January 11, 2007
http://www.nybooks.com/article
Better Late Than Never
By Michael Tomasky
Shortly after 10 PM on the night of Tuesday, December 12, 2000, in
Tallahassee, Florida, James Addison Baker III received a telephone
call from George W. Bush, who was in Austin, Texas, that night and
already in his pajamas. The United States Supreme Court had just
handed down the decisions in Bush v. Gore. There was much confusion in
both Democratic and Republican camps as lawyers and aides scrambled to
interpret the decisions. Television reporters, reading the opinions
for the first time on the air, offered wildly differing (and
ill-informed) interpretations. Bush's strategist Karl Rove, watching
one channel at campaign headquarters in northern Virginia, concluded
that the Court had decided in his candidate's favor and called the
Texas governor to congratulate him. Bush, watching another channel
that was spinning the decisions differently, thought the opposite.
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