Right after the declaration by Florida's secretary of state that Gov. George W. Bush of Texas was the winner of the state's electoral votes, the people in Austin raised the question: What should we call thee? There was a slight delay from the sanctum sanctorum, then the reply: You are to continue to refer to him as "Governor" Bush.
Exactly the same thing happened to Sen. John F. Kennedy the morning after he won his election victory. "How should we refer to you?" one reporter asked at close hand. The pause. Then, "Call me Mr. Kennedy." He dropped "Senator." Dubya wasn't quite ready to drop "Governor" because of course it remains a hypothetical possibility that next Jan. 20, they will still be referring to Dubya as "Governor," when Al Gore is sworn in as president.
This is unlikely, though there is much cross fire ahead. John Podhoretz, in his column in the New York Post, gave a day-by-day account of what the Gore people need to do to invalidate the finding of the secretary of state. It is a most tedious process, for reasons political, judicial and biological.
Political procedure now casts the Gore people, who are objecting to the appointment of the Bush electors, as plaintiffs. They are going to the circuit court in Florida and saying: We propose to prove to you that the secretary of state violated Florida law by failing to count this, by counting that, by failing to grant more time to them, etc.
How are lawsuits of that kind heard? You have to have witnesses. And you have to have depositions. And you have to have arguments. To do all of that under the constraints of federal law (Dec. 12) is a strain in the best of times, and of course the decision of the lower court would be subject to appeal.
Meanwhile, the Florida Legislature is predictably going to say something on the order of, "Remember us? We're the people who are supposed to decide what the law is in the state of Florida. Well, here is one law effective this minute." And they will come up with the Bush electors that Gore Inc. is fighting against in the lower state court. But such a law needs to be approved by the governor of the state, who -- an Italian opera librettist could have written this -- is the brother of the Republican candidate and has recused himself from hand-to-hand participation in post-Election Day process, though the librettist might have thought it entirely appropriate for Jebino to do something for his brother post-election, making up for what he failed to do for him pre-election.