The Accidental President: How 413 Lawyers, 9 Supreme Court Justices, and 5,963,110 Floridians (Give or Take a Few) Landed George W. Bush in the White House

by David A. Kaplan

For thirty-seven days after the disputed presidential election of 2000, we watched great theater, as George W Bush and Al Gore slugged it out in the swamp. You may think you've read it all before, but now Newsweek's David A. Kaplan goes behind the scenes of the sanctimony and machinations. In his critically acclaimed bestseller, The Silicon Boys , Kaplan took us inside Silicon Valley. In The Accidental President , he does the same for this epic moment in American history -- a harmonic convergence of politics and law, media and culture. With his mordant wit and incisive storytelling, Kaplan tells us how -- contrary to popular belief -- the Supreme Court's ruling for Bush was not a foregone conclusion and why the dissenting justices thought, until the last second, they could lure the one equivocating colleague they'd derisively nicknamed "Flipper." We're in the room when Gore decides that, more than any great lawyer, the one person he needs in Recountland is . . . Erin Brockovich. We learn which Bush partisan covertly marionetted the strings behind Katherine Harris. And we're treated to sketches of the characters they called Secret Squirrel and the Fine-Looking Man and of the political operative who jumped from a moving train. Through it all -- butterflies and boils; concessions, recantations, and fraternal recriminations; lawyers, more lawyers, and 181 invocations of the phrase "uncharted waters" -- Kaplan paints a picture of an extraordinary episode for the country. There are few heroes in this tale. No person or institution comes out looking very good. "Rule of law" simply meant trying to figure out a way around the law -- realpolitik by any other name. The outcome of Bush versus Gore was a colossal fortuity, an election gone bad, made worse by an inconceivable coincidence of accidents. A lucky tactical call here, a confusing ballot there -- amid all the folly and hypocrisy, these are what landed Bush in the White House. Different turns might have cast destiny the other way. Bush is our nation's first accidental president, just as Gore would have been. Bush may thrive or stumble in office. But either way, few will forget how he got there after November 7, 2000. This is the definitive story of those thirty-seven days and why they matter.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

David A. Kaplan is the former legal affairs of Newsweek, where he covered the Court for a decade. His other books include The Silicon Boys (a New York Times bestseller that was translated into six languages), The Accidental President (an account of the 2000 election on which HBO’s Recount was partially based), and Mine’s Bigger (a biography of the largest sailboat in the world that won the Loeb Award for Best Business Book of 2008). A graduate of Cornell and the New York University School of Law, he teaches courses in journalism and ethics at NYU. He and his family live in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

UPDATE: I had to give this another read. It's far funnier than I recall. In fact, it's hilarious. Especially that conservatives (I'll not name them, other than saying a New North Carolina Senator likes to make liberals cry: that's his rallying goal for the coming years I suppose.) I haven't seen any liberals crying in a long time except from frustration about the environment, co-vid, and because of non-sensical rants. And since I have voted Libertarian since 1992. I do mourn the fact that a third party hasn't had a stronger showing. But looking back and re-reading "Accidental President" must be one of the funniest re-reads I've experienced. It's all so true you'll find yourself thinking "How did that possibly happen," and "At least the Supremes didn't stop any vote counting....yet..." After all, Biden's 5 million popular vote win is meaningless with the SUPREMES, having decided no one has to obey subpeonas anymore, for example, can and will do anything on a whim. YES: THE SUPREMES CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT.* If that's not obvious to you, then you gotta read this book. This one is staying on my to-read shelf: in another 20 years it will have a new meaning!
*except overturn Roe VS. Wade: that's too good of a campaign platform for the republican party to ever let go of permanently!

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
No matter what your political persuasion may be, this book interestingly demonstrates how (or how not) American law works during election periods. Interesting to note that a Republican candidate has won the popular vote only twice in the previous 66+ years! We all know Hillary Clinton won about 3 million more votes than Trump in November of 2016, but Trump still was "awarded" the Presidency. (For the record, I've voted libertarian since 1992). If you want to know how this happens, this book is a good resource. And it's a fun read.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great play-by-play of the 2000 post-election period. It does a good job of being objective about the Gore and Bush camps, and the strategies and happenings that characterized the numerous court cases in both the Florida state and federal courts. The ending thesis of the book is biased in that the author does not believe that the federal courts (read: Supreme Court) should have gotten involved into a situation best handled by Florida law and courts, or even the political body of Congress.

[David Fulmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book because I enjoyed the author’s book about Silicon Valley and the topic of a disputed American Presidential election seemed very timely. I was not disappointed. The 2000 election between Vice President Al Gore and Governor of Texas George Bush came down to who won Florida and who won Florida came down to a matter of a few hundred votes difference, a ballot design controversy, a lot of legal challenges packed into a tight timeframe, and, ultimately, a U.S. Supreme Court case which, by one vote, handed victory to Bush. For 37 days after a chaotic election night which saw the TV networks calling the election then un-calling the election, the two sides battled it out in Florida where the issues ranged from what type of recounts could be conducted to the validity of absentee ballots. Kaplan is a graduate of the New York University School of Law and while he does include a lot of journalistic on-the-ground scene setting, it’s obvious that he’s mainly interested in this case for the many legal issues that were raised and debated in courts from Florida all the way up to the Supreme Court. He gives lengthy descriptions of the legal arguments and the legal opinions, supplemented with background on the law and biographies of the judges, and while I think it would be nearly impossible to write a book about this historic election without getting the reader at least a little bit confused now and then with all the legal wrangling, Kaplan does as well as I think can be done with these issues. The book would have benefited from a chronology and a list of characters (two things that I believe the Toobin book on this same topic has) to help the reader follow along but aside from that, this is really a complete, dramatic retelling of the endgame of the 2000 election. Kaplan doesn’t hide his opinions about the damage the Supreme Court did to its own reputation but this is an in-depth and at times exciting blow-by-blow account of a close election.