No Apology Necessary. U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Guido Calabresi apologized for embarrassing his court in saying that Dubya "came to power as the result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution". The New York Post won't accept that apology but insists that he should have apologized for the remarks themselves, even tho they are plainly true. Why is the truth of Calabresi's assertion so hard for the Post to accept?
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Half a million more Americans voted for Al Gore than for George Bush. Non-ideological believers in democracy would have conceded that Al Gore should be President, and voted for the man who received the larger popular vote.
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The members of the Electoral College knew the huge disparity in votes nationwide, even putting aside probable massive fraud in Florida, in which tens of thousands of Democratic votes were junked by a Republican state government. Yet they nonetheless misused their legitimate power, to hand the Presidency to a man who was NOT the choice of the people. That is an illegitimate act of a legitimate institution, the Electoral College, which was designed to prevent us from being carried away by the passions of the moment into electing a Hitler. Al Gore was no Hitler; his constituent base was national, not regional. And he got hundreds of thousands more votes than Dubya.
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Further, the Supreme Court's actions in declaring a highly dubious Florida election to be valid was a further illegitimate act of another legitimate institution. Dubya thus doubly benefited from illegitimate acts of legitimate institutions. And then this minority President took us into war by lies, which should hardly surprise: an illegitimate president used illegtimate means to lead us into an unwise war that most Americans now understand to have been a mistake.
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The Post admits none of this. Americans generally, however, admit all of it. (Responsive to editorial "Calabresi's 'Apology', New York Post, June 26, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:24 PM