The first election I can remember took place forty-four years ago. It was 1956. I cast my very first ballot in Mrs. Logan's second grade class at Roosevelt Elementary School in Boise, Idaho. On this occasion, there was no need for a recount. Only one of my classmates also voted for Stevenson. He was quick to explain to our incredulous friends that he didn't want to vote for Stevenson. But since his name was Stevenson, and he might therefore be related to Stevenson, his mother made him do it.
In another way, however, my 1956 election experiences do strangely and quite closely resonate with what we as a nation are going through right now, especially with what governor Bush and Vice President Gore and their families are surely experiencing in this remarkable, disturbing and historic time.
In 1956, my father, Frank Church, was a candidate for the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate from Idaho. At thirty-two years of age, he ran in the primary against four candidates, the most prominent of whom was a man named Glen Taylor. Let me tell you a little about Glen Taylor. A former U. S. Senator and singing cowboy, Taylor was known to have performed with his family on horseback atop the capitol steps. He also ran for national election as the Progressive Vice Presidential candidate in 1948, and was received in Idaho as a colorful and principled original. Accordingly, Taylor was the clear favorite to win his party's Senate nod. But my father ran a strong campaign. And, though it was very close, by the time most of the ballots were counted late that election night, my father was projected the winner by a nose.
But then, little by little, throughout that night and into the next day, votes continued to trickle in. By late afternoon, my father's lead had dropped to fewer than a dozen votes, and Glen Taylor, quite appropriately, called for a recount.
As it turned out, the Idaho election machinery in 1956 was almost as primitive as the Florida election machinery in the year 2000. It would take days before all the votes could be recounted, county by county, and then certified. My maternal grandfather, Chase Clark, had been through this before. In 1942 he lost his re-election bid for Governor by a scant 400 votes. Knowing how agonizing the recount process could be, he piled all of us (he and my grandmother, my parents and I) into his lumbering Oldsmobile and off we drove to Lake Tahoe, Nevada to wait out the returns.
Only once a day did my grandfather permit my father to call in for the latest tally. Depending on the report 53 up, 211 down and so on the family's mood shifted from unreasonable optimism to unwarranted pessimism. One week later, my father was certified the victor by 135 votes.
My clearest memory from this tumultuous time springs from our drive home. We were speeding through the Nevada desert, my parents no doubt singing in the car, which they often did when they were happy; we were a couple of hours out on our journey home from Lake Tahoe to Boise, when I discovered that I had left my monkey, Brownie, a tattered but precious little sock animal, in our motel room. My grandfather called to make sure no one had tragically mistaken my monkey for trash, turned the car around, and back we drove to the motel to rescue him. This is the sort of story I should actually not be telling, because it might give you the false impression that I was a spoiled and pampered child.
In any event, by the time we returned to Boise, we learned that Senator Taylor had filed a lawsuit to suspend the results of the election, and to call for a new election in Canyon county, where he lived and which he lost. Since losing his home county was inconceivable to him, while my parents and grandparents and I were cooling our heals in Lake Tahoe, Glen Taylor was pounding the pavement in Canyon county, going door to door and asking people whether or not they had voted for him. This may not have been the most scientific form of recount, but indeed, when asked directly by their perplexed neighbor whether or not they had voted for him, a great majority told Glen Taylor that, yes, indeed they had. Clearly the election had been stolen.
This argument did not persuade the courts. So Glen Taylor retired to California and got rich. He manufactured a line of toupees, Taylor Toppers. He only emerged from political retirement once, in 1976. After first repeating his claim that my father had stolen the election twenty years before, he publicly forgave my father, congratulated him on his career, and announced his support for my father's candidacy for president. Yet another Quixotic and ineffectual moment in a colorful life.
There are hundreds of such stories from our nation's rich and lively political past. Elections of some of our greatest leaders were almost certainly stolen. As for discrepancies, real and imagined, from county to county and precinct to precinct, they are legion. I suspect that the political process today is more fair and less easily corrupted than at any time in our nation's history. Only when a vote is as amazingly close as this one is are we confronted with our system's imperfections. And the closer we look, from precinct to precinct and ballot to ballot, the more imperfections we will find. Confusing ballots. Miscounts. Mislaid ballots. Ballots clearly punched for one candidate and yet unread by a computer because the chad now there's a new word for you didn't fully detach when the ballot was punched. I'm speaking here not only about Palm Beach, though the incompetence there is egregious and incredibly consequential. And not only about Florida, where a second, hand recount is both underway and under debate, but also about Wisconsin and Iowa, New Mexico and Oregon, where one candidate or the other leads by razor-thin margins, indeed here on the Upper East Side of New York City, where 19 thousand ballots are in dispute or missing, and throughout the United States.
With this as my backdrop, let me make a few observations about our current national crisis, potentially a constitutional crisis with international implications. It could become the greatest electoral crisis in our history, but it need not if it can be resolved with appropriate expediency and grace.
Heretofore, most of the sparring between campaigns, most of the pundits' commentary, threatened lawsuits and shouting in the streets, pivots on conflicting versions of how justice must be done. Yet, because of our antiquated electoral college system, differing state laws on how to resolve voting miscounts and on what to consider a voting irregularity, and the inevitability of human error, both in first counts and recounts, in light of the razor-thin closeness of this election in some half a dozen states, I'm afraid that perfect justice, if even there is such a thing, will surely elude us here.
Thus far both camps have tried to gain practical electoral advantage while spinning for popular moral advantage. Such behavior is understandable. It is also transparent, and soon may become truly divisive. Since Mr. Gore appears, if ever so slightly, to have won the national vote, he has every right, even perhaps a social responsibility, to utilize Florida's election laws to help insure, if not a perfect, a more proximate final count. And Mr. Bush has every reason to take equally reasonable measures to determine whether he has indeed won the electoral college vote and thus the presidency. Though both sides are demonizing one another, each has heretofore acted in a prudent manner save only the incendiary nature of their rhetoric. But during times of anxiety and doubt, the latter behavior, if understandable, certainly false below the standard we might idealize as "presidential." Beyond this, you don't reassure people by pretending you are already president. And you don't reassure people by completely disappearing from view.
What I have yet to hear from either candidate is a statement worthy of the office to which both men aspire.
"My fellow Americans. As I speak, the election for president has yet to be decided. It was the closest election in our nation's history, and will be settled one way or another by a hair's breadth. Whoever finally is certified as the winner, whether I or my opponent, will know that almost fully half of the electorate has withheld from him its mandate. We also will recognize that many of these same people may feel that the election was unfairly, or at least uncertainly, won. In an election this close, with so many variables in play and the stakes so high, such feelings are inevitable.
It is too early for me either to claim victory or concede defeat, but I do have a message this morning for the American people, a message of reconciliation and hope. At a far more divisive time in our country's history, Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the greatest of our presidents, called on all Americans to "rise to the better angels of our nature." Let us do so once again.
We should all be able to agree on one thing. What is best for me and my supporters and best for my opponent and his supporters is that which turns out to be best for all the people of the United States. I promise you this. Since the presidential election may turn on even a single vote, and since at this moment we are equally divided as a people, whether elected or defeated I shall do everything in my power to help bring us all together.
In this spirit, to my worthy opponent, I propose that we both pledge to the other, whatever the final results may be (results which may not be certified for weeks) that we will work together more closely than ever before in history during the months ahead. It is incumbent on both to ease a difficult transition as best we can, and to ensure that the new administration will respect and enfranchise as many voters as possible.
The Senate is equally divided between our two parties. The House is also equally divided. And the people are equally divided in their choice for president. This could create first a crisis and then gridlock, but it need not. It might even represent an opportunity for a new spirit of constructive bi-partisanship in this great country.
Given this challenge and to seize this opportunity, if elected I pledge to appoint a number of cabinet officers from the opposition party, and would ask my opponent to join me in this pledge. I also pledge to seek every opportunity during the presidential transition for reconciliation and healing.
If I am not elected, I further promise to oppose all ongoing lawsuits brought anywhere throughout the country by individuals or groups on my behalf that are intended to overturn the results of the election once those results are certified. Finally, I shall do everything in my power to support the president-elect, both to affirm the legitimacy of his leadership and to honor his office.
As we try to resolve the winner of this election, both of us and all Americans will have to be patient as the process toward final certification proceeds. And, along the way, we will no doubt disagree on the specifics concerning recounts in various states and voting districts. But when all is said and done, whoever prevails and by however slight a margin, we surely agree that this country is far greater than any president or party.
As Benjamin Franklin once said at another time of far more real crisis in our nation's history than today, "either we all hang together or we will all hang separately." The same trust and faith are reflected in our nation's motto: "E Pluribus Unum," out of many one.
In closing, I hope and do believe that I will finally be certified the winner of this extraordinary election. If I am, again I pledge to take the people's divided will fully into account in putting together my administration.
But if I am not victorious, I also vow, with all my heart, to devote the next few weeks and months to national healing, urging all my supporters to stand behind the final decision and to offer their prayers, best wishes and support to the president-elect.
I thank all the many millions nearly a historically record number of Americans who supported my candidacy. And I ask you to join me, whether in victory or defeat, in the great work of reconciliation.
Thank you very much. And God bless America.