The Election of 2000
In 2000 attention was focused throughout the year on the presidential election. Challenges from Sen. John McCain of Arizona on the Republican side and former N.J. senator Bill Bradley on the Democratic side were eliminated in the primaries, leaving the way clear for front runners Republican Texas governor George W. Bush and Democratic vice-president Al Gore. At the conventions in August Bush selected former secretary of defense Richard B. Cheney as his running mate, while Gore chose Connecticut senator Joseph I. Lieberman. Third-party candidates included Ralph Nader (Green party) and Pat Buchanan (Reform party).
The mixed record of the Clinton administration played a key role in the election. With the economy booming, Vice-President Gore should have enjoyed an enormous advantage in the election. However, the shadow of the Clinton scandals and some liabilities of Gore's own with campaign fund-raising allowed the untested Governor Bush to make "character" more important than "experience" for many voters. In terms of issues, both candidates cleaved to the center. This produced an election closer than any in modern history. It was so close, in fact, that the actual outcome was finally determined by court decision more than a month after the election.
Election-night returns on November 7 showed Gore leading in both electoral votes (255 to 246) and popular votes (48,707,413 to 48,609,640), but neither candidate had the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory. The outcome was too close to call in three states - Oregon, New Mexico, and Florida - and it was clear that Florida's 25 electoral votes would determine the winner. The vote in Florida, as in the nation at large, was extremely close. The initial count showed Bush leading by 1,784 votes, a margin so small that it required a recount under Florida state law. The recount took several days to complete. During this time, manual recounts were ordered by the courts in several counties where Democratic voters initiated legal action on the ground that the original vote count had been distorted by poorly designed ballots or faulty voting machines. When the official recount was completed and the absentee ballots were added in, Bush's lead had narrowed to 930. Then, on November 21, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the results of manual recounts in three strongly Democratic counties should be included in the final tally, and the court extended the date for certification of the vote to November 27. The Bush campaign, arguing that the hand counts were being conducted in an arbitrary manner and that the Florida Supreme Court had acted improperly in extending the certification deadline, appealed the decision the U.S. Supreme Court. On November 27, with the hand recounts still incomplete, Florida's Republican secretary of state, Katherine Harris, declared Bush the winner in Florida by a margin of 537 votes. The Gore campaign contested her ruling in the courts; at the same time, the Republican-dominated state legislature threatened to bypass the courts by naming its own slate of electors favorable to Bush.
On December 4 the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the November 21 ruling of the Florida Supreme Court and sent the case back to that court for clarification. Meanwhile, the Gore campaign's appeal against the vote certification by Secretary Harris had been turned down by Florida circuit court judge N. Sanders Sauls. On December 8, responding favorably to an appeal from the Gore campaign against Judge Sauls's decision, the Florida Supreme Court ordered an immediate manual recount of "undervotes" (ballots that registered no presidential vote in the machine count) throughout the state. The following day the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a halt to the recount; then, on December 12, the U.S. justices voted 5-4 to bar any further recounts. On the next day, December 13, Gore conceded the election, and Florida's electoral votes went to Bush. In the final tally, Bush had five more electoral votes than Gore (271-266) but lost the popular vote by a margin of more than 500,000. Bush thus became the first candidate since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to win the presidency while losing the popular vote.
The Bush administration took office in January 2001. The new president named a cabinet that included both conservatives and moderates, but quickly and methodically began to promote an agenda that reversed many of the policies established during the previous administration. President Bush laid special emphasis on his plan for a $1.6 trillion tax cut, which he said would give a boost to a faltering U.S. economy. Critics countered that since the tax reductions would occur gradually over a 10-year period, no immediate relief could be expected; they also claimed that Bush, by continually warning about the danger of a recession and the need of a tax cut to prevent it, was actually helping to bring on the economic downturn that he feared. Indeed the first months of the new administration coincided with an end to the booming economy of the 1990s and the emergence of a bear market on Wall Street. The House passed the president's tax cut in its entirety in March 2001, but the Senate would agree only to a $1.2 trillion reduction when it took up consideration of the plan a short time later. The administration's budget increased spending for education and the military but cut funding for transportation, agriculture, and environmental protection. The new administration also made proposals to relax some rules relating to oil drilling on public lands, it lowered drinking water standards, and it canceled a plan to regulate carbon dioxide emissions by power plants.
In foreign affairs the Bush administration showed a tendency to pull back from international commitments, moving to limit U.S. peacekeeping activities in the Balkans, to reduce economic assistance to Russia, and to abandon an effort to reach an understanding with North Korea. America's allies in Europe reacted negatively to the president's repudiation of the Kyoto treaty on global warming, as well as to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's criticisms of an independent European defense force. Tensions with China, already high because of proposed weapons sales by the United States to Taiwan, were further aggravated by a collision (April 2001) between a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter off the coast of China that resulted in the death of a Chinese airman. An expression of regret by the United States brought about the release of the American crew (who had landed at a Chinese airfield), but China remained dissatisfied about the Taiwan issue and about U.S. surveillance flights close to the Chinese mainland, which were viewed by the Chinese government as violations of their airspace.
In May, Republican Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont declared himself an Independent; this caused the GOP to lose control of the Senate, which had been evenly split between the two parties, with Vice-President Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote. On June 7 the president signed the tax cut into law; in the final version, arrived at by agreement between the two houses, the total value of the legislation was put $1.35 trillion.
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Rosa
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Rosa
Fifty years after her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, Mrs. Rosa Parks is still one of the most important figures in the American civil rights movement. This picture book tribute to Mrs. Parks is a celebration of her courageous action and the events that followed.
$16.95
books;hardcover books;hardcovers | Ages 4-8
Ages 4-8 $16.95
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March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World
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March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World
by Dr. Christine King Farris and London Ladd
$14.39 You save: 20%
2009 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winner
From Dr. Martin Luther King's sister, the definitive tribute to the man, the march, and the speech that changed a nation.
On a hot August day in 1963, hundreds of thousands of people made history when they marched into Washington, D.C., in search of equality. Martin Luther King, Jr., the younger brother of Christine King Farris, was one of them.
Martin was scheduled to speak to the crowds of people on that day. But before he could stand up and inspire a nation, he had to get down to business. He first had to figure out what to say and how to say it. So he spent all night working on his "I Have a Dream" speech, one that would underscore a landmark moment in civil rights history -- the Great March on Washington. This would be one of the first events televised all over the globe. The world would be listening, as one of the greatest orators of our time shared his vision for a new day.
From the sister of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., comes this moving account of what that day was like for her, and for the man who inspired a crowd -- and convinced a nation to let freedom ring.
London Ladd's beautiful full-color illustrations bring to life the thousands of people from all over the country who came to the nation's capital. They sing, they join hands, they march, and they listen as speaker after speaker inspires social change, culminating in Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
books;hardcover books;hardcovers | Ages 9-12
Ages 9-12 $14.39
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