2000 All Over Again

The political and campaign DVDs just keep coming. Next in our election year stack is Recount (HBO, $19.98), which tells how electoral confusion in the Sunshine State led to the presidency of George W. Bush. He, like Democratic rival Al Gore, is only seen here on TV. The rueful drama's real stars are the political footmen, real historical figures of both parties portrayed by Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt, Denis Leary, Laura Dern, Ed Begley Jr., and others. But they're also history's footnotes. We see images of Bush and Gore, hear their voices mimicked on telephone calls, and those are the guys who go on to reap the accolades, and scorn, of the media. Recount is interesting precisely because it gives voice, and a precious little bit of dignity, to those we haven't heard from the in the last eight years.

Remember hanging chad? What a simpler time that was, before 9/11. The Internet was new in 2000, hardly noticed by political pros, few of whom then had BlackBerries under their thumbs. Cable TV, the networks--those were the arbiters of opinion. Tim Russert and Dan Rather were at the twilight of their influence. The menace of the Diebold Corporation, the necessity of a verifiable paper trail--no one had heard of such things.

Spacey plays Ron Klain, a Democratic operative fallen out of favor. He realizes the miscount, the butterfly ballots and hanging chad, have created a margin of Republican victory in crucial Florida counties that keeps shrinking. From 40,000 votes to 8,000 to 1,784 and down to 327...where will it end? All the disenfranchised seem to be blacks and elderly Jews. (As one of Klain's colleagues says, "Blind fucking bats tend to vote Democratic.")

That's when the Republicans step in, led by former Secretary of State James Baker (Wilkinson). Directed by Jay Roach (of the Austin Powers movies) and written by first-timer Danny Strong, Recount is nothing if not frank in its admiration for GOP muscle and organization. White riots are organized in front of willing TV cameras. Office buildings are stormed. The troops are invoked (again, before 9/11), as being another disenfranchised party those pernicious Dems are trying to defraud. It's the voice of white, in-power grievance being invoked against minority rights, and the strategy works wonderfully well.

Though the Fox News Channel isn't specifically invoked (perhaps O'Reilly and company weren't quite so powerful back then), Recount positions HBO as the anti-Fox, the left-leaning Hollywood rebuttal to the empire of W., Rupert Murdoch, and Roger Ailes. Klain and his underlings represent decency. Wilkinson and his expensively suited colleagues represent corporate competence. "Fraud" is the blowback word used to smite the losing party. Is it any wonder who wins this contest?

Whether considered as tragedy or black comedy, this battle's designated villains are also its best characters. As Katherine Harris, the Florida official who nominally controlled the election (or tipped it to a rigged Supreme Court, depending on your views), Laura Dern is a comic marvel. Her stiffly coiffed hair and thickly painted face can't disguise this poor woman's panic at being placed in such combat. She is Citizen Ruth grown up, sobered up, clinging to her precious little self-worth. If she's unprepared, a little dim, being used by her GOP overlords--well, you get the sense she's endured worse before. To be manipulated, to grasp in some small way her utility, knowing even how she will be reviled on The Daily Show and elsewhere. Klain, Baker, and Warren Christopher (Hurt) have the smarts, wealth, and self-awareness to know they'll survive, whatever the fate of the republic. They can get new jobs, write memoirs, go on TV talk shows.

Harris, like current Alaska governor and Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin, becomes more sympathetic the more she's ridiculed for being unsophisticated, unattractive, unworldly. Though not a heroine in the sad political farce of Recount, she is its martyr. Bush may have been the big beneficiary and victor in that distant election year, but Recount convinces you it's the minor officials like Harris who still truly hold our nation's destiny in their trembling, uncertain hands.