Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Constitution worked

Saturday, Dec. 16, 2000 | 12:36 p.m.

Brian Greenspun is the editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

So much for the crisis.

President-elect George W. Bush is on his way to Washington to meet and greet and go to work on the transition from the Clinton administration to his own, which begins in just over one month. The hundreds of lawyers who have made Florida their home for the past six weeks have all gone back to their jobs and their families. The courts have, once again, closed their doors to the kinds of emergency orders and hearings that they usually shun, preferring, instead, a more orderly and deliberate process of dispensing their brand of justice. And, finally, most Americans have settled back in their living rooms to watch something, anything, other than the nonstop talkfests that have defined late, early and all-night television ever since America went to bed Election Night without knowing whether Al Gore or George W. would be the next president of the United States.

In short, America has turned its attention to more immediate matters like preparing for the holiday season, getting the kids ready for their Christmas vacations and planning the year-end financial decisions that come all too quickly these days. We have settled on a successor to President Clinton and life is going on.

All this is to say that something dramatic has not happened and that, in itself, must be disappointing to the myriad talk-show hosts and retained guest pundits who make a large part, if not all of their livings, on hand-wringing punditry. There are very few of us -- mea culpa, mea culpa -- who haven't lost sleep or valuable work time watching the TV talkers fill up hours and days of airtime, saying not much of anything while the real work of deciding the election was left to the lawyers and judges in the various courts way up and down the line of importance. For hours on end, we were bathed in headlines signifying much and saying nothing that were superimposed across the screens while one "expert" after another told us their predictions. Some of them were dire.

How many times did we hear "constitutional crisis" in the past six weeks? And how many have we had since the warning cries rang out? You get the point?

There was a significant disconnect between the folks on the television, who get paid to give opinions and make statements that are designed to boost ratings and keep them there, and the people across America who tuned into the shows to get information and stay in touch as best they could with the unfolding civics lesson we were getting, courtesy of the state of Florida.

Even some newspaper headlines, and certainly many columnists, picked up on the trend toward the absurd by mimicking what they heard and saw on television. When the hosts of the television shows weren't screaming at us, their guests were screaming at and over each other and they weren't quiet about the message. A constitutional crisis was looming and it was the fault of the lawyers, the courts, the legislators, the candidates and the people. Woe was us; what would we do to extricate ourselves?

Out here on Main Street, though, beyond the far more than idle curiosity of the viewers, Americans were vitally interested in the result. But there was no panic. There was no handwringing or woe is me to be heard, and there was not too much decrying of the lawyers and courts who, whether we agreed with them or not, were just trying to do the best job they could given the circumstances and their own human inclinations.

What I did hear a lot about was the mess Florida and perhaps many other states have gotten themselves into by not keeping up with the technological advances in voting machines that would have mitigated or eliminated most, if not all, of the legitimate complaints that marred the Florida results. What I did hear a lot about was the partisan cloud that hung over the Florida vote which, through no apparent fault of his own, placed the president-elect's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, right in the middle of the mess. No matter how clean an election looks it is always clouded when a familial relationships overhangs the process. What was once, and probably in the end continued to be, W.'s greatest strength -- his brother in the statehouse overlooking 25 electoral votes -- became the subtle lever of ultimate control when the chips were down. Whether Jeb Bush did anything wrong or not -- and I have heard nothing that suggests he did -- he will pay a heavy price because many Floridians have fel! t cheated and cheapened because their flaws were so well lighted to the world.

While George W. and his running mate and next vice president, Dick Cheney, pursue the transition effort, the last vestiges of one of the most discordant Congress' in history prepares to adjourn and go home to families and friends. What couldn't have happened -- agreement on the budget -- actually has and there is nothing left to say or do to rile the folks back home.

Life is really going on for the greatest democracy in the world. We did it more sloppily than most observers could ever think possible and we did it right up until what most of us thought was the deadline. We did it as noisily as one might expect in a vibrant and partisan political world, and we did it with a speed through an otherwise sluggish judiciary that most considered impossible.

But, most importantly of all, despite what the gloom and doomsayers predicted, and tried to sell to a ratings driven audience, there was no crisis. The Constitution worked, proving once again the incredible wisdom of those men who met so long ago to give us a government that would serve the people in good times and bad.

Only in America.

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