IMPEACHMENT AND THE ELECTION OF 2000 ★^1103of justice. He became the second president to be tried before the Senate. Early in
1999, the vote took place. Neither charge mustered a simple majority, much less
than the two- thirds required to remove Clinton from office.
Karl Marx once wrote that historical events occur twice— first as trag-
edy, the second time as farce. The impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868
had revolved around some of the most momentous questions in American
history— the Reconstruction of the South, the rights of the former slaves, rela-
tions between the federal government and the states. Clinton’s impeachment
had to do with what many considered to be a juvenile escapade. Polls suggested
that the obsession of Kenneth Starr and members of Congress with Clinton’s
sexual acts appalled Americans far more than the president’s irresponsible
behavior. Clinton’s continuing popularity throughout the impeachment con-
troversy demonstrated how profoundly traditional attitudes toward sexual
morality had changed.
The Disputed Election
Had Clinton been eligible to run for reelection in 2000, he would probably
have won. But after the death of FDR, the Constitution had been amended to
limit presidents to two terms in office. Democrats nominated Vice President
Al Gore to succeed Clinton (pairing him with Senator Joseph Lieberman of
Connecticut, the first Jewish vice- presidential nominee). Republicans chose
George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and son of Clinton’s predecessor, as their
candidate, with former secretary of defense Dick Cheney as his running mate.
The election proved to be one of the closest in the nation’s history. The out-
come remained uncertain until a month after the ballots had been cast. Gore
won the popular vote by a tiny margin— 540,000 of 100 million cast, or one- half
of 1 percent. Victory in the electoral college hinged on which candidate had
carried Florida. There, amid widespread confusion at the polls and claims of
irregularities in counting the ballots, Bush claimed a margin of a few hundred
votes. In the days after the election, Democrats demanded a hand recount of
the Florida ballots for which machines could not determine a voter’s intent.
The Florida Supreme Court ordered the recount to proceed.
As in the disputed election that ended Reconstruction (a contest in which
Florida had also played a crucial role), it fell to Supreme Court justices to decide
the outcome. On December 12, 2000, by a 5-4 vote, the Court ordered a halt
to the recounting of Florida ballots, allowing the state’s governor Jeb Bush
(George W. Bush’s brother) to certify that the Republican candidate had carried
the state and had therefore won the presidency.
The decision in Bush v. Gore was one of the oddest in Supreme Court his-
tory. In the late 1990s, the Court had reasserted the powers of the states within
How did a divisive political partisanship affect the election of 2000?