The first step in setting up a parallel government?
November 27, 2000 2:04 PM   Subscribe

The first step in setting up a parallel government? "Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney said if the General Services Administration will not assist George W. Bush's transition to the White House, the campaign is prepared to go ahead on its own. 'We will proceed drawing on other sources,' Cheney told reporters in Washington on Monday." Yeah, I just bet they will.
posted by tranquileye (18 comments total)
 
Meanwhile in Washington, Poppi's pals from the old days begin making similar pronouncements, aimed at securing for W. via PR what he couldn't win via popular vote...
posted by m.polo at 2:09 PM on November 27, 2000


GW = Princeps?

that would be pretty interesting to witness the establishment of an autocratic government...
posted by kidsplateusa at 2:15 PM on November 27, 2000


Poppi and Trent Lott are pals?
posted by chiXy at 2:22 PM on November 27, 2000


Why people keep bringing up the popular vote is totally beyond me. It has no relations to who is president. And by the reasoning in this thread, anyone Republican is consider "Poppi's pals?"
posted by gyc at 3:10 PM on November 27, 2000


Isn't that pretty much the definition of a coupe de tat?
posted by Optamystic at 3:11 PM on November 27, 2000


Isn't that pretty much the definition of a coupe de tat?

No, a "coupe de tat" is the permanent-body-art equivalent of a mobile locksmithing service.

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 3:36 PM on November 27, 2000


Anyone one remember the last time we had a "Mad King George" in power? :)
posted by owillis at 3:49 PM on November 27, 2000


Cmon, man. I think the popular vote is important. Shouldn't the guy with the most votes win? The electoral college is just too weird.
posted by snakey at 3:49 PM on November 27, 2000


Snakey, the electoral college more accurately represents the will of the nation as a whole than the popular vote. A baseball team gets the pennant coz they won the most games, not coz they got the most runs over the season. They might have played one game where they got 100 runs, just coz the other team had a bad (terrible!) night. A straight run-count would not represent how they can preform all-around.
On the same note, I saw a map w/ a breakdown of the votes by county, and the vast majority of Gore's votes were entirely in the biggest cities. If popular vote was all that counted, people in rural areas would not be represented. (Not to denounce Gore, this is just an example.)
Am I making any sense? I dunno if I worded this all too well..

posted by sonofsamiam at 4:04 PM on November 27, 2000


There's no such thing as the "will of the nation." It's not even a well-defined concept. We've got a system set up to choose governments, one that hopefully lets the government do things that a lot of people approve of without trampling on too many people in the process. We have elections to choose elected officials, not to satisfy some nonexistent "popular will."
posted by grimmelm at 4:29 PM on November 27, 2000


A succint argument for electoral college reform. “It’s too weird.”

As I’ve stated before, the electoral college is infinitely better than relying solely on the popular vote to elect the president.

As per the topic at hand: Cheney is initiating a PR coup so he can sweep into office a little easier. Why are we recounting, anyway? Nader lost. Move on.
posted by capt.crackpipe at 4:37 PM on November 27, 2000


Well, with the boost in oil, pharmaceutical, tobacco and MS stock on the back of a presumed Bush win, I'm sure his big corporate backers will be feeling flush enough to dip into their pockets. And after spending millions on the election, I don't see how Cheney has any right to plead poverty in the absence of federal funds. Perhaps he just got the bill for his heart medicine.
posted by holgate at 5:22 PM on November 27, 2000


Come on, under the Electoral College, all the madness over this election is confined to a single state. Why should Florida have all the fun? Let's have a nationwide popular vote in which every single precinct in the country gets to squabble over recounts!
posted by harmful at 5:40 PM on November 27, 2000


Why people keep bringing up the popular vote is totally beyond me. It has no relations to who is president.

Because the popular vote has a great deal to do with the legitimacy of an incoming president. Clinton was perceived as an extremely weak president because he only received 42 percent of the popular vote in 1992. Look at what Republicans like a Newsday editorialist were saying about him after he won:

... Clinton won his electoral victory against an unpopular Republican president, fatally wounded by a weak economy, by only a minority of the votes cast. About 57 percent of the voters did not want him as president, but voted for Bush, Ross Perot or some other candidate.

And Clinton won a majority of the vote in only one state, his home base of Arkansas (remember Michael Dukakis?). In 47 states, the majority of voters preferred somebody else. (Clinton got about half the vote in two states.)

This kind of criticism was made about Clinton for four years, and now it appears we'll have a president whose showing in the 1992 vote makes Clinton look like a landslide winner. You can say what you want about the Electoral College, but it doesn't deny the fact that under a one-person, one-vote count George W. Bush was America's second choice. That's a huge albatross.

(Newsday source: Phineas R. Fiske, Nov. 11, 1992)
posted by rcade at 8:05 PM on November 27, 2000



Clinton was perceived as an extremely weak president because he only received 42 percent of the popular vote in 1992.

Which just goes to show what a lousy criticism that was. The same arguments were made about Kennedy and Reagan.

On the flip side, landslide winners like Lyndon Johnson often piss away their percieved legitimacy and end up declining to run for re-election.

As far as Bush being the "number two choice," that's irrelevant under our constitution. If the popular vote was significant, Bush could hav erun up the score in Texas and other places where he was strong by organizing for igher turnout. instead, he devoted those resources to racking up electoral votes, rather than raw popular vote. The events of his Presidency and how he handles them will be far more important than his vote taly - after all, he got more popular votes than Clinton ever did in 92 or 96.
posted by mikewas at 8:28 PM on November 27, 2000


In 92, the same thing happened. Clinton/Gore set up an organization to get the money to start on the transition.
posted by tiaka at 4:33 AM on November 28, 2000


another reason to get rid of the electoral college is that we wouldn't have seen those lame Nader-trader sites. People could have voted their conscience, unhindered by Gore's fearmongering.
posted by snakey at 8:18 AM on November 28, 2000


As many as 19 presidents have been elected with fewer than 50% of the votes. It's just that generally nobody pays attention to anything but the first two parties on the list.
posted by dhartung at 10:18 AM on November 28, 2000


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