By Michael Miner
“Gore Bush in. Gore Bush out,” Eyre proclaimed. He glanced around the bar in hopes that his witticism had been overheard and admired.
“Then there’s Howard Phillips, whose Constitution Party garnered 4,280 votes, and Harry Browne, who cornered 18,854 for the Libertarians. Add any of those figures to Al Gore’s totals and nobody would be wondering who the next president is.”
Eyre looked about to see if he was holding court yet. No one paid him any attention. “No, this election was no accident,” he said, soldiering on. “Faced with a choice of doofuses to lead the republic into the new millennium, America ingeniously found a way not to elect either one of them. The breakdown of the electoral process we have just witnessed is roughly as calamitous as the breakdown of the family car during a trip to the proctologist.”
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“Nevertheless,” he said, “anarchy must concern us all. Our nation travels on the broad back of time-tested procedures, and so I applaud Governor Bush for thinking first and foremost of maintaining public order. We’ve counted the votes once. We’ve counted them twice. Is getting it right important enough to risk counting them a third time? I think not, and neither does the governor.”
“Grace under pressure is no everyday quality,” I said.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Eyre. “Justice is a matter of crossing the ts and dotting the is. A trial is like an election. As long as it’s proper it doesn’t have to be accurate.”
