Victory Through Apathy

Imagine this: It's November in the year 2000. Election time. As the final national results were tallied the following morning, Bush had clearly won a total of two hundred and forty-six electoral votes, while Gore had won two hundred and fifty-five. All eyes fell on Florida, with its twenty-five contest-settling electoral votes. There is widespread discussion about voter fraud and abuse. We all learned about hanging and dimpled chad. All of this in the face of Al Gore winning the popular vote. But now the story begins to change from the ugly reality we all waded through nine years ago. In the face of a possible Supreme Court judgement and mounting furor about the technicalities involved in any recount, Gore concedes then and there, suggesting any recount would be doomed by fraud just as the first voting the week before was. And so, the Pinhead regime begins its reign, without the mandate of the people, and with the noble but vindictive former vice president watching from the wings, waiting. What might have happened then? Without all the legal challenges and machine and manual recounts, would the American public have been happy to welcome Mister Gore back in 2004? Sooner?
We'll have some idea soon, as we watch how things play out in Afghanistan over the next few weeks. Hamid Karzai won a second term as president of that country Monday when competitor Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of next Saturday's runoff. Without two candidates, the election was handed to Karzai, who now must bear up against the international scrutiny of his legitimacy. "Nobody has ever made the accusation that credibility was going to be had simply out of one election," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Or, in the words of Mark Twain: “History doesn't repeat itself - at best it sometimes rhymes.” Stay tuned.