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Everyone is talking about the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare.  But I don’t want to talk about that now.  I want to address another controversial 5-4 ruling, one that many said was the last one before this to garner such attention.  James Fallows alluded to it in his hyperbolic-yet-interesting-but-ultimately-irrelevant pre-ruling post: the curious case of Bush v. Gore.

Since I didn’t start blogging until nine years after that decision, I’ve never really talked about it on here.  It’s quite interesting.  What does our go-to source, Wikipedia, tell us? 

The Court held that the Equal Protection Clause guarantees to individuals that their ballots cannot be devalued by “later arbitrary and disparate treatment”. Even if the recount was fair in theory, it was unfair in practice. The record, as weighed by the Florida Supreme Court, suggested that different standards were seemingly applied to the recount from ballot to ballot, precinct to precinct, and county to county, even when identical types of ballots and machines were used.

So, Florida screwed up the recount, huh?  What the heck were they doing, counting in Greek numerals?  How can you screw up a simple vote count unless corruption is involved?  Well, whatever.  Then:

The Court stated that the per curiam opinion’s applicability was “limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.”

I have read this over and over.  I am no legal expert, but I can read English.  I am going to write, in a separate paragraph, in bold, my reading of this.  If you are a legal expert, please explain to me if I am making mistake in the following paragraph, for I can see no other interpretation.

The Court had to make sure their ruling applied only in that case, because otherwise it could conceivably call into question many other elections in the history of the United States, and future ones as well.  Certainly, every recount was now suspect.  According to their findings, known methods of vote counting may have been unconstitutional.  I mean, if they couldn’t recount votes in a constitutional manner, how could anyone be sure they had counted them right in the first place?

I am not saying the Court was wrong.  I am only saying that if they were right, there existed a possibility that the entire system was fundamentally flawed.  At least that’s how I read it.  Am I wrong?

However, this part was a 7-2 ruling.  The 5-4 ruling was the controversial one, the one that said they couldn’t try a constitutional recount.

Conservatives have been quick to point out that the Court did not decide the election for Bush because, had the recount continued in those counties, Bush would have won anyway.  they cite this New York Times story from 2001:

A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

The story went on to note:

But[…] Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots.

Please observe that the story is from 2001.  Not 2000.  That means that people only found out what would have happened almost a year later.  The Court making their decision knowing that if they stopped the recount Bush would win, whereas if the recount continued, it was unknown whether he or Gore would win.  Now, we learned after the fact that Bush would have won had they allowed the count in those counties to continue, thus rendering it a moot point, but they did not know that at the time.  We must evaluate their decisions based on the knowledge they possessed when they made the ruling:

  • Stop recount: Bush chance of victory = 100%
  • Continue recount: Bush chance of victory = x, where x < 100%

I think it’s clear what the dominant strategies are in this case for any political partisan, no?

But the Supreme Court is not political!  They are just a machine that ruthlessly interprets the law, not biased in any way, shape or form, right?  They wouldn’t decide an election based on anything other than legal precedent.  That wouldn’t be logical.  What would Vulcan High Command say?

Let’s hear from Justice Scalia on the matter:

There you have it.  They had to do it!  Everyone was laughing at us!

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Dick Cheney is one of the few politicians who appears to really not care what people think of him. While some accuse other politicians of doing “whatever it takes to get elected,” Cheney has shown a complete lack of interest in polls. He certainly has never made any attempt to be beloved or popular. He barely even uses rhetoric, preferring to growl his statements with barely concealed hostility. He looks like a hunched over little man, with a sideways smirk perpetually plastered on his face.

In other words, Cheney is not charismatic. He is, in fact, anti-charismatic. But, unlike Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Martha Coakley, Dick Cheney knows he is anti-charismatic, and he has embraced it. He’s made it part of his image, to be the guy who doesn’t want to lead huge crowds, who doesn’t make big speeches, who prefers to be a lone, tough old bastard. He has worked his anti-charisma to its fullest, and has probably come further in understanding the nature of this phenomenon than any other anti-charismatic individual save Nixon. And Nixon’s success was, I think, more good luck than recognition of his own anti-charisma. 

The worst thing you can do if you’re an anti-charismatic person is try to something exciting and awesome and sexy like charismatic people are always doing. Hillary Clinton tries to make grand speeches and gestures like Obama does, and it comes across as irritating. Dick Cheney never attempts soaring rhetoric, and it’s a good idea.

Make no mistake; even when you embrace anti-charisma, it’s still no way to stop a true charismatic person in an election. Barack Obama (or Sarah Palin) would utterly defeat Cheney in a political campaign. But what embracing his anti-charismatic nature does for Cheney is grant him a remarkable confidence. Whereas Mrs. Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, Martha Coakley and even, to an extent, Nixon, were always making “gaffes” or being “boring” for reasons they could never figure out, Cheney seems to understand that he is never going to be personally appealing, and has simply said “To hell with this; I’ll be as unlikable as I can, and say what I want.” 

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I define anti-charisma as a phenomenon that causes the unlucky bearer to inspire an instinctively hostile reaction in others. If an anti-charismatic person says “Yes we can!”, the response is “You’re not the boss of me.”
Anti-charisma doesn’t seem to be as well analyzed as charisma, but here is my unscientific list of  a few prominent people who I believe have it.

  • Dick Cheney
  • Richard Nixon
  • Bill Belichick 
  • John Kerry
  • Al Gore

Most of them are politicians–Kerry and Gore largely unsuccessful ones, Cheney only successful by joining with a charismatic running mate, Nixon by avoiding debates with other candidates. Belichick, despite being the best active NFL coach, inspires none of the admiration in the national media or fans in general that is expressed for lesser coaches.
The reason I bring this up is because Martha Coakely looks destined to join them on this list. One of the hallmarks, in my opinion, of anti-charisma is that mistakes the anti-charismatic person makes tend to have greater impact than they really warrant, and Coakley is no exception. Whereas Obama could be forgiven for saying he’d been in 57 states, Coakley is mocked far more aggressively for a campaign ad in which “Massachusetts” was misspelled.
Then there are personal factors such as appearance and voice. This ad is a textbook example of a charismatic voice vs. an anti-charismatic one. And Nixon provided a legendary illustration  of what a difference looks make.
To be continued…