The lead story in the "Counting the Vote" section of today's New York Times offers thumbnail descriptions of the lawyers involved in the fight over the presidential election recounts in Florida. The Bush lawyer, Ted Olson, is described as "a friend of the former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr." The Times tells readers about Olson that, "In November 1998, he helped ABC News get an interview with Monica Lewinsky." Interesting material, perhaps, for a profile of Mr. Olson. But of all the highlights of Olson's long, substantive and distinguished career, is the Starr-Lewinsky connection really the most relevant or interesting?
Compare the treatment Mr. Olson got to that received by Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer for some Palm Beach voters. Mr. Dershowitz is described simply as "a Harvard law professor." The Times omits any mention of Mr. Dershowitz's role as a vocal defender of President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and the Times also omits any mention of Mr. Dershowitz's role as a lawyer for O.J. Simpson. The Times does slip into snideness at the fact that Mr. Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe, another Harvard Law School professor, "In a race that was not particularly close," beat another lawyer "to the television cameras outside the courthouse."
If the Times wants to write about these lawyers, straightforward and evenhanded profiles world be a better way to do it than catty asides.
Bush's Florida Problem: A story in the national section of today's Times on the influence of Republican governors on the presidential election quotes an anonymous "Republican strategist." The Times says "the strategist noted that a governor can cause harm and pointed to Florida, where the heavy turnout of black voters came after Jeb Bush's efforts to roll back affirmative action in that state." The Times quotes the strategist as saying, "The real problem in Florida was Jeb's whole thing about affirmative action." This is so far from the truth and unsubstantiated that it is just downright irresponsible of the Times to pass it along on the basis of a quote from an anonymous strategist. Jeb Bush's One Florida plan wasn't an attempt to "roll back' affirmative action, but to save it. A Federal circuit court ruling had undermined racial preferences, and Ward Connerly was poised to put a referendum on the Florida ballot banning racial preferences, a referendum similar to one that Connerly successfully championed in California. Bush pre-empted both the court challenge and the referendum by instituting a plan to guarantee the top 20% of every public high school class admission to state colleges. As John Leo wrote in his April 17 column in U.S. News & World Report, such a plan "would clearly raise the number of blacks and Latinos in the colleges." The are plenty of possible explanations for a high black turnout in Florida, if indeed there was one. One explanation could be the demagogic ads aired by the NAACP linking George W. Bush to a brutal racist murder in Texas. But on affirmative action, Jeb is a soft-liner, especially compared to Ward Connerly.