Al Gore Was Right
The most revealing moment in the new HBO movie Recount is the moment at the end when Al Gore tells Ron Klain that the fight is over and it's time to concede. Klain wants to fight on, but Gore overrules him, and Bush becomes president. There are a lot of Americans now, including former Bush supporters, who rue the day Gore yielded, but it is evident from the play-by-play in the film that the Republicans would have preyed upon a Gore presidency with the exact same vengeful, careless, aggressive sense of entitlement that they showed during the recount. If Gore had stuck it out, if the Supreme Court had been publicly shamed for its evident corruption, if the bullies had not gotten their way, then the Republicans would have obstructed the operation of Gore's administration and the nation would have been destroyed from the inside. As it happened, the Republicans got to take charge, and they promptly screwed up in every conceivable way, and so their maliciousness and absolute incompetence was revealed for all but the most obtuse of our citizenry to see. The Bush drug has been a terrible and nearly fatal dose, and we don't know how alive we will be afterwards, but at least it has shown how extensive and serious the disease of Republicanism was. Every Republican in Recount has since shamed and dishonored himself for all to see. It's clear that the recount was the Republicans' last hurrah.
Which is possibly why people like James Baker are said to be pleased with the film. It was a war they won, and even though they did so in unethical (rank partisanship on the Supreme Court) and illegal (Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris purging the voter rolls before the election) ways. Winning to them trumped every other consideration. It is also evident that they learned from their "victory" in Florida that bullying was the way to go, and so they attempted to use the same strategy and tactics in Iraq. The last eight years show that ethics, law, and human decency meant nothing to these Republicans. And their current pleasure in the depiction of their own rottenness shows that they have learned nothing.
I would like to be a fly on the wall in the room where John McCain is watching Recount. In the course of the next few months, knowing that bullying, cheating, and subverting the election might or might not work, he will have to make a choice. He can run an honorable campaign and lose or a dishonorable campaign that shames him. Does he watch Recount and see Warren Christopher as a "wimp" and James Baker as "tough"? Or does he watch Recount and feel the humiliation that every Republican should feel? He is the carrier of the Bush poison now. The sooner he recognizes it, the better off the nation will be.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/al-gore-was-right_b_103548.html