Last night we watched Recount (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a recently-made HBO film about the 2000 Gore/Bush election battle in Florida. Amazingly enough (’cause we kind of knew the outcome already) it was tense, gripping stuff. I realized, as I watched it, that I knew almost nothing of the street fight — that’s really what it became — that broke out in those days immediately following the election. Normally I’d have been glued to my TV during that time, but I happened to be working on an insane project, locked in a windowless Mississauga data centre for days at a time. I remember waking up to find a Globe and Mail on my front porch declaring Bush the president, and my friend Jane (who was working on the same project) had a copy of the Globe declaring Gore the winner. Or the other way around. Anyway, that’s all I remember.

So this film was interesting to me, as it laid out the legal battles and protests and political maneuvers that were happening in those initial days, and finally resolved with the bizarre Supreme Court ruling. When you think about the ridiculously tiny number of votes separating the two candidates, and the legal minutiae that decided whether the votes would finally be counted, it’s staggering to think that these tiny events would lead to an eight-year term that will surely have monumental impacts on America’s future.

While the film was certainly more sympathetic to the Democrat point of view, it showed grudging respect for James Baker, cabinet minister under Reagan and Bush I and the lead attorney in the Bush camp. No quarter was spared, however, for then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

[tags]recount, hbo, florida 2000, james baker, katherine harris[/tags]