Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election

Toobin is famous for his pro-Democratic sympathies, but what makes this book tolerable to conservatives (like me) is his unrelenting loathing of Gore as spineless and milquetoast, and his grudging admiration for the GOP's no-holds-barred tactics. Toobin covers the events from election night to the unofficial non-partisan tabulation released in November 2001. Although he does an excellent job of explaining the incredibly complicated series of events, Toobin makes no effort to be neutral and doesn't hold back from labeling people as spineless, incompetent, or ruthless. He explains how some judges in the lower-level Florida judiciary were in over their heads, and although Democrats, did Gore great harm, while other minor judges rose to the occasion and demonstrated impressive leadership. According to Toobin, the Palm Beach "butterfly ballot" fiasco was not nearly important as the Democrats' decision not to challenge the massive numbers of improper absentee ballots.Toobin's theme is that while Gore focused on managing the process in a statesmanlike way, the GOP concentrated on winning at any cost. According to this author, Clinton said he would have declared victory, played the race card, fought the inclusion of the controversial military ballots, and encouraged mass protests in the streets. One wonders where such an approach would have led.The author's harshest criticism is reserved for the US Supreme Court, where Rehnquist and his allies abused their power and behaved as unscrupulous political hacks. Even conservatives find it difficult to defend Rehnquist's action that stopped the statewide recount. Ironically, later examination of the ballots showed that the statewide recount would have ended in Bush's favor anyway, and all Rehnquist's intervention accomplished was to taint the (already dubious) legitimacy of Bush's victory. Toobin reminds us that a non-partisan consortium that examined every ballot discovered that under any criterion of defining what constituted a valid vote, Gore would have won the election (although not under the rules imposed by the Florida Supreme Court for the statewide recount, which limited the recount to ballots already deemed questionable). In an ideal world, Gore deserved to win the Florida vote count and hence the presidency, but no voting system can hold up when an election comes down to roughly a hundred votes in a nation of a quarter-billion people. Toobin blames the ruthlessness of the Republicans and the spinelessness of Al Gore for what happened.

This book is an excellent piece of journalism, synthesizing all of the elements of last year's election controversy into a compelling and lucid tale of how politicians once again choose to stick up for their own personal interests rather than that of American voters.Several reviewers here have made much of bias in this book, for which I have a different take. Toobin clearly points out the grubby behavior of both of the camps (both interested in counting only the votes that may benefit them, both cynically playing the media and public opinion, both stretching the law to suit themselves) and certainly highlights both the inept and the inspired from the Florida county and judicial officials trying to complete an election in the spotlight. His broader point, I think is to show how the political shenanigans that both sides participated in shortchanged the only party to the election who really mattered here - the voter.He is especially effective in breaking down the spin of both camps - "votes have been counted and recounted", when they were counted and only a few FL counties had done a full recount (they rechecked tallys only); "count all the votes", when that meant only doing a recount in a few counties. He is also quite good at explaining the legal issues and approaches of both camps, and in providing closure to some of the allegations of discrimination against black voters (no evidence of roadblocks, etc).But the real value of this book is its picture of a voting process where the voter is the only unprotected and unrepresented party to the election debates and lawsuits. For those of us who make a point of voting, this is a chilling state of affairs. Democracy does not exist without voters, and those of us who participate in the most important civil duty there is should be given the greatest possible respect, and more protection that any politician. This is, I think, the larger message and point of Toobin's book - that much of the system that should have been accommodating the voter choose to invest itself in partisanship on behalf of its candidate.I highly recommend this book - especially as background before jumping into the numerous books analyzing the legal and political consequences of this election.

I read Alan Dershowitz' "Supreme Injustice" before reading "Too Close to Call." Big mistake. Toobin's book provides the social history of the election you need to put Dershowitz' arguments--and other accounts of the election--into perspective. Toobin has performed the incredible feat of giving us the facts without being boring, confusing, or overwhelming the reader. There may be bias here, but neither side comes out very well--Bush appearing disengaged while his team did its work; an isolated Gore trying to seem presidential while forfeiting the presidency.It's tempting to say that we should put this squalid bit of electoral history behind us. But anyone who wants to understand the operation of the Bush administration needs to know how it got to the White House in the first place. Toobin's book is the place to start.

This is an excellent objective recount of all that happened between election day, Nov. 7, 2000, and the final resolution of that election by the Supreme Court on Dec. 12, 2000, when by a 5-4 vote the Court ruled to stop the vote recount in Florida. It gives both an outside (what we all saw), and a behind-the-scenes (what the public couldn't see) view of the chaos, dirty tricks, legal maneuvering that went on in Florida in the days after the presidential election that put the loser of the popular vote in the White House.This is not a partisan book. It discusses the moves, good or bad, that each side made, and it puts on the record events that should never be forgotten in this Democracy.It details how some of those involved in this election decision allowed their partisan beliefs to taint their decisions. For instance on the Supreme Court side, a quote from the book:"As it turned out, in the tight whirl of the Republican social establishment in Washington, O'Connor's views on the election were already well known. On the previous Monday, December 4, the day of the Supreme Court's first opinion on the election, O'Connor and her husband had attended a party for about thirty people at the home of a wealthy couple named Lee and Julie Folger. When the subject of the election controversy came up, Justice O'Conner was livid. 'You just don't know what those Gore people have been doing,' she said. 'They went into a nursing home and registered people that they shouldn't have. It was outrageous.' It was unclear where the justice had picked up this unproved accusation, which had circulated only in the more eccentric right-wing outlets, but O'Connor accounted the story with fervor." I read the book yesterday, skipping over parts that are still fresh in my memory and too painful to read about even now. I'll eventually go back and read through them. Toobin offers a lot of details of what went on behind the scenes. He appears sympathetic to the Gore team, but not entirely uncritical of Gore. What he does clearly show, however, is the absolute ruthlessness of the Bush team: their Machevellian approach to making sure their man got into the White House. Another theme that comes through clearly is that the Democrats tried to take the high road, to their disadvantage; while the Republicans had only one goal--winning, by any means necessary. Gore was too instinctively decent to stoop to similar tactics, and his reluctance to do so caused some divisivness in his team. My one compaint is that Toobin too easily seems to dismiss the ramifications of this past election, eluding to the feeling that Bush is now our President and we should all move on. We should forget that the past election was manipulated and that our Supreme Court stepped into very shaky legal territory by ruling as they did in favor of Bush. However, near the close of the book, Toobin makes this statement: "But still, the election of 2000 will not go away, because in any real, moral, and democratic sense

I highly recommend this book, no matter where you reside on the political spectrum. Jeffrey Toobin brings a clear-minded, sharply intelligent voice to the 2000 election debate, which has been sorely missing from the shrill controversies surrounding the events in Florida. His ability to sweep through the high emotions, the drama and the vitriol, and get to the heart of the issues is truly admirable.Beyond that, it's simply a great read -- at times both thrilling and, frankly, hilarious. Toobin has an ear for the absurd and a knack for turning a phrase. The book is just stuffed with amusing anecdotes and incredibly spot-on observations of all the players involved. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It deserves a wide audience.