Word: argumentative
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...consistency as well. But just as it had been difficult to predict during his presidential campaign which Gore you might see on any given morning, his argument for winning Florida was protean. He praised the hardworking Palm Beach canvassers one day and sued them the next. He wanted to count every vote, but countenanced his supporters' efforts to get thousands thrown out. He vowed to honor voter intent, a goal that lost some of its nobility as the nation saw how many kinds of guesswork that would take. So uneven was Gore's footing in the public relations war that...
...Gore kept hold of his sense of humor, which had always shown itself best in private. When Leon County circuit judge N. Sanders Sauls not only overturned Gore's request for a manual recount but also repudiated virtually every major argument his lawyers had made, the Vice President telephoned a couple of his top advisers and deadpanned, "You know, I think that went pretty well...
...culture is infused with dishonesty. We are obsessed with fibbing about facts because this is less elusive than the real problem, which is intellectual dishonesty. This means saying things you don't really believe. It means starting with the conclusion you wish to reach and coming up with an argument. It means being untroubled by inconsistency between what you said yesterday and what you say tomorrow, or between standards you apply to your side or the other guy's. It means, in short, spin...
That chastisement had its effect on some of the Florida supremes. At oral argument, you could almost see Chief Justice Charles Wells and a few of his colleagues looking over their shoulder wondering whether Rehnquist & Co. would approve of their behavior...
...what's keeping this process in place today? Some of its defenders consider the electoral college a safeguard against citified control over the election process. If we abandon the current system, the argument goes, and popular vote gains preeminence, the inhabitants of the nation's four or five most populated states might decide presidential elections on their own. And while residents of said states might not have a problem with such an outcome, folks out in North Dakota and Montana might see things a bit differently. Citizens of sparsely populated areas (and the congresspersons who represent them) have grown fond...