Recently my editor mentioned the existence of uwire.com, a website devoted to college newspapers across the country. My interest piqued, I visited said site to examine one particularly fun aspect of it, its daily rankings of the top columns from student papers. This site actually goes through a number of schools' newspapers every day and hand-selects what they consider the best columns.
Considering the liberality of the media, especially the college media, it should've come as no surprise to me when fellow "D" columnist Hemant Joshi achieved the acclaimed number one spot with a column last week that began, "Now that George W. Bush has stolen the election." I decided I would try to release my frustration at the appraisal of something so offensive to Republicans constructively by concocting a little experiment. The objective: to see if a column with a slightly conservative perspective will be accepted by the liberal media; namely, by uwire.com. The hypothesis: it will be ignored; if a column so decidedly liberal (and particularly Republican-bashing) is looked upon as favorably as Mr. Joshi's was, it would follow that the opposite would be true of a conservative column.
Anyway, the actual point I have to make was most coherently manifested when I accidentally happened to walk into my room when my roommate was watching MSNBC's coverage of the official counting of electoral votes taking place at the joint congressional sessions. For those of you who missed it, once Florida's turn came, every member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and several of its supporters in the House, came up, one by one, to deliver an objection; each referred to Vice President Gore, who presided over the session, as "Mr. President." Unfortunately for them, no one had a senator's signature to validate the objection, and there's a reason that no senator (nor Gore himself) approved of the objections: the madness has to end.
It's no secret that Democrats are mad about the outcome, and even I admit that there's little doubt that more people in Florida "intended" to vote for Gore than Bush. However, more people actually voted for Bush than Gore, and that's what we inevitably have to consider when figuring out who is president. The votes have been counted over and over and the results have finally been agreed upon. Case closed. Whining now is pointless, so everyone must deal with the cards that have been dealt.
However, rather than trying to deal with the situation in a manner that would benefit the country and everyone therein, many Democrats, as the black caucus so adeptly exemplified, continue to place blame, making cooperation impossible. Mr. Joshi was correct when he said, if grudgingly, that both parties must work together to make progress, including the Democrats. This rhetoric has pervaded the speech of Democrats lately but has been applied to Bush; they have not taken their own advice. They insist he needs to reach out yet they continue to play partisan politics by not accepting his victory as legitimate and by taking strict sides; Bush knows he has to reach out to be a successful president but many factions among the Democrats have refused to deal with him out of objection to the circumstances surrounding the election.
Democrats must give Bush a chance, yet they still resent him. They hypocritically blame him for not reaching out while backing off and identifying themselves in the strongest partisan terms possible. Only when they actually acknowledge that the election is over can they start working together. Bush alone cannot achieve bipartisanism if Democrats remain stubborn and insist upon his guilt in what they consider the crime of becoming president. Democrats cannot simply live and die by rhetoric; they too must take the initiative and let Bush reach out to them. Continued partisanship will condemn Bush's presidency before it even starts and will result in years of stalemate and hostility; progress will only be made when both parties work together productively and accept the president. Life will not be better for anyone, including those represented by the black caucus, until the ridiculous blame game, disguised with hypocritical rhetoric, ends.
Criticizing Bush mercilessly is counterproductive and unfair. It is his prerogative as president-elect to fill his cabinet with Republicans -- to the victor go the spoils -- yet he has still attempted to make his cabinet relatively diverse, as diverse as can be without alienating his own party. This whole mess isn't his fault. He is trying to get his presidency off to a good start, but he simply cannot do it alone with Democrats wasting four or even eight years crying that he was not elected fairly. Bush will do well if given the chance; it's his duty as president to reach out and do what's in the best interest of the country. Other elected officials now must realize their duty to the people as well, duty that must, without further argument, be carried out under Bush's leadership, and pursue cooperation.
Thus ends the procedure portion of my experiment. You'll see the conclusion.
