Let’s thank Al Gore
Reading this story about Mike Pence’s agita over whether to certify Biden’s victory I was immediately reminded of the situation Al Gore was in 20 years ago.
Indeed, the article mentions Gore, along with Richard Nixon, as two standing Vice Presidents who had to certify their own losses. Gore’s was particularly significant because he had lost in a highly controversial manner, and by many fewer votes than Trump is claiming ought to be “found” in Georgia.
What the article doesn’t mention, and which many younger people may not know, is that there had been considerable pressure on Gore “not to concede” the election even after the Supreme Court ruling. I distinctly remember arguing with friends, defending Gore’s decision to accept an outcome he believed was inaccurate as nonetheless legitimate. Basically, what Al Gore accepted was a process, and that process provided an outcome. The outcome might have been wrong, but Al Gore knew, and accepted, that this wrong could never be overturned by going outside the process. The process was over, so the outcome had to be accepted. That’s it.
I defended Gore in this way many times, even performing a comedy routine highlighting his virtue. In the routine I contrasted him with Rambo, who eschews any notions of legitimate process so he can impose his own vigilante violence to “make things right.” But this defense of Gore (not to mention the joke!) was too abstract to be compelling. It was hard to say why Gore following the process mattered — who did it help, other than Bush? Or maybe to preserve his own self-image or reputation?
But now, this Mike Pence craziness shows us exactly who it helps. It helps all of us, in the future avoid the catastrophe of a Mike Pence coup! (hopefully)
Just think, if Al Gore had refused to accept the certification in the Senate, what would be the chances that Pence would refrain from doing the same? 0%. Whatever machinations are going on in Mike Pence’s head, certainly the fact that he would be the first Vice President in U.S. history to do such a thing has some pull.
Breaking precedent is scary — as it should be. It calls immediate attention to one’s own agency. It also provides a clear temporal breakpoint for analysis. If you break a precedent, and then things go wrong, everyone knows who to blame. Any de-stabilization of U.S. democracy is on Pence if he takes this act. The historians of 2050 have their quills ready to go. Not so if he simply follows a path already travelled by a counterfactual Al Gore.
This doesn’t mean one should never break precedent. There can be good reasons to do so. It just means that precedent has force, and so taking actions that move, or remove, a precedent has a consequence on future generations. If Mike Pence does his duty in the Senate, we should thank Al Gore for preserving that force.
If I could teleport back to a brunch in January 2001, I’d bring this scenario with me. “Yes, it’s upsetting that Bush won even though the votes for Gore may not have been completely counted. BUT, imagine that someday Donald Trump is president, and when he loses, he just won’t leave. Al Gore is certifying 1 term for Bush to undo the possibility of a lifetime term for Trump.”
