Part VIII

Part VII

Part VI

Part V

Part IV

Part III

Part II

Part I
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Now about this time (summer 2000), John McCain was out and Dubya was in, at least unofficially until the convention. So I took the opportunity to find out as much as I could about George W. Bush.

I new there were lots of biographies out there, most of which were filled with rumor and innuendo from his wilder days. So I went right to an author who lived in Texas and had covered him for years, Bill Minutaglio. I found his book, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty, not only full of information about the candidate but also about his family going back to old Sen. Prescott Bush of CT. It was a fair account of his life, perhaps a little soft around the edges, but a good read. And one that I recommend. Then I went to his autobiography, A Charge To Keep. Like all autobios it glossed over a lot of the negative aspects of his life, but it gave me a bit more insight into the man.

At that point I kind of got obsessed with the new media: talk radio, right-leaning periodicals, conservative or Republican websites. I did a lot of reading, and a lot of thinking. Some things I didn't quite agree with, but most of it really made a lot of sense and at the very least helped reinforce the idea that I was never a liberal. Sure I took the Democrat position in a knee-jerk way without really thinking about it. And most of the time, that was the liberal view. But I never identified with the left-of-center ideology that had taken hold of the party over the last thirty-five or forty years.

But I digress.

So I identified W as the guy I would support. First came the conventions, then the debates, then the home stretch. The more I saw of Bush, the more I liked him both as a candidate for President and as a person. The Gore team hammered at the same old tactics. Al Gore made my skin crawl. And it was painfully obvious that he was not a man who was comfortable in his own skin. He changed his persona over and over, desperately trying to reinvent himself as someone the voters could get excited about.

Anyway, I never doubted that Bush was the better man for the job. And as the Democrats attacked him viciously and personally. Democrat-supporting groups ran appalling ads that distorted his record as Governor. One ad even suggested that because Bush didn't support "hate-crimes" legislation in Texas that should be equated with the two scumbags that had beaten a black man named James Byrd and dragged him to his death with their pick-up. The NAACP paid for this ad and used James Byrd's daughter to do the voiceover to give it a more personal touch. Forget that the guys in question were convicted at trial and received the ultimate penalty - the death penalty - which was enforced by that same Governor Bush.

Anyway, the campaign was long and grueling and Bush was in pretty good shape when FoxNews broke a story the Thursday before the election that Bush had been pulled over for a DUI in Maine thirty years before and supposedly was given special treatment because of his family. Forget for a moment that it was pretty commonplace in the 1970's for a police officer anywhere in the country to let a driver who appeared under the influence off with a warning and an order to go straight home. Bush had admitted to having a past he was not proud of, and made no secret that he had a problem with alcohol until he quit drinking at the age of forty. This issue - to me - was really a non-issue and a late hit that shouldn't have made any difference. But it did.

The polls tightened in those last few days and results were close. The irony is that right before election day, the Democrats feared that Gore might win the Electoral College vote (which is constitutionally how Presidents are elected) but lose the popular vote, something that has only happened a couple of times throughout American history. And his campaign put out statements that if that happened the people should understand that the Electoral College winner was the legitimate winner. But something happened on election night. Despite the fact that the MSM called Florida for Gore before the polls had even closed, Bush did win Florida and 271 total Electoral votes.

The Dems watched the returns late into the night and believed themselves that it was over. But a bunch of lawyers huddled with Gore's campaign manager and hatched an idea. I could not believe it when they reported that Gore had conceded to Bush, then called him back to retract it. What followed was thirty-four grueling days of disputes, lawsuits, rule changes and an overall disgusting display of political war. Gore's lawyers screamed that "every vote be counted" while they did everything they could to throw out as many overseas military absentee ballots that they could, as they clearly favored Bush. Al Gore, a man who sought to be the nation's Commander-In-Chief sanctioned the nullifying of votes by servicemen and women stationed around the world. I wanted to puke.

If there was ever a chance of me considering voting for a Democrat again, that chance evaporated during that whole debacle. Democrats and leftists all over the country spent the next year trying everything they could to de-legitimize Bush's Presidency. Although he won the first count, and the re-count and the re-re-count, Dems would never accept the result as valid and their anger and bitterness and resentment only continued to fester. I have never seen a President so hated by the opposition that they would reflexively deride anything he proposed or supported and even suggested.

That hatred would simmer on the left, waiting for it's next chance...in the next campaign. For revenge. It was going to be ugly. But after one beautiful sunny day in September of 2001, the hatred would go underground and hide for a while. For a brief period of weeks, the rancor over that election would subside if only for a short respite as we all sat in our homes and considered an entirely new threat. There was (or seemed to be) genuine unity in the days that followed that tragic moment.

But sadly, it didn't take long for that unity to erode and for the ugliness to crawl out from its hiding places. (To be concluded...)

Part X (the final chapter)

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