June 17, 2002 (Political Sanity/APJP) -- On the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, I reflect on a few things.

I recall watching the televised hearings which outlined in such stunning detail an amok, power-mad President and "All The President's Men" who carried out his alarming, authoritarian dictates. I remember reading the Woodward/Bernstein book, and watching the Redford/Hoffman movie of that name.

I recall my father telling me that Nixon -- after a long career of communist hunting -- hurt American more by his criminal activities than any communist ever had.

Most of all, I've been thinking about the brief, typed letter of resignation signed by Richard M. Nixon, delivered to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. I saw that letter framed on the wall of the George McGovern home in Washington, DC.

It began simply, with a concern for "leaks" to the media about the Nixon Administration's inner workings. A zealous official organized a special unit called "the plumbers" to stop the "leaks."

Soon, this group was involved in much more than imposing internal discipline. They were casing the offices of the Brookings Institute, plotting to fire-bomb them. They broke into the offices of Daniel Ellsberg's psychotherapist, trying to exert prior restraint over embarrassing files now known as the Pentagon Papers. These serious crimes represented an effort by the Nixonian Republicans to subvert our right to vote.

The leading Senate Watergate investigator, Sen. Sam Ervin, said, "If these allegations prove to be true, what [the Republicans] were seeking to steal was not the jewels, money or other precious property of American citizens, but something much more valuable-their most precious heritage: the right to vote in a free election." (See Sen. Sam Ervin: Echo From The Past.)

Sadly, today's Republicans remain just as hostile to our voting rights today as the Nixon Republicans. Several months after the Votergate election theft of 2000, serious legal and political issues remain unresolved.

First, and perhaps most important in the long run, the people spoke -- but at Bush's urging, the US Supreme Court overruled the majority of the people in the US and Florida, where voters preferred Al Gore.

Al Gore should be the President today. Period. Any full, fair count of the legal votes cast in Florida would reflect that simple truth. Bush campaign officials in Florida knew this, but filed one lawsuit after another and lied to the American people. Seating the loser as president upsets everything we hold sacred in America. Letting lust for power and corruption prevail over the peoples' will instantly invalidated the "trust the people" premise of the Bush campaign. Without remorse or awareness of the irony, the Bush team fashioned the most hollow "victory" in US history.

In their capacity as elected Florida officials and George W. Bush for President Florida committee co-chairs, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris shut down the basis of our federal government. They halted the process as soon as their man could trump up a bogus claim of a "lead", and controlled the sabotaged democracy every step of the way afterward.

They hired a Republican corporation to "purge" legal voters from the lists, which the US Civil Rights Commission found was a blatant violation the Voting Rights Act. They blocked and delayed vote counting, and then complained the counts weren't done on time. They solicited, "fixed" and manufactured 1000s of absentee votes, and hand counted in the six counties where it helped them most.

Their misconduct tainted Bush's claims of victory. As a political matter, they may have "won" but only at the cost of the legitimacy and credibility presidents need to lead. Their machinations far outweighed the final "official" margin: 527.

Remember: President Nixon lost his legitimacy after winning a stunning 49-state landslide. Watergate was about trying to cover up election dirty tricks committed on his behalf. In Watergate, the realization struck like a lightening bolt that our President was indeed "a crook."

We were already at war in Vietnam, and suddenly another national trauma arose. We faced a Constitutional crisis, but the other branches of government stepped in, and the man overwhelmingly supported by voters mere months before had to resign from his office. The process worked, we regained "normalcy," and life went on.

In 2000, after one of the narrowest of elections, the dirty tricks had much greater impact than "The Plumbers'" botched burglary. Republicans in Florida, in Congress and on the Supreme Court imposed a Bush presidency upon us anyway!

Today, an unqualified candidate lacking a popular or electoral vote mandate pretends to be President. This after cheating to win in the state where his brother is Governor and his other campaign chairperson is the top elections officer. Rather than stepping in to set things right, Republicans dominating the other branches of government rubbed this in our faces.

Participatory democracy is not a faucet powerful people can turn on and off. Either we have it, or we don't. The Bush campaign's actions strike at the very heart of our system. Vice President Gore called this "the consent of the governed, freely given." Without it, we are not a free nation. With Bush in office, we are not a free nation. Here political issues become legal issues, starting with the very first words of the highest law of the land, the US Constitution.

Without free, fair and complete elections, "We the People of the United States" are not a "more perfect union." We are a nation of dupes enthralled by a pantomime of participation, manipulated by powers beyond our control. The grim realization that we are not what we think we are should slap Americans in the face every time we see "President" Bush. Our election became a sham.

The Bush team waged a masterful but misleading public relations blitz. No one really believes their claims that hand-counting is less accurate than machine counting. Florida law provides for hand counts, just like the Texas law Bush signed. Bush officials used hand counts in six Florida counties themselves! Making such claims insults the intelligence of Americans.

Al Gore won the most popular votes in America, the most uncontested Electoral College votes, and most Florida legal votes. A crowd of violent protesters directed by the Bush campaign, and Bush's Florida campaign officials frustrated the voters' will by abusing their discretion, defying court orders, and breaking laws to slow down and shut down the voting process when their figurehead was ahead.

We already know about their efforts to manipulate the public opinion and the process in Florida, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Republican Bush campaign officials illegally "fixed" thousands of defective absentee ballots in Seminole County.

Bush supporters orchestrated an intimidation campaign to stop all hand counts, and actually dissuaded the Miami-Dade canvassing board from complying with the Florida law. Perhaps worst of all, the Bush Republicans used racism harking back to the dark days of Jim Crow to disenfranchise Blacks.

During Watergate, the Supreme Court upheld the Constitution and ensured the US was a nation of laws. In Bush v. Gore, the Courts allowed mob rule, illegal votes and abuse of office to stand. Bush sits in the White House, but he will be never be president. He will never be anything more than a white elephant, the Commander-in-Thief, and the Pretend-ident of the United States.

We now suffer under a corrupt and, as 9/11 showed, inept Bush Occupation government imposed by Republicans at the key choke points of our system, an illegitimate President forced on the US against our will via strong arm antidemocratic (and anti-republican) tactics.

This is Watergate, but worse.