Bleeding Florida.(Review)

Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency, by Jake Tapper (Little, Brown, 514 pp., $24.95)

Bush v. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary, edited by E. J. Dionne Jr. and William Kristol (Brookings, 344 pp., $15.95)

The Florida election battle seems long gone, and yet still very much with us. If the details have gone fuzzy and one of its combatants is safely in the White House (turning in by 10 every night), the Florida controversy continues to have the gravitational force of a dark star, not always visible to the naked eye, but exerting a powerful pull nonetheless. If the Republicans lose Congress next year, the Florida recount will be an important subtext, as the Left rallies its rank and file by waving the bloody chad. Though most of us have "moved on," the Left's obsession with Florida has helped it cement an impression that the result was essentially larcenous, with the U.S. Supreme Court's fingerprints all over it.

Two new books, in very different ways, revisit the scene of the supposed crime. Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne have coedited a Florida primer, reproducing the court cases and journalistic commentary. Jake Tapper, a buzzy liberal political writer for Salon and quick-witted TV pundit, has written a 500-page book of original reportage. If Florida was stolen, evidence of the theft ought to show up somewhere in the pages of these books-but it never does. So hold the police tape.

If you want to know what Gore aide Michael Whouley's assistant Donnie Fowler ate at the Palm Beach Denny's at 12:20 a.m. the Thursday after the election, Tapper's book is for you. He has written an admirably substantial book, especially given the time constraints he was under. But 500 pages on, it's not clear why so much sheer reportorial detail is necessary. Tapper is guilty of Woodwardism run amok, reproducing conversations apparently for no reason other than that they are in his notebooks, but without Woodward's saving grace of at least reproducing dialogue from the highest levels of government or making a blockbuster revelation.

Here's a you-are-there snippet from Tapper, involving the date of a hearing early in the controversy:

"I think that's tomorrow," [one Gore lawyer] says. "Tuesday."