After watching Peggy Noonan's "performance" on This Week the 2000 presidential results came into focus. For years many on the left considered George Bush and his fellow conservatives gutless hypocrites for claiming an election they lost.
Afterall, how could they claim the presidency when they were behind in both the electoral and popular vote going into Florida? Didn't they want to know that they truly won the election? Apparently it didn't matter, just as it doesn't really matter if the U.S. tortured as George Bush promised that we didn't.
"Some things in life need to be mysterious," said Noonan about the release of the so-called torture memos, "Sometimes you need to just keep walking.
"It's hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that."
Actually none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. In 2000 when the Supreme Court ordered a stop to counting ballots in Florida because counting votes could determine that Al Gore won would, in Scalia's words "threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election. Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.”
Actually the reverse happened. By not allowing the votes to be counted the Supreme Court cast a cloud upon the legitimacy of Bush's "election." Rule first and count second was not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.
Scalia's statement, made by a member of a court in a democracy was shocking, but in the Noonan view of the world, we should just keep walking and not look too closely so we don't find out things we don't want to know. Living in Oblivion, a conservatives mantra.
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