Just got back from visiting London and Paris, and the view most commonly held in both places that that Bush's 'Florida Victory" being as shaky as it was, is obviously the result of hanky-panky by brother Jeb--The Bush position is regarded as nothing more or less than an effort to steal the election and kick up enough dust to get away with it. The "American System" which we flaunt and tout to the point of insufferability, is now something of a joke--

I heard the comment that "The only reason that Bush could have for trying to keep the recount from taking place is that he knows the election was rigged and he'll be found out." so many times that I got sick of agreeing with it--

The fact that the margin of victory in the election was less by huge number, than the number of ballots thrown out, makes the whole election, no matter what the outcome, look completely invalid, no matter who the victor turns out to be, and no one in Europe, from the people that I talked to, to the press, to the TV journalists, can understand why another election is not held in Florida--

Of course, in our narcisistic way, we insist that Europeans and others simple do not understand how our system works, and that anyway, their views don't matter--but the fact is that we are the pre-eminent military and economic power in the world, and, as none other than Former President George Bush once said, you may run for office on domestic policy, as president, your main occupation is foreign policy.

If Bush finally becomes president through any other means than a full, systematic, accounting of all the ballots cast, and a full judicial review of all the legal issues, the world view of it will be that the election result was manipulated, and he stole the election. This will undermine any credibility that we have when insisting on free and democratic elections anywhere else in the world, and Bush will be viewed as a corrupt usurper in the ranks of Pinochet, Marcos, Milosevic, Suharto and so on.

If conservatives really believe in their candidate and in their country, they need to seriously consider the appearance that his action have, and should encourage him to do encourage a close examination of all the details of the election so that the final, general perception, will be tht the Florida election was untainted--