2000 Presidential Race Unusual But Not Unprecedented
ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: The pending presidential standoff is certainly one for the history books, but it's not the first time a presidential race has run so close or has been so controversial. CNN's Garrick Utley with more now.</s>GARRICK UTLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Imagine it is 1876 and Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, is headed for the presidency.</s>SAMUEL ISACHAROFF, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Hayes became President in 1877 with a cloud of scandal and compromise about him.</s>UTLEY: The Democratic candidate, Samuel Tilden, has won the popular vote. But the electoral vote is thrown into the House of Representatives when four states, including Florida, each sends two sets of electoral ballots to Washington. Members of Congress battle into January, unable to determine the winner. What is happening in Washington shocks the nation. A special commission is created with five senators, five House representatives, and five Supreme Court justices to decide which disputed electoral ballots to accept. (on camera): There are eight Republicans and seven Democrats on the special commission. And in each case of the disputed electoral ballots, they vote eight to seven to accept the Republican ones. The Democrats are not happy. (voice-over): There are threats of violence in the streets. Armed gangs of Democrats chant, "Tilden or blood," and threaten to put their man in the White House by force. And then, something happens. Representatives of Hayes and Tilden meet in Washington, and it is believed they make a deal.</s>ISACHAROFF: It's interesting that Hayes in 1876, which is the closest analogy to here, pledged to the Democrats in exchange for not further challenging the presidency that he would be a one-term president and that he would have a bipartisan administration. And he honored that pledge.</s>UTLEY: And so two days before the inauguration on March 4th, 1877, Hayes is declared the winner, with 185 electoral votes to 184 for Tilden. And the United States has a president. Garrick Utley, CNN, New York.</s>HALL: And all of us wait for the same outcome. Regardless of the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, history will have an opinion of it, but what will that opinion be? Standing by is Carol Berkin, award winning author and a professor of history. Carol, thanks for joining us once again.</s>CAROL BERKIN, HISTORIAN: Thank you.</s>HALL: Do you see any similarities besides the one that Garrick Utley brought up in the 1876 dispute between Hayes and Tilden? And now we, of course, have Gore and Bush.</s>BERKIN: Well, I think one thing that's evident is they made some kind of compromise, and I think it's likely that when all of this is over with -- I don't have a crystal ball. It is likely that when all of this is over, there'll be some effort at bipartisanship. There'll be some agreement, some exchange of political favors back and forth that will make it possible for the two parties to work together for the next four years. That's the way our politics generally work.</s>HALL: Well, that's the way politics used to work, but it seems like nothing is certain with this particular election. Everything changes moment to moment. We're seeing a lot of protestors in the streets today in Florida, primarily for Bush-Cheney. Do you see that there's going to be a healing, not just politically, but also a healing of people?</s>BERKIN: Well, I think so. We've had protests before -- 1968, when I was young and in college and wild and radical. We had protested the Democratic convention. We've had protests over civil rights. We've had protests over other elections, and people seem -- really, it's very difficult in human nature, I suspect, to sustain this level of excitement and hostility, and I think people will calm down. Daily life will take over again in most people's experience. The Super Bowl will come up, and I think that -- I don't mean to make light of this, but I think that, really, once it's settled, people will begin the process of seeing what the future will hold with whichever new administration we have, and historians will have a heyday with all of this.</s>HALL: Yes, and we talked about that 1876 election and how there was surrounding it the scandal and the clouds of doubt. Do you foresee that no matter how this is resolved -- and it will be resolved, and, as you said, people will go on with their lives, and there will be Super Bowl parties or whatever. Do you perceive, though, that this cloud of doubt will plague the next president for the next four years?</s>BERKIN: Well, I don't know, but I certainly hope that what it will do is produce some real serious thoughts about the electoral college, about old voting machines that may not work very well, about the shape of ballots. That is, I hope it will generate some very useful election day reform, in terms of how people vote and in terms of how votes are counted, and maybe a reconsideration of the electoral college.</s>HALL: Not to be blasphemous here, especially in front of a true historian like yourself, but do you see Election 2000, the mini- series, documenting all of this?</s>BERKIN: Well, you know, we just did a series for the History Channel that's going to air starting Monday night on the Founding Fathers, and I'm beginning to feel as if we were prescient. We hadn't figured out that this was going to happen. But I see some mini-series possibly. I see some books coming out on the electoral college by historians. We've ignored it virtually throughout my lifetime as a sort of ho-hum, boring issue. I think it'll come out. I think maybe we'll see some books or some series about disputed elections in American history. I think this will be a topic that will be considered popularly, and then some serious historical writing about it will take place, and it will be interesting. I imagine most school kids in history classes today will be reading about the electoral college in ways they never had before.</s>HALL: It's funny you would bring up the school kids, because I was just about to ask you -- I would imagine that when kids grow up, they don't typically say, you know, I can't wait to become a historian. You know what I'm saying? But I would imagine...</s>BERKIN: Yes.</s>HALL: ... that this is going to spawn an entire generation to really look at how they can change history themselves.</s>BERKIN: I hope so. I hope it makes students and young people everywhere more aware that what's happened in our country politically is an ongoing process. It changes, it's not written in stone, that there's something exciting in seeing how we got from where we were to where we are today, and even though you don't earn a great deal of money being a historian, there really is some opportunity to think long and hard about what opportunities there are for ordinary people to make history themselves. And I hope that this comes through to young people today, and they put away some of their video games and they watch CNN for a change.</s>HALL: Oh, I think that's a fabulous idea, absolutely fabulous. In fact, let's hope that my kids are watching. They never do, though. Carol Berkin, thank you very much for joining us.</s>BERKIN: Thank you.</s>HALL: It's always a pleasure.</s>BERKIN: Thank you.