AT THE NEWS from the TV networks that Al Gore had called George
W. Bush to concede the presidential election, a throng of people
had surged down Congress Avenue in Austin toward a huge stage near
the State Capitol and the Governor’s Mansion, braving a fiercely
cold wind and a light but stinging rain. Gov. Bush was expected to
arrive onstage any minute for his victory speech. After eight years
of the soap opera that was the Clinton presidency, an observer
could feel the crowd’s palpable desire for somebody good and decent
and, well, normal to accept the presidency with words that would
restore the dignity of the office.
But as the minutes passed and stretched into half an hour, and
nobody arrived onstage, one could sense the crowd grow
uncomfortable, and then edgy, and then almost angrily frustrated.
Finally, there was a murmur, a stirring, a craning of necks, the
glimpse of activity on the other side of the police
barricades.
Who was that walking in the direction of the stage? Was it
finally Bush? Was the long wait over— the long wait that night, and
the long wait through eight years of nasty politics and lies and
tawdriness?
THE WEEKEND BEFORE the 2000 election, my then employer, the
Mobile Register, sent me to Austin to add some
interpretive color to its coverage of the campaign. I got lucky
right upon arrival Saturday afternoon: sitting unnoticed and
undisturbed in an empty gate at Austin airport, Bush campaign
manager Karl Rove and campaign chairman Don Evans seemed to be
biding their time with not a care in the world. “It’s coming along
exactly as we laid it out,” Rove told me when I approached and
bothered them for some insight. He seemed utterly unconcerned by
the effect of the new story about the long-ago drunk-driving arrest
of his candidate. Indeed, a campaign aide would tell me the next
day that the campaign had suspended many of its state-by-state
internal “tracking polls” after the Thursday night before the
election, figuring any information would (as I summarized it then)
“come too late for any poll-driven, last-minute, thrust-and-parry
maneuvers.”
Indeed, through the weekend and all the way into Tuesday
morning, almost every campaign aide to whom I spoke seemed
similarly, almost preternaturally, calm. At lunch that Sunday,
Tucker Eskew—in 2008 the top campaign aide for Sarah
Palin—explained that the tone had been set by Bush himself, who
stayed cool and confident. Unknowingly prophetic, Eskew added, “We
know we’ve got very bright people who will be eager to help out if
there are any fires to be put out.”
Later that afternoon, a top campaign strategist (on background)
walked me through the campaign’s plans and tactics in what they
thought would be the most important battleground state, Florida.
Internal campaign polls showed a 47–42 Bush lead there. The Texan
was doing particularly well in the northern part of the state,
including the Panhandle, and the campaign had specially targeted
direct mail to senior citizens in the Everglades region.
But the last Bush campaign stop in Florida was that same Sunday,
while Gore returned Monday night and Tuesday morning for a spirited
last-minute blitz. Meanwhile, the drunk-driving story apparently
had a far bigger effect than the Bush team had anticipated: Rove
would later say that several mil lion Evangelical would-be voters
nationwide, on whose support he was counting, instead stayed home
on Election Day.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. The cool confidence of
the top campaign staff—including Ed Gillespie, later head of the
Republican National Committee and White House communications
director, and Ari Fleischer, later Bush’s White House press
secretary—continued into Monday, as they walked around looking
focused but well in control. When Election Day did come, cold and
wet in Austin, that confidence permeated throughout the lower-level
campaign staff as well, as they excitedly reported early-day
turnout figures that their superiors told them meant good news. As
late as 2 p.m., ducking the drizzle under a street awning while
calling into headquarters via cell phone, I heard from one
part-time campaign helper that all looked good.
But the exit polls later that afternoon obviously showed
otherwise. By suppertime, there was radio silence from all my
campaign contacts. Radio silence just when early press deadlines
start looming is not a good thing for a columnist—and neither was
the setup in the media tents. The huge tents—covering long rows of
tables with electronic and phone hookups, each with immense TV
screens turned up to a volume loud enough to drown out a
heavy-metal band— stretched along the middle of Congress Avenue for
block after block. The tents remained open at either end,
conveniently turning them into icy wind tunnels.
And as the networks began to report early state results, and as
most of the other reporters seemed to be enjoying those reports,
the whole situation seemed rather miserable for a Bush-favoring
columnist. At 7:50 p.m. central time, the networks called
Pennsylvania for Al Gore, after already calling both Michigan and
Florida for the sitting vice president. Oddly enough, just 15
minutes earlier, a band at the nearby outdoor “Victory Celebration”
extravaganza had played Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed,
Delivered”—but this campaign obviously was anything but. At least
not for the Bush team.
And so the night went, hour after hour: cold wind tunnel,
deafening noise, and network reports that seemed to bear news
either bad or, in the case of revoking their earlier Florida
projections, confusing.
IT WAS WELL after midnight when the networks finally called
Florida for Bush instead. And then they reported that Gore had
called Bush to concede, and both the working press and a mass of
outside humanity rushed down Congress Avenue to see the winner.
That’s when the bizarre, freezing wait began for the speech that
never came. And as the mood of the crowd, probably a couple of
thousand strong, turned from excitement to confused nervousness to
frustration, people began looking for a sign, any sign, of movement
from the direction of the Governor’s Mansion toward the stage.
Hence the murmur and craning of necks when some figures emerged
from that direction. This was it! This was the moment of victory!
This was the climax of the incredibly long, tense night!
This was…unfortunately, nothing of the kind. It wasn’t Bush. It
wasn’t Rove. It wasn’t Evans. It wasn’t Condoleezza Rice. The
“dignitaries” on the other side of the barricades, moving in the
direction of the stage, were…Wayne Newton and Bo Derek. Bo looked
shapeless, bundled up against the cold. Through the sea of
humanity, you could barely see her lovely face. And it wasn’t her
face you wanted to see anyway—and surely not singer Wayne Newton’s
visage—when what you wanted was the new president-elect who would
end the Age of Clinton.
On a bizarre night, all the crowd got was this anti-climactic
appearance of—no offense—two B-list stars. Hell, not only did Bush
never emerge all night, but nobody else, not even Derek or Newton,
actually took the stage. Somewhere along the line, even the two
celebrities just faded into the night. The networks had finally
reported that Gore had called Bush to retract his concession—and it
would take another 35 days to sort out the mess.
What I wrote that terribly anti-climactic night at 9:30 p.m.
central time, as the election was so breathtakingly up in the air,
might be worth remembering this month as we absorb the results from
this year’s numbingly endless presidential campaign: “Washington,
D.C.’s permanent campaign will continue, and somehow laws will
still be written. And every apparent political victory will hold
the potential seeds of disaster, and every apparent loss could
portend a greater triumph.”
Quin Hillyer is an associate editor of the Washington Examiner
and a senior editor of The American Spectator.
