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14A Friday December 1 Standard-Examin- Standard-Examin- Opinion 2000 O er SERVING THE TOP OF UTAH SINCE 1888 Scott Trundle Publisher Don Porter Editorial Page Editor Ron Thornburg Managing Editor OUR VIEW Hull officer deserved immediate response This kind of situation is the very reason that governments get bad name Officer Mills should be paid while he’s recuperating a situations but is enough to crop up once or twice a year But Mills waited from Aug 3 your blood boil until Nov 19 for the insurMills is an Ogden police ofance to arrive Workman’s ficer On Aug 3 he was drivhis in cruiser home comp was continuing to pay ing police 1 3 minutes after his shift endhim - because he didn’t have ed A drunken driver hit Mills’ enough sick leave or vacation accrued to make up the differIt didn’t kill him car head-o- n ence - but only after he signed but he has pins in his shoulder neck and back strains promissory notes agreeing to and he’s expected to be unrepay the debt As Police Chief Jon Greiner able to work before March vehiThe driver of the other correctly points out when an officer is in his or her patrol cle whose DUI charge is pending in 2nd District Court: car and is able to respond to a call they must respond - in She was unhurt that sense they are on duty But that isn’t the worst part “And if he becomes involved As if the conspiracy bebehe’s back on the clock” then tween irony a police car True enough ing rammed by a drunken driver - and fate - the accident Somebody somewhere has 1 3 minutes after make sure this kind of to happening Mills’ shift was concluded -process won’t weren’t enough now Officer be repeated Risk Manager Mills was for months unable says her goal is to collect insurance benefits to educate employees about because the city’s insurance the city’s coverage and who carrier was dragging its feet pays for what under specific comcircumstances “Usually most workman’s Initially -the tab people don’t think about inpensation picked up surance until they have to file but that was only because an a claim” she explained “It’s early and erroneous decision was made that workman’s my job to do that” So she said she’ll make sure everycomp applied in this situation one else knows too Actually Ogden pays for a $1 million insurance policy that Mills’ job - like all other y officers covers police peace officers - routinely puts as they drive to and from him in harm’s way The red work in vehicles sponse should be quick to The whole thing should help an officer of the law who’s been injured on his way have been routine said Ogden's Risk Manager Cathy to or from a shift to keep the way The BJ Mills was less-serio- slow-as-cold-t- us ar Allen-Verhoev- en off-dut- city-owne- since similar peace ANOTHER VIEW Bush camp violating a conservative axiom? No the US Supreme Court must preserve the integrity of the Constitution against the trespassing of state courts The US Supreme Court or may not help a just and constitutionally sound solution to the conservatives do agree for example that the 14th Amendment means that all branches of state governments must abide by the rights the Constitution guarantees presidential contest in Florida but it was not a betrayal of conservative principles for In the case to be argued FriGeorge W Bush’s legal team to seek its intervention day the Bush team’s lawyers Liberals have been instructhave said the Florida Supreme ing conservatives of late that it Court usurped legislative preis a reversal of their usual position on states’ rights to want rogatives and invented new law when it extended a deadthe federal court to overturn line for certification of Florian action by the Florida Suda's presidential votes If so preme Court this would be in contravention will Yes conservatives say of a specific provision of the they think Congress and the federal and the US Constitution that gives president courts should be limited to state legislatures the power to those powers enumerated in determine the process of sethe Constitution As a matter electors 6f both practicality and princi- lecting presidential How the high court will rule ple they will argue this means Congress should noT'-d- o is anyone’s guess right now It such things as pass speed may infuriate either conserva- - — limits for every state or deterfives or liberals or both But mine what level of alcohol in its involvement is not somethe blood qualifies for drunkthing all conservatives would en driving for the whole nation These are matters for the argue is anathema to their way of thinking states to deal with - Scripps Howard News Sen ice However large numbers of n COLUMNS Who said God was on the GOP’s side? Righteous outrage from Bush troops makes unity unlikely BOSTON - John Allen Paulos likes to tell a story about a museum guard who would inform visitors that the dinosaur on display was seventy million and six years old One day a little girl challenged his number Seventy million and six? How did he know for sure? The guard looked down and explained “When I took the job they told me it was 70 million years old That was six years ago” Paulos a mathematician with a sense of humor uses that tale to illustrate the absurdity of arithmetic precision in the face of estimates guesswork and margins of error Of course the Temple University professor is the first to admit that the comparison between the age of a dinosaur and the result of an election is less than perfect but there is a parallel to what is happening in Florida Two sides are searching for a mathematical benediction to what is - let’s face it - a statistical tie At the moment the certified Bush lead in Florida is 537 votes around 009 percent of the vote The uncertified Gore lead according to Tom Daschle is nine With butterfly ballots and pregnant ballots and absentee ballots there may be 40000 more uncertain uncounted or unaccounted for votes Add to that the fact that A1 Gore won the popular vote and add to that the margin of error in calculating all the votes and you come to this conclusion: In the end we will decide who has won this election but we will never know who won So given the certainty of this uncer tainty how do you explain the righteous outrage of Bush supporters? It’s not just the SoreLoserman posters or the angry mob outside the Miami-Dad- e counting room or the National Review cover Ime - Thou Shalt Not Steal It’s also the irate citizens in Florida claiming God is on their side Right from the beginning a New York Times poll showed that Bush voters were more adamant in claiming victory for their man than Gore voters The operative word here is “adamant” All along Bush folks have claimed an absolute win while Gore folks were more willing to face an ambiguous reality This week 93 percent of the Bush voters believe Bush won while 5 percent of Gore voters - like 53 percent of those who didn’t vote for either -aren’t sure who won Part of the difference may be the result of the crowning of Bush by the networks the Florida secretary of state or the governor hnhself But in someways the real divide in this election and this country is between those who grasp those absolutes and those who accept ambiguity We have seen the divide between the absolute and the ambiguous in issues far more difficult to determine than the status of a pregnant chad It’s a constant thread in international conflicts and ethical debates It even underlies arguments 1 over abortion or euthanasia Some believe that the moment life begins or ends is an open case some believe it’s shut But one thing that’s become clear in this haze is that absolutists often have anger - if not God - on their side In the weeks since the election the Angry White Man of 1994 has jumped out from behind the Compassionate Conservative of 2000 In the public debate between the passionate and the ambivalent the true believer and the neutral it seems that anger gets a competitive edge In the recent Gallup Poll for example 66 percent of Gore voters say they would accept Bush as president but only 46 percent of Bush voters would accept Gore Does outrage itself -- justified or not - become a factor in ending this uncertainty and mending this country? Does a country like a family try to placate the angriest member even if it means compromising reality for peace? It’s odd that the latest field on which we see this struggle between absolutes and ambiguity is filled with numbers We have long regarded math as “objective” the bottom line the indisputable scoreboard Now mathematicians like Paulos tell us that a com toss would be as accurate as any recount For my own part I am willing to tune out the angry voices and see how close we can get to an accurate count But any belief in a pristine conclusion to this presidential election has now gone the way of a seventy million and six year old dinosaur post-electi- Pulitzer Prize-- v inning columnist Ellen Goodman is associate editor of The Boston Globe Her column runs on Tuesdays and Fridays Email her at ellengood-manCaglobeco- m Bush needs to push election reform provide him with some needed political capital badly It will So is George W Bush the presidentelect? His aides say he still wants to be called “governor” but he’s edging toward the Oval Office In his nationally televised speech Sunday night Bush said he was “honored and humbled” at the prospect of “preparing to serve as America’s next president” But the honor will be hollow if he doesn't show a bit more humility - and a lot more imagination If Bush is sworn in Jan 20 as America's 43rd president as looks increasingly likely he will be as legally legitimate as if he had carried all 50 states But having won a minority of the popular vote and the barest majority m the Electoral College his political legitimacy is still in doubt If he wants to be etfective in office he needs to demonstrate an understanding that this is a much different country than it was three weeks ago As a direct result of the election fiasco in Florida the issues agenda has changed: Issue No for the next president should be election reform Yes Bush said all the right things about national unity Sunday night - “together we can make this a positive day of hope and opportunity for all of us” -but after he and the country spent 19 days m electoral limbo he should also have acknowledged that the cause of the current national disunity is an incompetent system for counting votes But Bush didn't so much as mention that topic Instead he recycled rhetoric from his stump speech adding a line about what he alone seems to see: a “growing consensus in Congress and in America on the need to reduce 1 taxes by reducing the marriage penalty and eliminating the death tax” He also promised to “work with members of the Congress to reduce tax rates for everyone” He even brought up entitlement reform not seeming to notice that his Social Security proposal - supplemented of course by A1 Gore’s cam- paign - was what made Florida as close as it was The election results in which the presidency and control of both chambers of Congress wfere decided by just a few thousand votes proved that Americans didn’t want big change But the post-electi- re- sults show that big change is needed so that “chad” is consigned to the wastebasket of historical memory by the 2004 election That’s the real mandate that Bush should claim Thoughtful legislators such as Sen a Arlen Specter and Sen Charles Schumer have put forth suggestions that would begin to set national standards for national elections But Bush might go further He might draw inspiration from Dava Sobel's 1995 best seller “Longitude” which tells the story of the British government’s effort to solve one of the biggest technological conundrums of the 18 th century Sobel's book recently turned into a minisenes on cable television’s A&E R-P- D-N- Y network starts with Parliament's offer in 1714 of a prize to anyone who could come up with a longitude-determinin- g device “Tried and found Practicable and Useful at Sea” One John Harrison started working to win the prize in the 1 720s he finally claimed it in 1773 Hopefully progress would move faster today If Bush embraced the “Longitude” prize model for ballot reform he would surely enjoy exactly the kind of bipartisan support in Congress that will elude him if he pushes for tax cuts or the partial privatization of Social Security - not to mention even more divisive matters such as the possible appointment of a pro-lif- e judge to the Supreme Court More importantly an electoral “Longitude” prize would engage the imagination of every inventor tmkerer and -class teacher in the country The end result would be a ceremony that would make Americans feel that the I londa fiasco had not been tn vain civics- But what about Bush's campaign promises? What about the millions of people who voted for the Republican ticket precisely because they wanted tax cuts entitlement reform and an end to abortion? Bush needs to mind his political base yet he needs to be even more mindful of the national interest And he needs to remember that he will take of-fice with precious little political capital But if he solves a problem that the whole country wants solved he will build up his political capital And then he can spend it as he sees fit over four years or majbc even eight James P Pinkerton is a Hewiday colum- nitf and a member of its editorial board His column runs occasionally' i |
