While it’s normally true that winners write the history, there are always exceptions.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that some Democrats are currently trying to break their own rules – think Hillary Clinton, Michigan and Florida delegates – the Hollywood left is now trying to rewrite the 2000 general election history in a further attempt to sway voters in another general election year.

            This week, the HBO special “Recount” aired with Kevin Spacey starring as Al Gore’s Chief Counsel Ron Klain during the 2000 Florida election debacle.  This film is just about as objective as a Michael Moore “documentary” on steroids.  Ignoring the more subtle bias issues such as how all Republicans in the movie were portrayed as uptight, conniving little weasels, there’s still plenty of substantive issues on which the film fell dramatically short.

            But before really diving in, there is one line taken from the beginning of the movie I found particularly ironic.  In an obvious attempt by Recount’s writers to expose what they see as an irony with the Bush presidency, Chief Counsel Ben Ginsberg of the Bush campaign states in the film, “The stains of Bill Clinton will be washed away, and honor and dignity will finally be restored to the White House.”  Ignoring the factual inaccuracies underlying this alleged irony, I think the directors provided an additional, yet unintended, irony about their “rockstar” president.

            Say what you will about Bush, he never actually lied to the public as some Democrats contend, nor did he ever commit any high crimes or misdemeanors while in office.  I find the statement above ironic on another level because Bill Clinton did in fact commit a felony when he perjured himself in the case brought on by the Monica Lewinsky affair. 

Indeed, “The stains of Bill Clinton” were not washed away, and he was impeached because of it.  Just because he was not tried by the Senate does not mean he did not still commit a felony.  He just didn’t have to face the music because he was President at the time.  Yet the fact remains that he did perjure himself and the Supreme Court disbarred him as a result.

            But I digress.  Moving on to more significant issues with the film, Spacey’s character Ron Klain really hits it home throughout the film that “we” owe it to the country to find out the truth.  However, within a minute of making this proclamation for the first time, the film shows Klain requesting that recounts be conducted in only the four most liberal counties in the state of Florida!

            Even when attempting to appear virtuous and having the time to write a consistent script, biased as it may be, the left still cannot help but contradict themselves.  Only recounting votes in liberal counties isn’t exactly finding the truth now, is it? 

So why juxtapose the two scenes in such a way as to expose the weakness in the position they advocate?  As you’ll see below, Recount’s writers were obviously not making an effort to be objective.  This little inconsistency can best be chalked up to generic, absent minded liberal thought typical of the Hollywood left.

            Later in the film, it is brought to both parties’ attention that military ballots from overseas where also not counted.  Naturally, if one truly wished to discern the truth of who won an election, the votes of our service men and women should be counted.  Yet Klain is portrayed as being fuming mad when Florida decided that those military votes should be counted. 

Later, Klain eloquently proclaims, “You know what I’d like to know?  Who actually won this election?  Who won this f@#$ing election?  Who won it?”  But even when scripting their own version of the Florida events, liberals cannot help but be intellectually dishonest.  Klain never wanted to know who won the election, he wanted to know who would win if more Gore votes were counted from liberal counties.

Then comes Recount’s objection to Supreme Court intervention in Florida, making it abundantly clear through Klain and other characters that the Supreme Court should mind its own business.  The film unmercifully portrays the voter issue as a state issue.  While mentioning the Equal Protection Clause issue that arose because different counties in Florida were using different standards for discerning voter intent, the film’s content makes it evident that its writers felt the Federal Equal Protection issue was bogus. 

However, unlike Hollywood writers trying to make Spacey’s character seem like a viable, real life lawyer, actual lawyers sitting on the Supreme Court did in fact see a Constitutional issue as it related to the Equal Protection Clause.  Not only that, the 7-2 Supreme Court vote that there was a Constitutional issue fell outside the ideological lines of liberals versus conservatives. 

In 2000, liberal Justices Stevens and Ginsberg joined the conservatives and Justice O’Conner (typically an unpredictable swing vote) in deciding there was in fact an Equal Protection issue because ballots that were cast in different counties were being held to different voter intent standards.

            In a recent and rare interview with 60 Minutes, Justice Scalia was entirely unapologetic for the Supreme Court’s interference with the Florida recount.  At one point he proclaimed, “What were we supposed to do?” 

That’s because there actually was a Federal Equal Protection issue that could not be avoided, despite what a few Hollywood writers who never actually read the Bush v. Gore decision would have you believe.  Scalia was unapologetic in the interview because under Constitution law, there was one manifestly correct choice to be made in the matter – halt a recount that afforded American citizens unequal voting rights depending on the location of their residence. 

As an amusing side note, the film also portrayed Federalists of the court who constantly advocate judicial restraint such as Thomas and Scalia as being judicial activists, further exposing the uneducated disposition of Recount’s writers.  The real judicial activism would have been to allow a wildly inconsistent statewide recount to proceed so that Gore had another shot at the presidency. 

When reading the Court’s decision, Gore’s team noted that one part of the opinion indicated that the decision was to be confined to the present circumstances only.  Maybe I was wrong…some one working on Recount actually did read the Bush v. Gore opinion!  But immediately thereafter the writers gave us this little gem of an exchange between Gore staffers:

Staffer 1:  “Limited to the present circumstances only?”

Staffer 2:  “Have they ever done that before?”

Staffer 3:  “Never once in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Really?!  Never ONCE?  Except for all the other thousands of decisions the Supreme Court has handed down stating that their current decision is to be limited only to the current set of circumstances!  Anyone who has studied criminal procedure knows that.

Supreme Court decisions are often confined to present circumstances only.  That’s why the law is so notorious for its subtle intricacies – there is never a bright line rule.  What fools the Recount writers must think we are.

Last, Klain and the other Gore cronies constantly speak of respect for the legal process rather than allowing their challenge to come off as too political.  Yet at the end of the film, Klain is asked, “Do you think if W had asked for a recount, the Supreme Court would have stopped it?”  To which Klain’s response was, “Good question.”  The film shortly thereafter cuts to its last scene where an entire warehouse of presumably un-recounted ballots is shown stacked to the roof.

There are two points I’d like to make about this ending.  First, it exposes another liberal self-contradiction.  The people preaching respect for the legal process throughout the film question its integrity and independence at the end because the result didn’t go their way.  That’s supposed to be “respect” for the legal system? 

More importantly, the film willfully ignores the fact that although the recount was cut short, Bush still would have won the recount had it proceeded under the terms the Democrats prescribed!  While Recount tries to rewrite history, it cannot rewrite that now commonly accepted fact – Bush would have won anyway.  Instead, they chose to completely ignore that fact in the film because it did not support their liberal agenda. 

Much of this is analogous to the Democratic political scene today.  The National Democratic Party made rules on when Florida and Michigan should have their primaries.  The respective state Democratic organizations broke those rules and had their primaries earlier.  Then the national Democratic party did what they said they were going to do and ruled that each state’s delegates would not be seated at the convention. 

Yet because Hillary Clinton didn’t get her way in the primary season, she tried to retroactively change the rules.  Even more astonishingly, the Democrats caved and seated half the total delegates from each state!  Starting to see some similarities?

Modern Democrats do not stand on principal.  They stand on whatever high horse gives them a present advantage, end of story.

In 2000, they were able to extend and bend the rules of Florida’s election laws to give Gore an edge by speculating on voter intent.  Luckily that was properly cut short by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Now they’ve broken their own election rules in the 2008 primary season by seating some of the Florida and Michigan delegates they said they would not seat.  Is that they type of party you want running our government?

COPYRIGHT 2008 JOHN M. ROGITZ