Like Ebenezer Scrooge, I am haunted by three ghosts, all of elections past. Of course, the first election that came to mind as a “ghost of elections past” is Trump’s shocking electoral college victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. That ghost is still haunting most of us with only a few days to go until November 3, 2020. My daughter, granddaughter, and I donned our pant suits and took the selfie below, confident that we were electing the first female president. But the painful and shocking outcome is still too raw, and it is too soon for me to write about it without knowing the result of the upcoming election. Suffice to say, I am left with too many “what if Hillary won” thoughts for a single story.
On this Halloween, I pray the results of the upcoming election do not make it into another one that haunts me. Our country deserves a treat rather than a trick this time.
Instead, I will briefly reflect on 1968, the first election in which I voted. This ghost will haunt me forever. It resulted in the election of Richard Nixon, the president I hated most until now. Some 52 years later, I often wonder about the many factors that resulted in Nixon’s victory. What if Bobby Kennedy had not been assassinated? What if Gene McCarthy had been a stronger candidate? What if Hubert Humphrey, a decent man, had not been tarnished by the police riots and protests at the Chicago convention as well as by being the unpopular Johnson’s Vice President? What if, instead of crying “Dump the Hump,” young people like me had realized Nixon was the greater evil and supported Humphrey’s candidacy?
If I eliminate 2016 and 1968, the bookends of elections that rocked my world, the election that still haunts me is Bush v Gore in 2000. I remember watching the returns and the networks declaring Gore was ahead in Florida. The station I was watching back then switched to a live feed of the Bush family in a hotel room. Jeb, who was then Governor of Florida, was on the phone. In my fantasy, he was putting in the fix for his big brother. Perhaps Jeb was talking to Katherine Harris, Florida’s Republican secretary of state, who also served as co-chair of Florida’s “Bush for President” election committee.
Ultimately, Gore made the huge mistake of conceding and then having to take it back as it became clear that Florida was too close to call. When Gore called Bush to withdraw his concession, Bush was astonished and said,
”You mean to tell me, Mr. Vice President, you’re retracting your concession?” Gore replied, ”You don’t have to be snippy about it … ‘Let me explain something. Your younger brother (Jeb) is not the ultimate authority on this.”
We all know how this ended. On November 26, 2000, three weeks after election day, Katherine Harris certified that Bush had won the election by 537 votes. Gore sued her because all of the recounts had not been completed when Harris certified the results. On December 8, 2000, the Florida Supreme Court sided with Gore, ordering that all statewide punch-card ballots (see featured image) that had been cast but not registered needed to be recounted. Remember the hanging chads on ballots that were not punched all the way through? The confusing “butterfly ballots” that resulted in some Gore votes going to Pat Buchanan?
Ultimately, Bush appealed to the Supreme Court and on December 12, the Supreme Court stopped the counting and declared Bush had won Florida. Those 25 electoral votes meant Bush squeaked by in the electoral college, 271-266. Even though Gore had won the popular vote by 543,895 votes, we all know now that winning the popular vote means nothing. In his dissent, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote:
“Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”
Aside from the post-election stress and confusion, I have been haunted by the “what ifs” had Gore been declared the winner (which I will always think he was):
Here’s a big one. If Gore had received the intelligence briefing in August, 2001 that there was a terrorist plan to fly planes into American buildings, I’m pretty sure he would have read it, taken it seriously, and tried to stop the 9/11 plot.
Even if he couldn’t have prevented 9/11, he never would have invaded Iraq, thus saving our country the blood and treasure that was lost in the wrong war. No Iraq war would have prevented 4,000 American soldiers from dying and 40,000 from being wounded. We would not have spent $3 trillion on what became America’s second most costly war after World War II.
I’m sure Gore would never have done the Bush tax cuts. Between that and saving the trillions spent on the war in Iraq, our country would have been in much better fiscal shape.
When I think about all of the environmental disasters we are experiencing now, I can’t help but wonder where we would be if President Gore had been in charge. Perhaps he could have convinced us to act twenty years sooner. His commitment to environmental causes dated back to hearings he organized in Congress and the Senate in the eighties. As Clinton’s Vice President, he worked on climate change and new technologies to reduce vehicle emissions and create clean energy. Since environmental causes have continued to be his life’s work … what if?
So much can hinge on a small number of votes that can confer great power on someone who was not the choice of the voters at large. We saw that in 2000 and again in 2016. On this Halloween, I pray the results of the upcoming election do not make it into another one that haunts me. Our country deserves a treat rather than a trick this time.
Trick or treat 2020
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Laurie LevyBoomer. Educator. Advocate. Eclectic topics: grandkids, special needs, values, aging, loss, & whatever. Author: Terribly Strange and Wonderfully Real.
I had never read Justice Stevens dissent in Gore v. Bush, Laurie. Thank you for including it. Like the butterfly effect, so many things could have been different if Gore had risen to the top. (Of course, that holds true four years ago as well). We can work, hope and pray for a good outcome this coming week. I feel our democracy depends on it!
This will be an anxious week coming up. I totally agree that democracy depends on the outcome.
Not only did I also include Bush v. Gore among my three horrible elections, but we even chose the same hanging chad inspection photo. And don’t get me started on the role of Republican lawyers (including current SCOTUS Justices Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett) and SCOTUS in that debacle.
That said, I, of course, share in your great Halloween prayer and love the photo. (And who’s your friend?)
John, great minds think alike. My *friend* in the photo is part of the elaborate Halloween decorations created by my granddaughter and her friend on their front porch and yard (along with many politically correct yard signs). It’s pretty frightening that 1/3 of SCOUS was involved with making Bush president.
Yes, Laurie, our great minds thought alike! You did a much more thorough job of explaining and analyzing the 2000 debacle. And I love that you included the scene of the Bush family in the hotel room, the conversation between Bush and Gore when Gore retracted his concession, and the quote from the Stevens dissent. And we both wore our pants suits to vote in 2016.
Love your Halloween photo at the end too. With masks on, no less!
Thanks, Suzy. It’s so refreshing to find political soulmates out there. I don’t remember what I did with that pants suit (sigh).
Great analysis, Laurie, and thanks for including Justice Stevens’ dissent. Very well put. With the Supreme Court now so compromised, this is scarier than ever. Yes, let us pray.
Marian, I have spent the last four+ years thinking things could not get any worse, but of course they have. I fear 2000 was just a dress rehearsal for what we are about to see.
Thanx for the reminders Laurie, as depressing as they are.
And if Hillary Clinton was in the White House you can be sure she wouldn’t have discarded Barack Obama’s pandemic guidelines.
Hoping for a Blue wave.
Ditto, Dana.
Laurie, like you, I was out marching against all three candidates (Nixon, Humphrey, Wallace) in 1968 and also too young to vote. I am unable to “replay” that in my mind and imagine a scenario where I would have been encouraging people to vote for Humphrey after all the things he (and Mayor Daley on his behalf) had done. But maybe that shows limited imagination on my part.
IN more recent elections, I have been happy to vote for candidates that I didn’t really believe in–up to a point. I voted for Clinton once and Obama once but neither of them earned my vote twice. I voted for Hilary and (this time) Uncle Joe even though I thought (as I believed in 1968) the country’s priorities need to be transformed, not just tweaked. Let’s hope for. a landslide victory that sweeps out McConnell as well as Trump.
Dale, I agree that Biden is not the candidate I dreamed of either. But if he/we are lucky and he wins, I hope he will serve as a bridge to a new generation of leadership. Humphrey was a decent man tainted by his association with some bad actors. He probably didn’t deserve the contempt with which I held him back then.
Dale’s comment confuses me, Laurie, because you never said you were out marching against all 3 candidates in 1968, and you WERE old enough to vote. You explicitly say it was the first election you voted in.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I sadly and unenthusiastically did cast my first vote for Humphrey. He was by far the lesser of two evils and I was a pragmatist even back then.
I was responding to Laurie’s question: “What if, instead of crying “Dump the Hump,” young people like me had realized Nixon was the greater evil and supported Humphrey’s candidacy?”
I inferred that she was chanting “dump the Hump.” She also hated Nixon and I took a guess that she didn’t support Wallace. So, like me, marching or not, she was opposed to all three candidates.
You are correct in your assumption, Dale. I did not support any of them. But when push came to shove, I gave my first vote to Humphrey, already disillusioned with a system in which I had to choose the lesser evil. That was probably a painful but good lesson to have learned for future elections. Sorry I didn’t include that to make my choice clear.
Your story is a big part of the reason I love Retrospect so much, Laurie! In reading each person’s story on this prompt in particular, I now have a richer and broader understanding of the politics of my generation. I’ve not been a very political person (although I understand we are all inherently political) until the last decade or so, so it’s helpful for me to read stories that encapsulate these earlier momentous events in such succinct and personal ways. Thanks for this one!
Thank you, Barb, for reading my story as part of how I saw three different elections at three different stages of my life. Now that I’ve written that, it would have been good to have said it in the story (LOL).
Laurie, I love this story, and not just because our “what-if” analyses were so similar. By focusing on three elections spanning our entire voting lives, you remind us that much of our generation has always had a burning political activism. We learned the importance of politics early on and experience political joy, anguish, and anxiety that our offspring may never know — although Gen Z may be coming close. Glad to share this political roller coaster with you.
Sadly, my kids and even the older grandkids are experiencing great anxiety over our current political rollercoaster. I just checked my phone. No change in the election results. I so wish we weren’t on this ride!