The fictional movie Recount is coming out soon and the San Francisco Chronicle, of all papers, skewered it as a piece of bias filmmaking made for one political party….but hey, its still entertaining:
Though everybody knows that Republican George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 by defeating Democrat Al Gore in a hotly contested election, “Recount” manages to keep the suspense taut throughout.
As for the second issue, well, “Recount” barely tries to contain its bias. This is a movie that asserts – convincingly – that the election was stolen from the Democrats, and it only fleetingly portrays the Republicans as a group merely trying to keep what it won rightly.
~~~Glory goes to the Democrats in this film and Klain in particular, while a late brush of compassion is meant to illuminate Wilkinson’s portrayal of Baker.
But by then, well, it’s hardly fair. You could argue that Baker comes off as a master strategist who knew that the recount was going to be “a street fight for the presidency of the United States” and was savvy enough to take the gloves off from the get-go. But he’s portrayed less as a public servant interested in upholding the Constitution and a rightful victory than as a Machiavellian hired gun whose slight forward lurch and dead-eyed glare come off as evil.
~~~And yet, it’s important to remember that “Recount” is not a documentary. This is a fictional movie based (mostly) on fact, and it should be judged on that alone – otherwise we’ll all just waste our time in a political shouting match. You need to know going in that “Recount” is topical and entertaining but that it doesn’t pretend that its point of view is balanced.
Now, there have been claims to fairness and balance, but mostly those involved said they, ahem, “attempted” to be fair. But it would be wrong – or worse, naive – to say there’s not a partisan message at the heart of “Recount.”
The consensus of critics who’ve screened Recount — a group that doesn’t include me, by the way — seems to be that, despite its token gestures at evenhandedness, the film makes clear that supporters of Al Gore were more right than wrong while supporters of Bush were more wrong than right.
I’m floored this article, written by Tim Goodman, appeared in one of the most biased papers in the country. Kudos to them. But in the end its just one more piece of biased filmmaking. The actors admit it and hell, the premier had a panel discussion afterwards with Jimmy Carter for gods sake.
Mark Goldblatt makes a great point here on having an opinion vs. an informed opinion about this case. The movie certainly has an opinion, but its hardly informed:
Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, who yells a lot, has asserted that “the decision in the Florida election case may be ranked as the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history, because it is the only one that I know of where the majority justices decided as they did because of the personal identity and political affiliation of the litigants. This was cheating, and a violation of the judicial oath.”
On the other hand, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who doesn’t yell a lot, and who helped shape the majority opinion in the case, contends the decision was altogether justified: “The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn’t even close. The vote was seven to two.” Scalia also points out, “It was Al Gore who made it a judicial question. It was he who brought it into the Florida courts. [The Supreme Court] didn’t go looking for trouble. It was he who said, ‘I want this to be decided by the courts.’ What are we supposed to say? ‘Oh, it’s not important enough.’?”
It would be interesting to watch Dershowitz and Scalia debate Bush v. Gore. But another point, a more general point, needs to be made here. There’s a difference between having an opinion and having an informed opinion. Dershowitz and Scalia have informed opinions. By contrast, if you’re spouting off on the merits of Bush v. Gore and you don’t recognize the names, say, Marbury or Madison, you have an opinion on the case in the same sense that Washoe the Chimp has an opinion on a Beethoven symphony: He might sway back and forth with pleasure or fling his refuse in frustration, but he has no possibility of grasping the underlying issues.
Finally, it’s worth noting that if the Supreme Court had not intervened and halted the hand recounts, Bush still would have won the Florida election — according to a comprehensive review of ballots conducted after the fact by the National Opinion Research Center at the behest of (among others) the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN. The only way Gore could have won was by counting “overvotes” — spoiled ballots containing the names of more than one candidate per office — which were so clearly voter screw-ups that neither candidate ever requested that such ballots be counted.
Bush won, he still would of won with a recount, and the Democrats just can’t get over it. Eight years later and they still cling to this notion so tightly it has become their security blanket it seems. They wanted a recount because they lost. Instead of taking defeat as a mature adult, Gore acted like a spoiled little brat and demanded recounts until his desired outcome was achieved.
One final note. Isn’t it interesting that the Democrats fought so hard for that recount in Florida in 2000 but thought nothing about disenfranchising millions of voters in the very same state eight years later. Funny how that works out huh?
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