One Nation... Divided
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr One Nation... Divided It seems clear that the country's strident postelection battle, hinging on a few hundred of the over 100 million votes cast, will...
...That's really thumbing your nose at the colossus of the North...
...To keep him from making more trouble, inspectors looked for hidden weapons and planes patrolled nofly zones...
...Something similar occurred in 1824, when the Electoral College found itself in a four-way deadlock and the House of Representatives settled on John Quincy Adams...
...From these numbers one might surmise that some truly profound ideological chasm divided America—like Serbia choosing between freedom and repression, or Nige ria between dictatorship and democracy...
...And so, a free election of the kind that many peoples would give—and have given—their lives for left us with a sour taste...
...Gore did better with blacks and Bush with whites...
...elections...
...While voting for Parliament in Egypt, five people were killed as police fired into opposition supporters and attacked crowds with clubs and tear gas...
...Two new books have broadened my understanding...
...At the height of the Presidential campaign we heard strong words about the Cole...
...Bush was favored by 71 per cent of those who think our military has gotten weaker in the past eight years...
...At a White House commemorative ceremony, former President Jimmy Carter, who has monitored many elections abroad, declared, "I've seen troubled elections...
...The mujahedin in Afghanistan were divided into 12 factions, two of them as virulently anti-West as they were anti-Soviet...
...When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Washington assembled overwhelming strength and a broad coalition to crush Saddam Hussein...
...Ignoring the cautions of family and friends, he would plunge into crowds, ride in open cars, challenge hostile groups...
...Pressured by the public to do something about terrorist outrages, the United States government sometimes lashes out...
...Many fissures ran through the electorate...
...Well, maybe...
...Not only because of the closeness of the vote, but because of what the exit polls revealed about a nation at peace, but not with itself, prosperous, but not really enjoying that prosperity...
...UnitedNations arms inspectors have been turned away...
...In September 1963, Castro publicly announced that he knew of the Kennedy plots against him and warned that two could play at that game...
...During the same period, several citizens were killed in election fights in Thailand...
...This is explored in Evan Thomas' biography, Robert Kennedy: His Life (see "Writers & Writing," NL, September-October...
...When an aide wanted to close the blinds in his hotel room, he said, "Don't close them...
...It was a $3 billion campaign, using television to dramatize a sense of fateful choices, that created a largely fictitious impression of deep cleavage over health care...
...Bush with Christians and Gore with Jews...
...He would be tortured no longer by the thought that his efforts to kill Castro had backfired...
...Go back a little in time and you have the abortive coup to oust Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and the uprising against Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin that led to an artillery assault on the Parliament in Moscow...
...That is merely some of the recent electoral violence...
...Arab states like Jordan are renewing diplomatic and commercial ties...
...The USS Cole has come limping home with an ugly gash in its side, a visible symbol of the impotence of American omnipotence in the face of elusive terrorism...
...In 1800, the Democratic and Republican electors gave an equal number of votes to Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, requiring the House of Representatives to resolve the tie (in favor of Jefferson, of course...
...Gore with low-income people, Bush with high-income people...
...Now U.S...
...But look what happened in Caracas...
...Some dividend on the Reagan Administration's investment in freedom fighters...
...Louisiana's late Governor Earl Long said, "When I die, I want to be buried in Louisiana so I can stay active in politics...
...Osama bin Laden is believed to have been involved in several anti-American terrorist acts before the attack on the Cole, including the bombing of the two American embassies in Africa in 1998...
...But, in case you haven't noticed, Saddam Hussein is out of his box...
...For a long time, the Attorney General had trouble sleeping...
...Gore by 68 per cent of those who think the military is stronger...
...New York's 19th-century Boss Tweed said, "As long as I can count the votes, what are you going to do about it...
...The question our new President may ask himself is: What's the use of being a superpower if you don't get any respect...
...And he became fatalistic about his own life...
...We have tended to treat irregularities and even voting fraud with indulgent humor...
...Just a decade ago, the United States celebrated its victory in the Cold War and prepared to lead a global parade to free markets and democracy...
...Chicago's late Mayor Richard J. Daley is supposed to have said, "Vote early, and often...
...Attorney General Kennedy was in charge of a secret CIA task force that plotted revenge against Fidel Castro for President Kennedy's humiliation in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion...
...warships have been withdrawn from Arabian ports...
...In Zanzibar, hundreds of opposition supporters, incensed over the late delivery of ballots, clashed with police and scores were injured...
...There have been allegations of fraud in Presidential elections back to 1800...
...In most states, electors do not have to follow orders...
...This one has been a divisive experience...
...In Mozambique, some 38 were killed in election clashes and the government declared a national day of mourning...
...But there is a less-known side of Bobby Kennedy—who was haunted by the fear that he may have played some part in his brother's death...
...From Vice President Gore: "This is a situation that will bring a response...
...Bush 78 per cent of those who wanted an honest President...
...Two months after King's assassination, in a crowd in a Los Angeles hotel, Robert was shot at short range by a Palestinian, possibly because he had been seen on television outside a synagogue wearing a yarmulke...
...Our Founding Fathers designed the Electoral College, giving disproportionate weight to small states, for the same reason they designed the U. S. Senate with two votes for every state, large and small...
...Once the Afghan war ended, some of the American-supported militants found new targets...
...Since the bombing of the American Marines in Beirut in 1983, most terrorists have gone unpunished...
...He lost weight...
...The Global Challenge Our new President will face a changing international environment...
...A lot of injured feelings but no bones broken...
...In Nicaragua, two were killed and 18 were injured in fighting that marked municipal elections...
...This is, in part, because the U. S. cannot impose its will in locating them...
...Gore led by a wide margin among those who consider America on the right track economically...
...suburban and rural dwellers went for Bush...
...It is about how Robert Kennedy, once known as "ruthless," became a passionate voice for the poor and the disadvantaged...
...Voters in big cities went three-to-one for Gore...
...Our quadrennial election should be a unifying experience...
...Another thing we are learning from the Cole bombing is that some of the suspects belonged to the Islamic Jihad and were veterans of the American-backed anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan...
...Bush was way ahead among those who think America is on the wrong track morally...
...From Governor Bush: "There must be a consequence...
...The author, Peter Edelman, who drafted much of Kennedy's antipoverty legislation, confirms what many surmised: In fighting against the isolation of the slum, the cuts in welfare programs, Robert felt a responsibility to carry on for his fallen brother...
...Perhaps precisely that—a struggle for power that many nations could envy because it was being conducted peacefully...
...Governor George W. Bush was ahead by 9 percentage points with men...
...Mir Aimal Kasi pumped bullets into cars near CIA headquarters in suburban Virginia, killing two and wounding three...
...Fidel Castro, at the end of a five-day state visit, signed an economic pact with Venezuela that will give Cuba oil at cut-rate prices...
...Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman became ringleaders in the bombing of New York's World Trade Center in 1993...
...Robert talked of "knocking off Castro" and presided over plans like one abortive plot to plant a bomb on Castro's car...
...Some strange things have occasionally happened as a result...
...Every now and then a bill is introduced in Congress to abolish or change the Electoral College...
...Many of the 15,000 trainees were volunteers from other Islamic countries...
...Lest the significance of that be missed, Castro joked about how many American Presidents he has survived, and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez talked of their countries being joined in "a geopolitical vision," an "axis of power" with other Third World countries...
...The second attack was launched against a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan suspected, without convincing evidence, of making weapons of mass destruction...
...President Bill Clinton, following the pattern of Presidents before him, delivered a ritual response to the attack on the Cole: "We will find out who is responsible and hold them accountable...
...Cuba is the target of a harsh American embargo that Congress has tried to enforce on other countries...
...American planes have been patrolling Iraqi skies much less aggressively...
...He became popularly known as "Rutherfraud...
...For example, in the tight 1960 race between RichardM...
...In Yemen, despite a letter from President Clinton and an appeal from FBI Director Louis J. Freeh on the spot, Yemen at first refused American access to scores of suspects and witnesses...
...The very presence of this warship in Arabian waters was meant to signal American strength...
...After the truck bombing of the Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the Saudi government stubbornly refused the FBI access to suspects and witnesses...
...And Western Europe, no longer counting on the United States, is planning its own rapid reaction force...
...Because the small states have an interest in preserving it, no such proposal has ever come within hailing distance of gaining the support of twothirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the states...
...President Vladimir V Putin journeyed to Paris in October for a Russian-European Union summit...
...They have risen to crisis level this year only because of the closeness of the vote and the high stakes involved...
...CIA director Casey cherished them all as freedom fighters and persuaded President Reagan to give full support to all the factions...
...Divided It seems clear that the country's strident postelection battle, hinging on a few hundred of the over 100 million votes cast, will make it difficult for the new President to establish his legitimacy in the eyes of Congress and the public...
...French and other commercial airlines fly into Baghdad, ignoring the UN embargo...
...our system will prevail...
...It was a little irritating to hear the visiting Aleksandr A. Veshnyakov, chairman of the Russian Election Commission, saying, "I was under the impression such things cannot happen here...
...America's electoral history has been pockmarked with stories of votes from the graveyard, votes bought with "walking around money," votes undercounted, votes overcounted, boxes of ballots lost...
...Gore got 83 per cent of those who wanted an experienced President...
...In 1998 there were the missile attacks ordered by President Clinton after the bombing of two American embassies in Africa...
...It is a melancholy affair...
...President Ronald Reagan said it better in 1985 in the case of Mohammed Abbas, who masterminded the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, "You can run, but you can't hide...
...Reining in the Multitude Irregularities at the ballot box have long been a casually accepted fact of life in U.S...
...Or the mass movement to oust Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that left the Belgrade Parliament building and other seats of power in flames...
...He was listless about his work...
...RFK Revisited I have long been interested in Robert F. Kennedy and the ways in which he changed after the assassination of his brother on November 22, 1963...
...Apparently Riyadh was more concerned about terrorist influence than superpower influence...
...In the end, though, Abbas was released by Italy despite American protests...
...Gore was favored by 74 per cent of those who think the government should do more, and Bush by 70 per cent of those who think the government should do less...
...In 1986 there was the air attack on Libya that President Reagan ordered after a bomb incident in a Berlin caf...
...Or take Russia...
...One attack, on the Afghan headquarters of terrorist chief Osama bin Laden, did him no harm...
...One was a young man from Saudi Arabia named Osama bin Laden...
...One of them, Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope, is officially scheduled to be published next January...
...This is an unaccustomed event for Americans...
...The rhetoric of America's supremacy persists, but the reality has changed...
...We will survive this present uncertainty...
...But now that we have seen what turmoil our sloppy electoral system can plunge us into, maybe it is time to think of fundamental election reform—of changing antique procedures, incomprehensible ballots and incompetent monitors...
...Speaking of election reform, Hillary Rodham Clinton has not even been sworn in as Senator yet and already she wants to change the Constitution...
...On the night of Martin Luther King's assassination in April 1968, Robert said, "That could have been me...
...No Bones Broken During Thanksgiving week, under the shadow of the struggle for the Presidency, what was there to be thankful about...
...Actually, in real terms, both major American parties tend to cling to the center, where the increasingly important independent voter dwells...
...In 1876, the electors delivered two sets of votes, one for Samuel Tilden, the other for Rutherford B. Hayes, and it took a Congressional commission finally to give the Presidency to Hayes...
...If they're going to shoot, they'll shoot...
...Some numbers reflected different perceptions of America today...
...During the 1980s the CIA, mainly under William J. Casey's stewardship, poured $3 billion into supporting the mujahedin guerrillas in Afghanistan...
...And, to add insult to insult, Iraq will not sign oil export contracts denominated in dollars, only in euros...
...He offered oil and natural gas as part of a deal for a "greater Europe...
...This may be the latest of the CIA's chickens come home to roost...
...From across the border in Pakistan, the agency helped set up camps to train militants in bomb-making, sabotage and guerrilla warfare...
...So when the President was shot by a professed admirer of Castro, Robert had reason to wonder whether he had helped trigger the shooting of his brother...
...She says she intends to co-sponsor an amendment that would provide for the direct election of the President and Vice President...
...It was to put a rein on the passions of the multitude, to offset the influence of majorities...
...Nixon and John F. Kennedy, 15 Southern electors spurned the two candidates and voted for the ultraconservative Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia...
...Later a compromise was reached that was supposed to allowthe FBI to observe interrogations...
...Differences over domestic and foreign policy were less sharp than advertised...
...In this country, they fought over the Presidential succession in the courts and on the television tube...
...Vice President Al Gore by 12 percentage points with women...
...In his copy of Emerson's essays he underlined, "Always do what you are afraid to do...
Vol. 83 • November 2000 • No. 5
