But he did not want la guerre folle , a silly, fratricidal War of the Rosebushes, so he did not charge Jeb with treason. He did, however, christen him the Black Prince. Hats off to Ms. Dowd, who doesn't always score, but here, on a level comparable to the best of Mark Twain or Will Rogers, hits the bullseye - offering an altogether healthy antidote to the bizarre and sometimes stupefying blandness of the 2000 campaign and election. When we come to the post-election struggle, however, comedy turns to drama and ultimately to tragedy. To Bush also went the drama, and, although a portion of the tragedy could be said to be his, the bulk of the tragedy has to belong to Gore.
True tragedy is said to be the catastrophic conclusion to good intentions.
Of course, the mere fact that his candidacy had come to hang on the threads of South Florida chads and a few hundred votes was a tragedy already in place, the blame for which can only be laid at Gore's feet alone. For all the reasons I have already cited, it was his fault and his alone that it had to come to this. The tragedy for Bush, even though he will ascend to the presidency next week, is that his bludgeoning tactics and judicial hypocrisy will likely continue to cloud his victory, to say nothing of the frightful likelihood that freelance vote counts already underway in Florida may well confirm Gore's plurality. The same court that had bragged about strict construction and judicial restraint for years had logged on to judicial and political activism in the most embarrassingly public way, with Justice Stevens lamenting that the real losers of the 2000 election were the citizens, their faith in the objectivity of the judiciary dealt a crippling blow. Each President enters his term or terms of service with a clean slate, and, although Mr. Bush does not seem to be especially promising Presidential material, he deserves a chance to rise to the occasion.