It was a damn close-run thing, the most damned close-run thing you’d ever see in your life. — Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, describing the Battle of Waterloo, 1815.
Right now, the country is going through its own “damn close-run thing.” Florida still has not been decided. As I write, Florida is embroiled in a re-count triggered automatically by the razor-edge margin between the two candidates. At last count only 233 votes stood between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore.
Once again, our TV media jumped the gun — twice. Florida served as a test of the cardiac health of Tom Brokaw, Bernie Shaw and other news anchors Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. After early projections declared Florida for Gore, the major networks retracted the call. Hours later, they declared Florida for Bush, giving him the presidency. In a normal election, that would be the end.
This is not, as you have undoubtedly noticed, a normal election. People were getting sloshed in Austin, Texas, for an hour celebrating the “victory” of their governor before Gore, smarting from losing his home state to Bush and concerned about irregularities in the Florida ballot, retracted his concession and demanded a recount.
And so the race hangs in free-fall.
There are shades of 1948 at play here: The Chicago Daily Tribune ran an early edition calling New York Gov. Thomas Dewey the winner of the presidency. Needless to say, incumbent Harry S. Truman trounced the governor when all was said and done, and one of the most enduring photos of that election is Truman triumphantly holding up a copy of the gaffe after winning. Neither Bush nor Gore will be hefting videotapes, I think.
But the larger question is why did the television media screw up so dramatically, even pulling print media with them? I could just say, “Well, duh, it’s television” and leave it at that. But I’ve got inches to fill. My pet theory about television journalism in situations like this is the “gunslinger” model.
Look at it this way. There is a showdown with at least two hombres, each with a hand on his gun. The idea is to shoot first or the other guy will. It’s much the same in television news, from what I see. They want to get the story out first to have the honor of the scoop. This leaves precious little time for fact-checking. When it seemed Gore was going to carry Florida, the first showdown happened. A bigger shoot-out was when Bush seemed to have won the presidency. It appeared that they wanted to be the first to report the winner and so ran with the story without even waiting to see whether the result would stick.
At this point, mind you, barring Buchanan (whom I believe should be thrown bodily out of the country) I couldn’t care less just who gets the top spot. After an enervating and vicious campaign between three candidates, a Neanderthal could win in the election and everything would be copacetic. This has been an ugly and vicious race. It has been a race that more than any other deserves all the war metaphors that politicos have conferred on the pursuit.
I’ll be glad when this “close-run thing” is done. Unfortunately, at the rate we’re going, that won’t be until Inauguration Day.