Editor’s Note: So, SCOTUS refused to accept the legal challenge from Texas yesterday, and set the stage for the Electoral College vote on Monday. From what we can see from the Piedmont here in Virginia, that strongly suggests we will have a Biden Administration next month. I anticipated grand theater in this amazing year, but this has risen to full Opera Buffe in presentation. It promises to have more theatrics in the remaining portion of The Seventy Days between Election and Inauguration day. We should expect more entertainment.

But now, one of the critical pieces has fallen, the Electoral College will vote on Monday, and likely the government will settle into the transition mode that now is likely to happen. In 2000, the year of Gore v. Bush, I was working in the Pentagon and up the Parkway in Langley. A decision on who would be President was resolved after 38 days, and we had to make up for lost time. It is a little comforting to know that the system will at least attempt to function in times of uncertainty- so here is an example of how it went in another time under a different set of circumstances. Some things never change…

– Vic

16 November 2000

Nov 16. First snow back home in Michigan, first frost in Baghdad-on-the-Potomac. The steady rhythms of the Government continue in this one-industry town, but there is a disconcerting vacuum at the top. The parts all move, the paper shuffles, but all ears are alert for the footsteps of the new leaders.

I had a long chat with one of the bureaucrats from the Secretary’s office this morning. We were down in the Bat Cave, a service ally in the midst of the vast federal building. Amid the crumbling concrete is the designated smoking area. The low November sun improbably reflected in a fifth story window and flooded the dingy blacktop under the pedestrian walkway between the sprawling corridors. The illumination brought out the years of rust stains on the structural columns and highlighted the broken overhead tiles.

I should note that the sorry state of the Building is being remedied after years of neglect, at vast expense to the taxpayer. We have been designated a historic structure, and although it would be more efficient to simply rip it down and start over, we will work through the construction and pretend the noise and the dust are just part of the process. Maybe they are.

We talked, of course, about the election. We here in The Building have talked about little else during the long campaign. It matters to us. The new administration brings us new leaders, strong-willed individuals who must be trained in the ways of the system. The old troupe of political appointees began extended travel, or golf, or just left the Building to get on the Executive Department bus to take them on the roundabout to the private sector. Strobe Talbot leaves State for Yale; does anyone want to be Deputy Secretary of Defense for three months? It’s a great resume bullet!

All through the roller-coaster of the campaign we had smoked and contemplated who the winner would bring to us in the department. Firebrand? Ideologues? If it was Bush, will it be re-treads from his Dad’s administration? If Gore, what Democrats are in the closet who have not already been burned out in the endless series of Government down-size, right-size and reinvention? Let me tell you, it is no fun to execute a budget smaller than the one last year. Makes even the career people cranky. We have to wait out the eagerness of the political transients and let the system grind them down.

But for now, no resolution. If one, if the other, they come weakened to us. Gore looked fairly Presidential last night, as he disavowed the battalions of his lawyers who are busy at stealing the election. Bush is nowhere to be seen. The two local DC rags tell the same story story differently: The Post trumpets: “Bush Spurns Gore Recount Plan.” The feisty Times proclaims: “Florida certifies the Bush Lead.” Whoever wins this will come to town with a taint of illegitimacy on them, and that will cling to their appointees. With the narrowness of the Senate divide, it will be tougher than ever to get the confirmable appointees through the mill. That will slow the critical first few months of the Administration and will cause chaos in the budget we submit to the Congress in February.

From the Bat Cave, the opinion is that we will have a weakened President, a weakened Executive Branch, and a Congress with margins so razor thin that little will be achieved in the 107th. We noted that the split in the vote finalized the polarization of the electorate. The countryside went overwhelmingly for Bush, and hence the values of the last generation: Self reliance, Church, Family. The suburbs- represented in the wildly successful and disturbing film American Beauty- split down the middle. And the cities went almost without exception to Mr. Gore, and the values of the Baby Boom: diversity, situational ethics, deconstruction of our institutions, laws and in fact the truth itself. Our urban centers have endorsed the Balkanization of our population, celebrating the unique victimhood of dozens of special categories of citizens, and the special need for the Government to take an active stance on their behalf. The two sides seem implacable and resolute in their views, and there appears little room for compromise. At the end of the campaign, at least one candidate was demonizing the opposition from the pulpit. The level of civility plunged from discussion of the issues to the forces of good and evil. Dubya was portrayed simultaneously as an amiable dunce and agent of the antichrist.

The street protests in West Palm the day after the election were a taste of what the next few years may be like. How the country responds will show us whether we have a choice between the country road or the city highway.

Perhaps the greatest irony in all this is that the only organization in this town that really was downsized- the military- may produce the margin of victory in the overseas absentee ballots in Florida. Florida has no income tax, and for many of the military assigned around the world it is logical to claim Florida as their home of record.

Back home in Michigan, the seasons are lurching into thoughts of snowmobiles and the winter ski trade. Here by the Potomac it is a very interesting time to be a bureaucrat. And it is likely to be a very interesting time to be a taxpayer.

Copyright 2000 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com