LOOK at ME!
Boo-HOO we should have tossed a coin (get rid of that pesky Electoral College)!
All that environmental destruction without Algore and war - LOOK at ME!
Posted on 11/29/2015 7:09:17 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
An example of an extremely significant, decidedly unintended result of a relatively tiny event can be nightmarish. This one is, at least for me. It concerns the role I played in getting George W. Bush elected president in 2000. That I was the butterfly whose fluttering cascaded into Bush's election still pains me. I had written an op-ed for the New York Times titled "We're Measuring Bacteria with a Yardstick" in which I argued that the vote in Florida had been so close that the gross apparatus of the state's electoral system was incapable of discerning the difference between the candidates' vote totals. Given the problems with the hanging chads, the misleading ballots (in retrospect, aptly termed "butterfly ballots"), the missing and military ballots, a variety of other serious flaws and the six million votes cast, there really was no objective reality of the matter.
Later when the Florida Supreme Court weighed in, Chief Justice Charles T. Wells cited me in his dissent from the majority decision of the rest of his court to allow for a manual recount of the undervote in Florida. Summarizing the legal maneuverings, I simply note that in part because of Wells's dissent the ongoing recount was discontinued, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and George Bush was (s)elected president.
Specifically, Judge Wells wrote, "I agree with a quote by John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University, when he wrote that, 'the margin of error in this election is far greater than the margin of victory, no matter who wins.' Further judicial process will not change this self-evident fact and will only result in confusion and disorder." (Incidentally, the CNN senior political analyst at the time, Jeff Greenfield, cited the quote in his book on the 2000 presidential election, "Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow!," and wrote, "The single wisest word about Florida was delivered not by a pundit but by mathematician John Allen Paulos." I doubt, however, that Greenfield thought it was reason to stop the recount.)
I was surprised and flattered, I admit, by the judge but also very distressed that my words were used to support a position with which I disagreed. Vituperative e-mails I received didn't help. Many were angry that I would support Bush. Some were clearly demented. With all due respect to these correspondents and the esteemed judge, I believed and still believe that the statistical tie in the Florida election supported a conclusion opposite to the one Wells drew. The tie seemed to lend greater weight to the fact that Al Gore received almost half a million more popular votes nationally than did Bush. If anything, the dead heat in Florida could be seen as giving Gore's national plurality the status of a moral tiebreaker. At the very least the decision of the rest of the court to allow for a manual recount should have been honored since Florida's vote was pivotal in the Electoral College. Even flipping a commemorative Gore-Bush coin in the capitol in Tallahassee would have been justified since the vote totals were essentially indistinguishable.
Historical counterfactuals are always dubious undertakings, but I doubt very much that the United States would have gone to war in Iraq had Gore been president. I also think strong environmental legislation would have been pursued and implemented under him. Was I responsible for Bush's presidency? No, of course not; butterflies can't be held responsible for the unpredictable tsunamis that in retrospect can be traced to their fluttering and to a myriad of other intermediate events. Still, every once in a while, the guiltifying thought that the unwarranted Iraq War was my fault does occur to me.
LOOK at ME!
Boo-HOO we should have tossed a coin (get rid of that pesky Electoral College)!
All that environmental destruction without Algore and war - LOOK at ME!
I’ll bet the Obama presidency was your fault, too.
I seem to remember back page admissions long after Florida’s election after PAINSTAKING review of each and every ballot in the state by at least two or three liberal newspapers that George W. Bush won that election.
This man’s me, me, me, I, I, I attempt to rewrite history amidst today’s political scene is pitiful, frankly.
Did The Good Professor manage to count the dogs, cadavers and crooks who voted multimple times for Algor?
He needs to apologize for Bush since Obama is such a success.
If it makes him feel any better, he won’t have to worry about a recount in 2016, with Trump taking at least 350 Electoral Votes.
Only a real ***hole would be out there complaining about the Bush presidency. The country is on the brink of destruction and this moron is worried about Bush. IMHO.
He probably thinks so. The left was completely spun out of orbit and has left the galaxy.
No recount by any one inclusive of NYT showed gore winning. Poor math teacher should do some history, instead of trying to rewrite it,
Yet most people don’t know that Ted Cruz was on the Bush legal team fighting to stop the dems from stealing the election.
Gore lost his own state...
Gore legal team thought they could steal the election...
The Sunshine Laws required the truth come out, and it did: George Bush won the state of Florida in 2000. All the malcontents who had threatened that “the truth will come out” quickly disappeared when it did. Al Gore had nobody but himself to blame; if he had carried his home state (or that of BJ Clinton, for that matter), Florida would have been irrelevant.
Yet some have continued to repeat the lie to change history; AL Gore lost Florida (and the election) in 2000, and supposedly blamed BJ Clinton for that. He was probably right, but he wasn’t a very good candidate himself.
Yes, and the real purpose for bringing this up is to again rally the Democratic Party underground to start beating the drums with calls to get rid of the Electoral College - so that the Democrat city strongholds can (s)elect presidents.
These people really need to move on.
What is consistently overlooked in this argument is that the major networks announced a victory for Gore an hour before the polls closed in the heavily conservative panhandle. How many Republicans, thinking the cause was lost, never bothered going to the polls after work?
Tired songs in the key of “Me” by a leftist hack. I’ll bet his math classes are a hoot — probably invented Common Core, too.
P.S.: Why do they always look like they need a haircut, a bath, and their clothes cleaned & pressed.
Banana Republics,when they bother holding elections at all,have countless recounts lasting for months.
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