Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - This election got weird, stayed weird

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Brooks Peterson

Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com

Monday, November 13, 2000

This election got weird, stayed weird

You want to know when I knew this election was going to be seriously strange and twisted? Well, tough: I'm going to tell you anyway.
   See, I was watching (intermittently) NBC's coverage of our quadrennial exercise in participatory democracy, and things were humming right along. This state was going to Bush, that state was going to Gore . . . Bush, Gore, Bush, Gore . . . as the pollsters and computer geniuses assigned each one in its turn to the Republican or Democratic column, the appropriate state on the big illuminated map behind the talking heads lit up in the appropriate color.
   And that, neighbors, is when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck. Suddenly, we weren't talking life imitating "The West Wing." We were talking "The X Files."
   It was a small thing, granted, but enormously significant: The Bush states were lighting up in a vivid red, while the Democratic states were a sober, respectable navy blue.
   Now, unless I just haven't been paying attention in all those other elections of my life, stretching back to, oh, say, the Cretacean period, the standard, time-honored practice was: Republican, blue; Democratic, red. A nice, staid blue for those solid, responsible, stodgy Republicans, and a vivid red - redolent, ever so faintly, of protest and other naughtiness - for those irrepressible, party-animal Democrats.
   What did this portend?
   And don't try to make me believe it was just a coincidence - a whim on the part of some network flunky trying to jazz up the mix a bit. Nossir: I've been reading entrails and deciphering tea leaves too long not to know a portent when I see one, and this was definitely a portent.
   But what sort of portent? Since about 99 percent of the portents with which I'm acquainted are ominous portents, or alarming portents, or worrisome portents, or at best mildly disquieting portents, I leave it up to you. I knew, though, that we were in for a bumpy ride the moment I spotted the color conundrum.
   From that point forward, the weirdness grew more intense by the minute.
   That's not to say it was all bad by any means. Oh, sure, we've got (or had, depending on whether all this has been sorted out by the time you read this) the makings of a dandy little constitutional crisis perking along here - but there are compensations.
   Foremost among these, of course, was the spectacle of the people who for the last few decades have been calling races and naming winners and with such hauteur stepping in a great big steaming pile of . . . er, organic matter.
   And not once, but twice! Florida, the battleground state par excellence, had been plucked by Al Gore, they serenely informed us, and Americans across the length and breadth of this great nation took a deep breath and started to get used to the inevitability of a Gore presidency.
   Except . . . after the Bushies got on the horn and complained that the early call didn't take into account (and might be influencing) the expected heavy Republican vote in the Florida Panhandle, the pollsters and pulsetakers trembled, winced - and caved. Abjectly, they yanked Florida back into the Too Close to Call column.
   Embarrassing, yes, but more and better was to come: After a while, it began to look as though Bush would carry the Sunshine State and, thereby, the election. The network wizards declared him the winner. Gore phoned his Republican opposite number to concede, and . . .
   . . . and phoned a few minutes later to un-concede, as late returns made it clear the issue was still in question.
   And so there we were: The spectacle of the networks tripping over their shoelaces not once but twice in the course of the evening almost made all the angst worthwhile.
   Since the election will ultimately be decided one way or another, only one other mystery remains: Who the heck pressed Greta van Sustern into service as a commentator? Why? And, far more important, who was filling in for her on the O.J. Watch as she wasted her expertise on such mundane stuff as the American presidency?
   Inquiring minds want to know.


Brooks Peterson

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