Did you know that the plural of chad is chad, as in "there's a lot of chad lying around"? The word behaves in the plural the same way as the word crap, e.g. "that's a lot of crap". And there was a lot of both during the 37 days of the Florida election recount dΘbΓcle which ended with the Supreme Court giving George W. Bush the presidency of the United States. The chad was the bit of ballot paper punched out by voters in the 25 Florida counties that used punch ballot machines. The vote was valid if it had a "hanging chad", i.e., it was still attached to the ballot by one corner, or a "swinging door" chad connected by two corners, or a "tri-chad" which had only one corner punched out. A "dimpled chad", however, in which all four corners were still attached but which had a puffed indentation in the middle, did not count as a vote.
On such issues did the most tech-savvy nation in the world decide its commander-in-chief last December. The Florida recount of disputed districts became the key to the White House, as the state's 25 electoral votes would decide whether George Bush or Al Gore would win the electoral college and hence the presidential election. The Florida electoral system was, however, in such a hopeless muddle that the process degenerated into farce very quickly.
The state is so incompetent that after heavy rain there is always a flood in the parking lot of the Palm Beach County's Emergency Operations Centre. There were four different ways of voting in the 57 counties, in some by punching out chads, sorry, chad; in others by filling in circles with a pencil on high-tech optical-scanning cards, pulling a mechanical lever or ticking a ballot paper.
In a recount, the scope for mischief was obvious. Florida is what the author calls the Jeberglades, where Governor Jeb Bush, brother of the Republican candidate, appoints and promotes judges, names individuals to boards, freezes people out and plucks others from obscurity. The Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, was co-chair of the Florida Bush campaign. So the Gore people were up against it from the start when lawyers and flacks from both camps flooded the Sunshine State, the Democrats intent on getting some counties recounted, the Republicans determined to stop the recounting at all costs.
Claims and counter-claims of irregular practices and cheating multiplied at a bewildering pace. African-Americans favouring Gore told of being stopped at police checkpoints on the way to polling booths. A butterfly ballot paper used only in Palm Beach had Holocaust survivors inadvertently voting for independent candidate and Hitler-admirer, Pat Buchanan. Votes were allegedly undercounted in heavily Democratic districts. Military ballots, likely to favour Bush, were counted even if technically invalid because of the postmark.
The fight got dirty. A senior Gore adviser, identified only as Deep Strep, phoned the author, who was covering the count as correspondent of Salon.com, to suggest he check out rumours that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris had an affair. It turned out to be completely untrue. The Washington Post bitchily went for Harris, wondering how "this Republican woman, who can't even use restraint when she's wielding a mascara wand, will manage to make sound decisions". The Bushites went after Gore's campaign manager, Bill Daley, whose father, former Chicago mayor Richard Daley, helped steal Illinois for John Kennedy, delivering the northern state to JFK by just under 9,000 votes out of a total of 4.7 million in the 1960 election. Their chosen instrument was Bob Dole, famous in his declining years for advertising the benefits of Viagra on television. Dole told ABC's Good Morning America: "It's always good to hear from Bill Daley from Chicago, where even the dead vote on a regular basis for Democrats - maybe we ought to take a look at Chicago." For the rest of the recount a furious Daley referred to Dole as "that limp-dicked motherf***er". There's a lot of the f-word in this book, even in three chapter headings. Seeking to convey a sense of rising public indignation, the Bush camp paid for a mob of partisans to demonstrate on the streets. One told reporters she was just a Virginian on vacation but was identified by the author as an aide to a Republican Congresswoman. Tapper also names a dozen other "angry voters" protesting outside a recount centre as Republican fund-raisers, aides and staffers, some from as far away as Iowa and Alaska.
In this rubber-necking, blow-by-blow account, the Republicans emerge as more power-hungry and opportunistic, determined not to let a bunch of disenfranchised African-Americans thwart their destiny, and prepared to muffle the voice of the people by subverting the constitution if necessary. The timid and confused Gore people were out-lawyered and outmanoeuvred.
Gore's running mate, Joe Lieberman, typically "crumbled like a matzoh" on television when he retreated from a technical challenge to overseas ballots rather than appear to be denying votes to the military.
Down & Dirty does not however justify its subtitle. There is not so much a plot to steal the presidency, rather a nasty struggle between two "ruthless, power-mad pols with hollow centres, surrounded by political mercenaries". The public was confused by the daily controversy over dimpled chad, machine recounts, hand recounts, and legal wrangling, and I found this a quite bewildering book which lost me at times.
The author races around dropping names without explanation as he chronicles every foul word and deed, lacing the narrative with his own scathing comments, while neglecting to give an overview or narrative flow. At one point he describes as a "scoop" the discovery of the bar where Bush lawyers were celebrating, and then tells us what he told them over drinks, including that one looked like Kevin Spacey. Waoh!
The great American journalist, Theodore White, invented the genre of insider campaign books with his account of the Nixon-JFK election in 1960, but today everything spills out endlessly on the omnivorous screens of CNN, Fox and CNBC, and campaign books have become rants, dominated by trivia and exaggerated opinion. There are nuggets of information and flashes of insight in this one, but one has to be patient to find them.
One interesting insight was the reaction of Bill Clinton when he heard the news that the Supreme Court, dominated by Republican-nominated judges, had ended the recounts and given the election to Bush. The President was in Belfast preparing to meet Gerry Adams and David Trimble. His aides found him "in a full state of outrage". "It's an incredibly political decision," the President fumed to an adviser, who cautioned, "I don't think you should say any of that in public." "I am not going to be silent!" Clinton retorted. "I will not validate this opinion in any way, shape or form. I don't want to be sitting around 10 years from now, saying I signed off on the most political decision the Supreme Court has ever made! . . . I am not going to be on the wrong side of history on this." But his aides prevailed, saying it must be Gore who reacted first: "Clinton is put back in his box. For the time being".
Conor O'Clery is International Business Editor of The Irish Times, based in New York