Word: evening
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...close to call. By the Sunday 5 p.m. deadline, the counting still wasn't done, but in a dramatic signing ceremony at 7:30, Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified George W. Bush the winner by 537 votes - enough for him to claim victory a third time. But even as Republicans planned their celebrations, the Democratic faithful were primed to fight on - especially after Harris decided to leave out the results of the hand count Palm Beach canvassers stayed up all night to produce. "George Bush can have as many balloon drops as he wants," said Al Gore's lieutenant...
...understanding that a close race may take time to sort out. But by last week the conduct had become so reckless that patience required some courage and faith; reasoned arguments about fairness were drowned out by angry mobs charging that Gore was "the Commander in Thief," a "chad molester," even as Democrats charged that Bush would burn down the White House before he'd let Gore live in it. The uniform code of conduct in a democracy - the assumption of good faith that allows politicians to quarrel one day and compromise the next - was sacrificed to the reality that only...
...Bush team in all its public comments did not even leave open the possibility that machines might have missed legitimate votes, only that Gore was determined to keep counting until he got a result he liked. Gore's Democrats were, for the first time in a long campaign, united behind their leader last week, if only out of shared disgust at his enemies. Democrats kept finding new fuel for their indignation: when Trent Lott denounced the Florida Supreme Court's "unelected judges" for usurping the rights of the people by letting the recounts continue; when Florida Republicans threatened to name...
...about every legal scholar on the planet and said it would hear the Bush petition that these ongoing recounts were unconstitutional. The search for wise elders with a good sense of direction had so far been in vain; judges farther down the food chain had had their fairness challenged, even as they ruled for the Democrats one day, the Republicans the next. Maybe the nation's highest court would be able to guide us home. "The Supreme Court is the only decent way out," said a Democrat who has worked for three presidents in as many decades. "That would...
...Through it all, Bush himself was strangely absent, even when he was in full view. He came before the cameras Wednesday morning to say how great Dick Cheney sounded on the phone, that his hospitalization was just a precaution; he hadn't had a heart attack, even though his own aides knew Cheney had actually had a stent placed in his artery and neglected to mention it. Asked about his next legal move, Bush referred to his legal eagles - "Jim Baker is in charge of the team in Florida, and he's doing a really good job down there...