The Sword and the Olive Branch

By The Last Sober Irishman

Now before you go and bite my head off, I first want to point out that until I was recently laid-off, I was an American factory worker in a union controlled plant in the mid-West. I am definitely in favor of businesses investing locally whenever feasible, and preferably with American companies. The problem I see with the newly proposed “Buy American” provisions on the new economic stimulus plan is that it doesn’t leave a whole lot of flexibility. Allow me to point this out in the simplest way possible.

Let’s say you are shopping for a new car. You are a loyal, hard working, taxpaying American citizen, and you want to spend your money to help support American workers. This is admirable of you. However, what constitutes “American Made”? Ford, Chrysler, and G.M. are all American companies, but a sizable number of their vehicles, particularly passenger cars, are made in Mexico and Canada, thanks to NAFTA. Toyota, Honda, and Nissan are all foreign manufacturers, but a significant number of their vehicles are actually produced at plants in the U.S., made by American workers. Which of these is more American? Even if you buy a vehicle from an American manufacturer and you know it was assembled in the U.S., what percentage of its parts were made in the U.S.? I spent a summer working for a dealership, and even they can’t tell you that. How does one make an informed decision then?

A second dilemma is the product itself. Using the same analogy as before, you do your research and find that the foreign manufacturer has a higher average quality than the American made vehicle. While you want to support your fellow countrymen (and women), do you sacrifice quality for the sake of a flag? Or perhaps cost comes into play, and the foreign vehicle, while similar in quality, is significantly less expensive than the domestic vehicle. Maybe you have $25,000 to spend and have to choose between a mid-size American sedan, with no options, or a full-size luxury sedan, loaded with all available features, made in Korea. That’s not an easy decision to make.

This is the inherent problem with forcing a limitation of “Buying American” into any stimulus package. While I’m all for creating American jobs, are the American corporations I’m buying from actually creating jobs here in the U.S., or are they shipping the work to plants overseas that have less expensive labor? Do we pay the same amount for half as much product because it costs more to produce (hypothetical example) steel in the U.S. than to import that steel from Russia? Do we buy an inferior product that is made in the U.S. instead of purchasing a better quality part that may have been made in Germany? By limiting us to “American Made” products, we tie the hands of our industrial and political leaders in trying to fix this problem. The Unions, unfortunately, are as much a part of the problem as the corporations are at this point. While understandably trying to protect their workers, they have failed to see the bigger picture. Unless we can compete at the same level as foreign manufacturers, American companies will continue to go belly-up because unions are unwilling to lower wages to match the competition’s. The question should not be “is it made in America?” The question should be, “why isn’t made in America able to compete?”

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Did George W. Bush steal the 2000 Presidential Election through the Supreme Court, as Democrats have been claiming for almost a decade?  I’m tired of this argument, but even today, it’s festering like a rotting tooth, occasionally flaring up and causing discomfort.  Like abortion, every introductory student of politics has an opinion on the matter.  But unlike the boring metaphysical debate over the unborn, this one can be resolved without waiting for God’s decision on the matter—right? 

Back story:  The 2000 election was contentious even before its controversial resolution.    Al Gore, the former Senator from Tennessee who served as Democratic Vice President during Bill Clinton’s two terms, was derided as an uppity, boring elitist.  The Republican nominee George W. Bush, the former Governor from Texas, was being portrayed as a stupid and privileged “fortunate son” of former President George H.W. Bush from the starting gate.   But the animosity proceeding Election Day wasn’t nearly as acidic as the aftermath. 

After months of campaigning, Election Day came and for a while, things went as expected, with Gore winning modern democratic strongholds such as New York, and Bush winning most of the south, while both candidates split the Midwest.  Along the way Florida was called for Gore, and then switched to undecided.  Americans waited well past their bedtime, waiting for the results.  Finally, at 2:16 a.m. EST, Florida was first called for the Republican nominee.  Of course that was only the beginning. 

Shortly after the results came in, Al Gore called Bush to congratulate him.  An hour later, Gore calls to say he changed his mind.  As people were starting work on the west coast, the networks switched Florida back to undecided for the second time.  Later that day, recounts are already started.  Two days later, the Bush campaign files an injunction alleging that the recount violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.  Florida continues to go recount crazy (All the while the vote tally in states such as Iowa and New Mexico are questioned by the media).  Even though the recount went past the November 14^th, 5:00 deadline for certifying election results, the Florida Supreme Court decided on November 16^th that the recount could continue.  The court decides later in another decision to move the deadline to almost the end of December.  A lot more happens, including Al Gore taking Miami Dade-County to Florida Supreme Court to continue the recount it had suspended, until the United States Supreme Court intervenes on November 24^th to re-hear one of the cases decided by the Florida Supreme Court. 

America was nowhere near the end of the tunnel.  Legal wrangling continued as state courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court all deliberated contested elements of the long drama.  In the end, two Supreme court decisions accelerated the end of the ugly beginning to the millennium.  In Bush v. Gore, the court decided 7-2 that the use of “standardless manual recounts” violates the equal protection clause.  They didn’t like that the recounts the Florida Supreme Court preferred included faulty ballots (hanging chads and such) which could only be counted by attempting to conclude the intent of the voter-in other words, guesswork.  The standards for judging a legal ballot in the recounts were arbitrary and thus, unreliable.  The court also decided 5-4, that there was not enough time to devise a recount system that would be fair to all of Florida’s voters (as well as the candidates). 

The votes were taken November 11^th, 2000.  The election wasn’t resolved until December 13^th.  This ugly aftermath of it was unavoidable.  Numerous independent studies have produced mixed results, concluding that both Gore and Bush would have won a recount.  The point may be moot.  The media incorrectly called Florida for Gore before the polls closed in the western most part of Florida, which is in the central time zone, likely depressing Bush’s numbers in the state by several thousand.   On the other hand, a flawed system used to keep felons from illegally voting in the election may have skewed the minority vote, which has in recent history voted mostly Democrat. 

Overall, it must be stressed that Bush would have won the election if the judiciary hadn’t interrupted either the recount requested by Gore or the recount requested by the Florida Supreme Court.  This means that if the court had ruled in Gore’s favor, it would have only prolonged the inevitable.  Yet other standards for recounting ballots showed Gore to be the winner.  Voter error greatly exacerbated the problem.

The debate rages on for several reasons.  First, America is still a very polarized nation; both Republicans and Democrats invest a lot of emotional stock in controversial issues.  When someone’s ego is involved in a dispute, it’s very difficult for them to admit they’ve been wrong; especially if they’ve been wrong for more than nine years.  The left is still coming around on the Rosenbergs.  Second, on the surface, the Democrats should have won the election relatively easily.  Bill Clinton may have been hated by Republicans, but at the time he was the most popular Democrat of his generation.  Gore’s associations with him, in peacetime, no less, should alone have carried him into the White House.  Three, George Bush isn’t just Republican; he’s a walking manifestation of everything Democrats hate.  He doesn’t take himself too seriously, he’s not a polished speaker, he wears his faith on his sleeve, he’s cocky, he’s nationalistic, he’s successful, and he’s southern.  George W. Bush is the Wal-Mart frat boy liberals never know how to relate to.  Fourth, it was the closest Presidential election in U.S. History; of course it would end in controversy. 

Fifth, the media’s treatment of Florida was very unusual.  First all the stations, including Fox News, called for Gore, but then the Sunshine State was taken away and treated as “undecided,” and then decided for Bush, until again being labeled “Too close to call.”  Now put yourself in Democrat’s shoes.  Your guy won one of the largest collections of electoral votes in the union, but all of a sudden it was taken away from him, only to eventually become the deciding state given to his opponent!  You’ve never seen anything like that before.  It was so close there must have been a mistake, but as the ballots are being finely combed, the Supreme Court steps in and stops the recount, allowing Bush’s brother and another Republican to finalize the results, sealing the election.  Taking all of these factors into account, only one conclusion is natural for the left-wing partisan: the hick who can’t pronounce words correctly stole the election through nepotism and the courts. 

Sixth and most importantly, even after all the analyzing and recounting by independent groups, journalists, and bloggers, the most divisive question:  Did more people vote for Bush or Gore? –cannot be answered in full.  Without easily comprehended, conclusive evidence, this will be fodder for conspiracy theorists until the end of history.  This is unfortunate because conspiracy theorists rate slightly below psychics when it comes to credibility. 

In short, the recounts requested by Gore and the Florida Supreme Court would have given Bush the election, so the courts demonstrably did not “steal” the election for Bush.  Anyone who claims otherwise is grasping at straws.  The media called Florida too early, suppressing Bush’s vote, and the faulty felon-vetting system suppressed the certainly Gore-friendly minority vote.  Without a time machine available to go back and prevent these errors, there is no way of knowing conclusively which candidate received more votes in Florida.  In the end, a close election was needlessly prolonged, widening the rift between “red states” and “blue states” that will take at least a generation to heal.

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