By
The Wildcat Opinions Board
After three arduous weeks of legal battles and recounts, the American people can now know one thing for sure - what a pregnant chad is.
Too bad they still don't know who their new president is.
Not officially, anyway. But really, it's all just a formality now. After every Florida recount - machine, manual - Texas Gov. George W. Bush has eked out a majority of the votes. Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris' announcement on Sunday that she had certified the state election in favor of Bush seemingly plucked the final petal from Vice President Al Gore's wilting flower of a presidential attempt.
By a mere 537 votes, Bush topped Gore to tentatively claim Florida's 25 electoral votes, supposedly deciding the election. Still, Gore just won't concede - along with his gang of legal cronies, Gore's a fighter, to be sure. But what may have seemed admirably tough and feisty three weeks ago is growing old now.
Gore lost. Nice try, but no amount of counting and recounting is going to close the gap between him and Bush.
The tension began building in the early evening on Nov. 7, Election Day, when Florida's electoral votes were prematurely awarded to Gore, than revoked after elections officials deemed the state "too close to call." The future of the American presidency was in limbo, and the suspense was novel for awhile.
Error, human or technological, is inevitable, so at first recounting Florida's votes was a good idea. There were the tricky "butterfly" ballots of Palm Beach County - which situated each candidate's bubble adjacent to an opponent's name - and then there were problems with "chads," or the little bits of paper that are the by-products of punch-out ballots, that inaccurately awarded votes to either presidential candidate.
So the recounts began - machine and then hand counts across Florida, checking out chads; adding in absentee and military overseas ballots; even recounts in the not-to-be-forgotten New Mexico and Oregon - and in every case Bush won. And in every case, Gore contested. Last weekend's extended deadline came and went with the proclamation of "Bush wins." And what has Gore done? He has contested. Again.
A pattern is forming here, and the next logical outcome - again - would be for some legal wrestling to eventually result in yet another victory for Bush. Gore should accept this. Sending out his legal crew to ask for more recounts or to reject the latest results of the recount is just wasting time.
As the state of Florida is representative of, the American public is strongly divided. Half want Bush, half want Gore. But even the average American citizen, no matter who he or she voted for, is accepting that Dubya as the next inhabitant of the White House. A poll conducted by Time magazine, for example, has nearly 70 percent of respondents saying Gore should take Harris' certification for Bush.
Although the Wildcat supports and endorsed Gore, the veep needs to accept what more and more of his would-be constituents already have- Bush is the next president, and no amount of appealing is going to change that. Before Gore's rapid-fire "no, wait"'s become overwhelmingly viewed as sore-loser whining, he needs to save face. Gore needs to swallow his pride, maybe take a vacation, and graciously acknowledge that George W. Bush is the 43rd president.
