Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris certifies the state's election
"I hereby declare George W. Bush as the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes for president of the United States," she said after signing page after page of the cobbled-together returns with a big blue fountain pen. She declared it a victory not for Bush or for Gore, but "for the rule of law."
Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman appeared minutes later to to say the rule of law had not fared so well at all and to give the Democratic mantra — that not all the votes had been counted — and to start immediate p.r. preparations for the long and turbulent "contest" phase ahead. "From the beginning of this extraordinary period, Vice President Gore and I have asked only that the votes that were cast on Election Day be counted," he said in his warm-up for Gore's Monday morning address, calling the Secretary of State's count "incomplete and inaccurate." James Baker answered moments later by saying: "At some point, the law must prevail and the lawyers must go home. We have reached that point."
At 9:30 p.m., Bush reached it too. "The end of an election is the beginning of a new day," he said in a 7-minute address that seemed to contain large chunks of the acceptance speech he didn't get to give on election night — common ground on education and Social Security, dreams of bipartisanship in the next Congress, praise for the size of the American heart. "Secretary Cheney and I are honored and humbled to have won the state of Florida, which gives us the needed electoral votes needed to win the presidency," Bush said. The transition from Austin to Washington will begin, Bush said, in the care of Dick Cheney. Bush had finally given his victory speech.
But conspicuous by its omission was any mention of Bush's appeal at the Supreme Court. Remember, Bush has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare this very victory completely empty — which is why Harris saved some airtime for a few digs at the Florida Supremes' messing with her deadlines. Bush has asked the high court to upbraid the Florida Supreme Court for making a shambles of the legal election process — but now that he's won by their rules, he'd prefer not to talk about it.
Instead, Bush grabbed the presidential reins. Of the imminent Gore contest to the night's ragged results, Bush merely said, with studied magnanimity, "I respectfully ask him to reconsider." And then it was on to the coming term, and a nice plea for both sides to "show our commitment to the common good." See you in January.
There is no chance whatsoever that Al Gore will bite, and it was Katherine Harris who on Sunday left Democrats one more thing to complain about.
The lady certainly had a firm grip on her discretion. The Florida Supreme Court had given her a nice out — if a timid but honest canvassing board like Palm Beach's (we know they're honest because Gore is suing them in the morning) wasn't going to finish on time, she could give them 16 more hours if the Secretary of State's office was closed on Sunday.
She not only turned down Palm Beach's request for the extra time and kept her office wide open and bustling with lawyers all day, she then handed Lieberman a few lines for his speech by certifying only the original machine-count results and blithely moving on.
OK, maybe the counting board shouldn't have taken Thanksgiving off. But if Harris was any sort of diplomat, she might have graciously closed up her office, taken the whole batch in the morning, and in the process made her soon-to-be-litigated certification a little less temporary. Palm Beach, counting for posterity and the courts, finished before the ceremony took place. Bush's lead was not in danger.
No matter — in fact, Gore's lawyers were happy to have it over with, so they can start Monday in court. David Boies spent Sunday afternoon confidently explaining why Harris may well have been declaring herself Queen of Sheba, for all the legal issues yet unresolved and all the hand counts unfinished. Contesting an officially certified presidential election? Child's play, Boies told reporters, and don't worry. "Everything's going to be over on December 12." He wants to spend the next two weeks suing in Miami-Dade, Nassau and even Palm Beach, which he says was too hard on the dimpled ballots. Boies has been telling everyone who would listen that there are more than 10,000 votes in Miami-Dade that have never been counted because the voting machines spit them out. Declared Boies Sunday afternoon: "Until those votes are counted, this election cannot be over."
For Bush, that's now a matter of opinion. He's now been declared the Florida winner three times (pending litigation). And he's just declared himself the next president of the United States, albeit without the bunting and confetti. Let Gore explain to the American people why he's still suing to prolong this race.
Gore will start right away. From his Monday address until the Supreme Court rules, the veep has to rely on the polls that say a majority of Americans still have a feeling that the vote has been kind of fishy. That there are votes in Miami-Dade, in Palm Beach, in some other counties, that were cast by Democrats for Gore with good intention but lousy execution. That those votes are out there somewhere, waiting to be found, interpreted and put in the veep's consistently rising column.
Bush has to rely on the other large feeling among Americans, that maybe we should stop looking. "While our system is not perfect," he said conciliatorily, "it is fundamentally strong." Translation: You've got a president right here, all ready to start uniting this great land. Why wait?