At 4:11 a.m. -- more than 19 hours after it began -- the nightmarish battle over Duval´s military
    ballots came to an end.  Duval was the last of Florida´s 67 counties to complete the arduous task.
    When the canvassing board announced that the ballots of 149 soldiers, sailors and airmen had been
    disqualified, a pair of jubilant Gore lawyers exchanged high-fives.

    A Republican, visibly shaken by this sight, demanded to know how they could celebrate the
    disenfranchisement of U.S. military personnel risking their lives around the world. One of the Gore
    lawyers glibly replied: 'A win´s a win.'
        -At Any Cost

It is quite unlikely that Bill Sammon's account of the 2000 election debacle will be taken seriously by the mainstream media, he is after all doubly a member of the Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy--as both the White House correspondent for the dread Washington Times and an analyst for the upstart Fox News Channel.  And to be honest, he's neither a great stylist (imagine this story in the hands of a Tom Wolfe or a Richard Ben Cramer), nor is he a profound analyst (though the political and legal intricacies of this story would require an analyst who combines the acumen of both Ed Rollins and Bob Bork).  Nonetheless, he is an excellent journalist, and he has a naturally riveting tale to tell.

Even though it was only seven months ago, it's easy to forget, or perhaps we (or just I) don't choose to remember, what a roller coaster ride those six weeks after Election Day were and what emotional peaks and valleys we all shared.  Mr. Sammon uses an especially effective device to restore the sense of immediacy that the passage of time may have diminished : he opens most chapters with the actual experiences of one individual and how events effected them personally.  This is particularly devastating when he details the stories of Bob Glass, a voter in the Florida Panhandle who turned away from the still open polls when he heard that Al Gore had already won, and Navy Lieutenant John Russell, whose ballot was thrown out because it lacked a postmark, even though, as military mail, it required none.

Stories like these serve to plunge us back into the whole mess, then Mr. Sammon lets the course of events take over, marshaling the fairly complicated facts and presenting them in clear and dramatic fashion.  The narrative is held together by the theme around which he organizes the book, which, as the title indicates, that not only was the chaos and uncertainty of this period not an inevitable outgrowth of a close election, but that Al Gore actually tried gaming the system in order to steal an election that he knew he had lost, even though he always knew he had practically no hope of reversing the result.  Mr. Sammon has his own reasons for distrusting Gore, one of which he discusses at some length.  It was Mr. Sammon who first reported the story that, with the connivance of Gore campaign officials and local environmentalists, Pacific Gas & Electric officials were ordered to release water into the Connecticut River in order to ensure a pretty photo op for Gore and New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen.  Gore's subsequent dissembling on this issue, if not downright dishonesty, made Sammon even more skeptical of the Vice President's character than he might otherwise have been.

One result of this is that Sammon takes Gore at his word when he said :

    I'm not like George Bush. If he wins or loses, life goes on. I'll do anything to win.

From this perspective--and though admittedly antagonistic I think it is nonetheless fair--the entire course of Gore's extremely reckless and potentially destabilizing attack on the Florida election result takes on a consistency and a coherence that it might otherwise lack.  The conscious attempt to disenfranchise military voters, the anti-consitutional resort to the courts to settle a dispute which is explicitly entrusted to legislatures, the vicious smear campaign against Katherine Harris, the contemplated subversion of potentially "faithless" electors, etc., all seem out of character for an essentially conservative, rather decent, career politician, unless we first accept his own admission that he was being driven by pure personal ambition, which Sammon does.

There are certain to be many more books about the 2000 Election, but none are likely to beat this one for clarity in terms both of presenting the facts and developing a simple thesis for why it all happened.  If you still refuse to acknowledge George Bush's legitimacy and you harbor lingering contempt for the Supreme Court, this probably isn't the book for you.  But if you are interested in reading a brisk, highly opinionated, but always professional, account of the crisis, you'll thoroughly enjoy this one.

(Reviewed:30-Jun-01)

Grade: (B+) Orrin C. Judd

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