to earn it. Surprised by John McCain in New Hampshire, Bush woke up and waged a bitter, low-road campaign in South Carolina. Last weekend's counterattack on Gore had some of the feel of Bush's ferocious assault on McCain--an all-out attack, usually through surrogates, on the Vietnam War hero's integrity. It was an interesting coincidence that the same behind-the-scenes operator who ran Bush's campaign in South Carolina--Warren Tompkins, a disciple of the late GOP hit man Lee Atwater--was back on the scene. Tompkins was stationed in Tallahassee last week, helping to mount the counterattack against the Democrats for disenfranchising the military.

Until last weekend, it was the Gore campaign that seemed to be playing harder and shrewder. Operating out of a small, unprepossessing law office in Tallahassee, fitted just last week with high-speed T-1 lines, Gore's lawyers were busily trying to do what they do best, manipulate the law. Breakfasting on Krispy Kreme doughnuts and doing their own typing and Xeroxing, these expert hired guns were trying to extract a Gore victory from the bewildering chaos of Florida's anarchic election system. In one sense, the Democrats were playing on their own turf: the Party of Trial Lawyers is expert at filing lawsuits and winning them. In the down-and-dirty struggle for the PR high ground, the Democrats seemed to be taking their cue from Al Gore himself. Be relentless. Sound moralistic (while acting partisan). Never let up. By contrast, Governor Bush had seemed oddly listless, cocooned on his Texas ranch. But the GOP candidate showed in the nomination fight and the general election that he has a way of drifting along--and then suddenly, back to the wall, lashing out.

Would it ever end? By Saturday night, with the machine vote tally completed and the counting of absentee ballots from overseas still in turmoil, Bush led Gore by 930 votes. The Gore forces were hoping to gain an edge in the days ahead from the hand recount of some 1.5 million votes in counties that went nearly 2-1 for the vice president. The Gore votes were only trickling in during the early going, and some Gore-ites were anxiously beginning to wonder if the new votes would add up to a majority after all. Both sides were pondering stratagems and scenarios that would throw the results into further confusion and, perhaps ultimately, into the House of Representatives.

At some point, one of the candidates would have to play the statesman and call it quits. But for now, the public seemed reasonably patient. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, only 12 percent of Americans characterized the situation in Florida as a "crisis," and two thirds said that the TV networks have made the impasse appear like a bigger crisis than it really is. Americans were interested in the battle for Florida, but more as an entertaining curiosity than a struggle that will deeply affect their lives. For many cable-TV addicts, "Decision 2000" was more gripping than, say, the Elian Gonzalez case but less consuming than the O. J. Simpson trial.