Two weeks ago, THE SCRAPBOOK noted that an "Emergency Committee" of intellectuals and show-bizzers, aflame about Florida's ballot mess, had published a pro-Gore ad in the New York Times. "Vice President Gore has been elected President by a clear constitutional majority of the popular vote and Electoral College," this ad proclaimed. It went on to endorse a do-over election in Palm Beach as something folks should "explore."
There were distinguished legal scholars among the signatories. Which got us wondering about that "constitutional majority of the popular vote" business -- there being no such thing, after all. We also wondered about the extremely questionable Palm Beach revote proposal.
In response to which quibbles, last week we got a letter from Emergency Committee eminence Cass Sunstein, professor of law at the University of Chicago. He wrote:
THE WEEKLY STANDARD is wrong to attack, as unacceptably partisan, those of us who signed the November 9th advertisement in the New York Times. Though some of its wording was indeed ill-chosen, the principal goal of that advertisement was to help ensure that the election was not settled prematurely and that serious consideration was given to the various issues in Florida. Our commitment was to the process and the law, not to any candidate. True, some of the signatories believed (and continue to believe) that the impeachment of President Clinton was patently unconstitutional; but we would have reached the same conclusion if the impeachment effort had been directed against President Reagan or Bush. Indeed, many of us also supported (and continue to support), on constitutional grounds, some of President Reagan's most controversial initiatives. Many of us also attacked, both privately and publicly, the unconscionable Democratic scandal-mongering under Presidents Reagan and Bush. We would be entirely pleased to defend the legal prerogatives of Republican presidents in the future.
THE SCRAPBOOK isn't holding its breath. We are trying hard not to burst out laughing, though. Observe that Sunstein declines to mention Palm Beach. And therein lies a tale, first reported by Timothy Noah in Slate.
Turns out Sunstein was never too keen on the notion of a single-county, election-turning re-ballot. Turns out, when that proposal became a fullscale Emergency Committee demand in a version of the ad printed in the Times, Sunstein and two other notables (Ronald Dworkin of NYU and Bruce Ackerman of Yale) repudiated the thing in a so-far unpublished letter to the editor. They hadn't been consulted about the shift in tone. They wouldn't have signed it if they had been.
Noah has further reported that the entire Emergency Committee adventure was the brainchild of anti-impeachment zealot Sean Wilentz of Princeton. Who, after writing the first draft, solicited signatures by e-mail as follows: "Conservative names good if you can, but not essential." Wilentz, we suppose that means, will be pleased to defend future Republican presidents all by himself if necessary.
Perhaps next time, if Cass Sunstein wants to maintain a nonpartisan air, he should take a closer look at this wouldbe confederates. Men like Emergency Committee signatory Paul Berman, for example. Berman is totally unrepentant about the Committee's ad. It was a "smashing triumph," he wrote to Slate in response to Noah's disclosures. Similarly triumphant, no doubt, were the ads Berman helped buy in college newspapers earlier this fall. Aux armes!, Berman then urged the sophomores. Oppose Ralph Nader's "wrecking ball campaign."
The better, of course, to carry Al Gore's water. Not that there's anything "unacceptably partisan" about that.