One week, no more, experts say By R.W. Apple Jr. New York Times Nov. 12, 2000 WASHINGTON - Another week and no more. By next weekend, a group of scholars and senior politicians interviewed this weekend agreed, the presidential race of 2000 must be resolved, without recourse to the courts. With remarkable unanimity, the experts said that would be in the nation's best interests and, in the last analysis, those of the candidates, Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. It was the Democrats who had talked during the past four days of seeking redress in the courts, expressing their support for lawsuits already filed by some of their backers, and it was the Republicans who had resisted that idea. But on Saturday morning, it was the Republicans who pursued legal remedies first, in an abrupt reversal of positions that they must have found politically painful. Once begun, it was widely said, even before the Republicans had acted, litigation could only spawn more litigation and drag on and on, to the detriment of the political system. But there was no consensus on what to do to help head off the looming court battle. "When the officials in Florida announce their final count, including the overseas absentee ballots, next Saturday or Sunday, the candidates should step forward and accept them," said Lee Hamilton, a former congressman from Indiana who heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Hamilton, a Democrat, added, ''I think they may well do so, because I think this week of waiting that lies ahead of us will create in the country an upwelling of public pressure on the candidates to move on. There appear to have been irregularities, but there are no perfect elections. People are going to lose their patience very rapidly with these arguments over who won." Former Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee agreed, saying that "the country would be absolutely outraged by weeks and months of litigation, which is exactly what you will get, tit for tat, if someone starts it." Baker, a Republican, argued that neither the man who ultimately became president nor the one who lost would benefit from a protracted struggle. The one who claimed the prize, he said, would "take over a less than useless presidency" because of accumulated bitterness, and the one who lost would probably see his career ended. "Eventually, somebody is going to be a hero," he said, "and somebody's going to be president. Not necessarily the same person." David McCulloch, the author of an esteemed biography of Harry S. Truman, quoted Truman to the effect that "the only new thing in the world is the history that you don't know," and commented, "We have been through this kind of thing before, and thank God, we had people then who put the country first." Thomas Jefferson, McCulloch said, was involved in an agonizingly close election. In February 1801, Jefferson was elected over Aaron Burr after 36 ballots in the House, when Alexander Hamilton, describing Jefferson as "the lesser evil," used his influence to break a deadlock that lasted all night. "Nobody ever described Jefferson as a weak leader because he barely won," McCulloch said, "and that need not be the case this time, either. If a man acts like a leader, he can lead. But these candidates need to pull back, just for a moment, and stop thinking about their own narrow interests." Several of those interviewed said the coming week offered opportunities and pitfalls. While waiting for the overseas-ballot deadline in Florida on Friday, they said, the two sides could either escalate their dueling news conferences or use the time to work out an agreement on how to go forward. With the Florida outcome still very much in doubt, some of the political scholars at the Brookings Institution in Washington commented, it would be much easier for the candidates to agree to abide by the final vote certified by state election officials than it would be after that certification had taken place. "The country's interest desperately needs a voice," said Charles Jones, a retired professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. "The voters prepared a script of consultation, cooperation and bipartisanship, and asked the politicians, in effect, to get on with it. What's going on is the absolute antithesis of that. These two people should be settling down, setting that tone right away and assuring all of us that they got the message." Anthony Kronman, dean of the Yale Law School, who has written widely about the state of the American legal profession, said he hoped that "two complementary acts of statesmanship could help us find a political way out of a political problem incommensurable with what any court should decide." ------------------ Houston Sports Board The Anti-Bud Adams Page
