Bush demonstrated his political legitimacy through the combination of the 2002 and 2004 elections.
-- Jack Balkin
Jack Balkin, a strong opponent of Bush v. Gore and someone concerned about black disenfranchisement in the 2000 and 2004 elections, argues that the 2000 Election is over in that President Bush won re-election and so forth. This is true to some degree, and his remarks are worth reading (as are those that complete the post excerpted below), but we cannot undo the past. The result of that election changed all that happened afterwards, and we cannot take the aftermath on its own.
Simply put, it would have been darn hard for President Bush or his bunch to win the White House if they lost in 2000, so 2004 (and 2002) is indisputably tied together. So, in some sense, 2000 is never over. This feels a bit like "money laundering," where illegitimate gains are being processed into legitimate businesses. The last two elections, putting aside the corrupt ways used to win, surely cannot be ignored. But, is interest and profits raised by smart investment free and clear, even if the base funds were stolen?
The Bush administration is waging a war on Al Qaida. But it continues to use metrics better suited for law enforcement in measuring its success in that war. To date, the administration has not devised a grand strategy for measuring political, moral, economic or strategic progress against Al Qaida, much less what victory might look like. And thus, we measure our success using crude metrics like the body count -- something which is ananthema to most military planners today, but still used in the prosecutorial context by officials who measure their success by convictions and imprisonments.
-- Philip Carter
The fact that this is galling given how Sen. Kerry was damned for allegedly believing in something quite similar cannot lead us to ignore the possibility it is all too true.
---
Bush Supreme Court: Chief Justice Rehnquist has thyroid cancer and is eighty years old, so it is unsurprising that there is talk of retirement in the air. After all, President Bush was elected fair and square this time, and so forth. Though various individuals say otherwise, some are fearful of what this opportunity will bring. This plus other opportunities for justices of the Scalia/Thomas mold that President Bush says he favors to the courts, the Supreme Court in particular, upsets many. I respond to one article on the possibilities of a Scalia Court (and the future of the federal courts in particular) here.