Gore won the popular vote; Bush the electoral vote. The court battle over Florida's electoral votes divided the nation as no other issue has in recent years. Even Richard Nixon had enough class to bow out of the fight after the controversial election of 1960 rather than drag the country through an acrimonious legal challenge of the election results. And he had sufficient cause to challenge the results.
But I digress.
Gore may have won the popular vote in 2000, but I doubt if he could do it today.
On the subject of Bill Clinton let me offer the following thoughts.
Arkansas is a small state, so native Arkansans, such as myself, have had numerous occassions to hear him speak or to socialize with him. He and I share a number of friends, although I have never spoken to him personally.
His party has controlled the state legislature without interruption since 1874, the year that Reconstruction ended in Arkansas. That is the longest uninterrupted control of a state legislature by a single political party in the history of the United States. That has led to a number of abuses of political power over the years. Decades ago, Arkansas politics was about as corrupt as that of any state in the nation. Things have improved somewhat since that time, but certain attitudes and practices linger. Contempt for the rival party, the use of surrogates when questionable methods are used to accomplish a goal, accepting illegal campaign contributions, using government agencies to investigate political opponents, or covering up for fellow party members who have been caught in some questionable act.
The year that Clinton threw his hat into the ring to run for president, I was overseas studying in Egypt. On the return flight home, a young couple asked a companion and myself about Clinton. What was he like...that sort of thing. My companion, a lady who was a staunch Clinton supporter, said that she thought he would make it to the White House. I replied that I wasn't sure about his chances because there was a possibility that scandals would keep him from winning the Democratic nomination...and that even if elected scandals might sink his administration.
The bad habits he developed while governor of Arkansas nearly destroyed his administration.
Clinton was the friend of the son of a lady who is one of closest friends. Just prior to his first presidential election she tried to persuade me to vote for him. She felt that he had a lot to offer the nation. I listened politely, and later wrote Clinton a letter, detailing some of the things that I thought he ought to try to accomplish as President. I wished him well
But I did NOT vote for him.
Late in his second administration, after the latest scandal had hit the papers, she and I had another conversation about him. She admitted that she could no longer defend some of the things that he was doing. This lady was a close personal friend of his and had worked in his office when he was governor. She had supported him for many years and loved him dearly. But she would not blindly defend him.
The partisanship he exhibited during his first two years in office was the real Bill Clinton. His belief in his own "rightness" or the "rightness of his cause" leads him to treat the opposition with contempt. He might have been able to get away with that type of thing in Arkansas, but it was another matter altogether to engage in that behavior on a national stage.
Regards, Shuckins
