AS THIS year's presidential election edges closer, it has become increasingly evident how worried many Americans are about its outcome. Some are seeking vindication for the manner in which George W. Bush was elected four years ago, while those who felt that they came out on the winning side in 2000 fear that their luck has run out. Pro-Democratic political action committees, such as the widely known Moveon.org, have been urging Americans to do just that -- move on from the Bush administration and the horrors of the past four years. But it seems curious that many Democrats have been unable to put the 2000 election behind them while gearing up for this November's.
No matter how forward-looking those who identify themselves as liberals often claim to be, it has become apparent of late that many of us are anything but that. Take, for instance, Michael Moore's blockbuster summer documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." It has been nearly four years since the 2000 election debacle, yet for the first part of the film, Moore chose not only to rehash the entire scenario, but also to rub our faces in it, asking questions along the lines of, "Did it really happen? Or was it all just a dream?" The opening sequence attacked all of the usual suspects for the disparity between the electoral vote and the popular vote, including Jeb Bush, governor of Florida, and Katherine Harris, its then-secretary of state who also worked as director of campaign finance for the Bush campaign.
Moore's blame of the Democratic Party for the loss is subtle, if present at all. Could it have been simply that the Democrats did not campaign well enough or in the right places prior to the last election? Riding high on President Clinton's domestic and foreign policy successes, it seemed as if Gore had it in the bag. Yet, over the course of Election Day, it became clear this wasn't the case. National attention focused on Florida, whose electoral votes pushed the election in favor of Bush. Democrats eventually blamed Bush's connections in Florida, the Supreme Court and Teresa LePore, Palm Beach County elections supervisor and designer of the infamous butterfly ballot, for what became known as the stealing of Florida.
It is because of this that last week's election of the Palm Beach County elections supervisor has garnered so much national attention. LePore, after all, was a Democrat when she ran for election in 2000. Only after Democratic Party leaders began blaming her for the loss of Florida did she declare herself an independent. And for some reason, this presented a huge problem for the Democratic Party, which feels justified in getting nervous when its own people aren't in charge of the bureaucracy anymore.
The issue seemed to subside for a while, though. LePore ran the elections for Palm Beach County in the heavily scrutinized 2002 gubernatorial race, which went off without a hitch -- unlike the elections in other Florida counties.
But even after this success, Democratic heavyweights have not been able to forgive LePore for the butterfly ballot and her decision to identify as an independent. Why should this matter, if the overseeing of the electoral process is supposed to be a fair and bi-partisan effort? If the Republicans were to behave similarly, Democrats would surely not accept it.
Normally, elections for bureaucratic positions such as county elections supervisor are fairly low-profile. In fact, LePore ran unopposed during the 2000 election.
This was not the case in last Wednesday's election: Enter Arthur Anderson, a professor, former Palm Beach County school board member and, most importantly, a Democrat. What is bothersome about this situation is not that Anderson, who defeated LePore, ran against her. Perhaps LePore deserved what she received. The trouble lies in both parties' efforts to politicize the bureaucracy.
The tactics used by Democrats in this election were simply unnecessary. In visits to Florida, key Democratic leaders such as Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman, both former presidential hopefuls, rallied behind Anderson. But what were they actually campaigning for? Out of context, one could have assumed that we were in the midst of this year's Democratic primary. A sound bite of one of Dean's speeches to Palm Beach County residents read, "These right-wing radicals are not going to give back what they have taken from us. If you want your country back, you must take it back. These are not nice people." Was Dean referring to LePore? Because last time I checked, she was anything but right-wing.
In the end, what should have been a rather straightforward election spiraled into something much more. It became a chance for Democrats to once again show their immaturity and bitterness, something that we frequently chastise our conservative counterparts for.
Perhaps the Democratic Party should take its own advice and begin to look forward rather than backward. Whether you regard the past four years as a dark period in American history or one of the brightest, it is time to look ahead and chart the next four. Our party and candidate preferences should not be based on bitterness over what happened four years ago, but rather on what has occurred since then.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans should feel the need to install our own party members to ensure that things go smoothly in November. What we need is a fair, truly bi-partisan electoral effort to restore all Americans' confidence in the voting process. Maybe then we can all move on.
Todd Rosenbaum's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at trosenbaum@cavalierdaily.com.
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