October 24, 2024 • 42 mins
Today on the show, Leon Neyfakh, co-creator of the hit podcasts Slow Burn and Fiasco, discusses his season on the aftermath of the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
You can listen to the full season of Fiasco now.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin a last archive listeners. In the year two thousand,
Al Gore and George W. Bush faced off in a
presidential election that was too close to call. Eventually it
became a Supreme Court case which granted a victory to Bush. Today,
(00:37):
I'm talking to Leon Nafok, co, creator of the hit
podcasts Fiasco and Slowburn, about a series he did on
the dramatic month long battle that ensued after Election Day
two thousand. He made it a few years ago, but
Pushkin is now re releasing that series. In it, you'll
hear fly on the Wall, minute by minute accounts of
one of the most gripping and consequential legal battles in
(01:00):
American history, and on the eve of another US presidential
election that is likely to be tight, it all feels
eerily pression. You can listen to your ASCO's a whole
series on Bush Vigor over on the Fiasco Feed. Here's
our conversation. We're here to talk about your season on
the two thousand election Bush Gore, and I'm curious to
(01:23):
know how did the idea to do a season on
that election come about?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
So the honest answer is, we had produced these two
shows at Slate one on Watergate and one on the
Clinton impeachment, and so we sort of saw ourselves as
in this lane that we thought of as being about
political scandal. And so the two thousand elections struck us
(01:50):
as a story that sort of has all the drama
and all of the heightened emotions and twists and turns
of a great scandal, but it's something else. It was
this this this, this train barreling down a track that
(02:12):
no one was really in control of. I suppose that
is true about Watergate to some extent too, But I
think the two thousand elections, especially as we dove into it,
we started to see as a bunch of bureaucratic machines
kind of rolling on their own power and rolling into
(02:32):
each other and trying trying to run over each other.
And it was almost like disembodied in that way. Obviously
there were the two candidates UH facing off, and obviously
there were all of their lawyers and all of their aids,
but it really did seem like a system's story. And
I think that's what attracted to us in the in
the in the wake of Clinton.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I guess because in Watergate, someone still holds all the cards,
like there is somebody who knows the truth of what
happened in Watergate from the very beginning of that scandal,
whereas in this case, sort of even in the final analysis,
nobody really knows what happened in two thousand, Like who
the true winner is there? You run through different studies
at the end that suggests in a few cases gore one.
(03:15):
But it's this It is so perfect for a system
story because of that fundamental ambiguity that you tease out.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, and I think also like the one, I think
one of the pleasures of those first two seasons of
slowburn was kind of just forensically taking apart cause and
effect and trying to retrace like how things ended up
going the way they did. And with the two thousand election,
what we found pretty quickly is that the margin was
(03:44):
so narrow that any number of you know, sliding doors
could have gone the other way. To mix metaphors, I
think sliding doors really only go two ways. But but
you know, like there were just so many contingencies and
so many decisions that could have been made differently, so
many mistakes that could have been avoided, or so many
(04:10):
you know, potential arguments that could have been made that weren't.
In the first episode, we talk about the election itself
and like the campaign itself and everything that led up
to the recount, and even there you just see how
easily it could have gone differently. I think that was
attractive to us as students have cause and effect.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Well, so could you could you walk me through the
process of reporting this. You mentioned in one of your
bonus episodes that there's a kind of ten day long
reporting sprint in Florida, and I do love how sort
of you know, it's this It has these national and
global repercussions, but it is quite a provincial story and
really set in Florida. Could you just tell me about
(04:50):
those ten days and how you went about piecing this
story together.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, So we got so much done in those ten
days I sometimes dream of. I mean, it was really
it was really grueling and hard because we were trying
to do like two to three interviews a day. But
you know, we usually take between you know, a months
to a year to make these podcasts. But having like
a two week period or a ten day period whatever
(05:16):
it was where we just like crammed it all in.
It was really amazing. Once it was done. You know,
we planned it by just reaching out to everyone we
could who we knew was in Miami or Palm Beach
or Sarasota. And so there's a lot of driving, a
lot of staying in pretty gnarly hotels, and a lot
(05:40):
of cramming in the car. Like you know, we had
preps for all our interviews, but there was a lot
of like thinking on the fly because they were just
coming too fast and furious for us to really to
really plan everything meticulously as we like to do well.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
And it's a huge cast of characters, which is I
think that's one of the things I love, not just
about the season, but about all the seasons of the show.
You wrangle's there's such a strong spine to the story,
but then you have all of these people filling in
different pieces of it, And I'm wondering how you choose
your characters. If you interview I think you said sixty people,
there aren't six. There aren't sixty people in the show,
(06:18):
So I'm curious what your selection criteria is. And also
if going into your interviews you kind of know I'm
going to want this person. I know what structure our
episode on the courts or the media is going to
have I want this person to speak to this moment
or is that something that evolves after the fact.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
So obviously it depends a little bit. But the way
we like to do it in an ideal world where
we have a story that we have decided to take on,
where there you know, we've almost never done a podcast
about something that about which there's there is not already
like a shelf or ten of books and documentaries that
we can watch, and so a lot of our first
(06:56):
steps are absorbing everything that's been produced already, and you know,
taking leads from people that have been interviewed before, often
looking at contemporaneous coverage, you know, individuals who happened to
be quoted in a newspaper story who seem like they
might be interesting to follow up with. And we try
(07:18):
to outline episodes ahead of time, like before we've even
done much reporting, because you know, that's the luxury of
doing history right. You already know what happened, and you're
trying to find witnesses for every corner of it that
you're interested in. But I think you know, based on
who says yes, your emphasis ends up shifting. But it
(07:41):
definitely helps to know what we're interested in ahead of time,
but also obviously be for us to feel open to
pursuing avenues that we couldn't account for because we didn't
know who was going to agree to talk to us,
and we didn't know what they were going to say.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And your your second episode was one of my favorites
of the series. It's your media episode functionally about about
the early Call on Election Night two thousand, which is
this is a subject that is very near and dear
to the last archives heart, because we have ale episode
about the UNIVAC computer predicting the nineteen fifty two election,
and I'm curious, I had not really heard the story
(08:19):
of Voter News Service. I'm curious if you've seen much
reporting subsequently on how impactful the early call was in
shaping the outcome of the election. There's sort of there's
reference to voters in the Florida Panhandle possibly being discouraged
from voting. I've seen there's kind of conflicting evidence around
whether or not that actually made a difference. It seems
(08:41):
on principle, it's clear that we shouldn't be calling things
before we know an actual outcome. But I'm curious how
you think about the impact of that early call.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah. So I think in terms of setting the basic
dynamic of those thirty six days during which the recount unfolded,
the early call, well, I guess there's two early calls,
right that both turned not to have to be wrong.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
They get it wrong twice on an election.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, first Al is the winner in Florida, and then
it's Bush and then it's nobody. I think the fact
that it was Bush before it was nobody kind of
positioned him. And the fact that he had more votes
in so far as there was a vote count on
election night or the day after, he had more and
(09:29):
I think that just inherently created a dynamic where he
was protecting his victory and Gore was trying to challenge
it even though technically no one had won, and it
should have been you know, in some abstract way it
should have been even but I think, you know, narrative
is important and the overwhelming feeling, you know, I think
(09:51):
people probably remember, if they were around Sore, Luserman was
the joke. And I think that just directly stems from
the fact that Gore was in this unenviable position of
having to try to overturn a non result. In terms
of what you know, those folks that you mentioned who
might have turned around on their way to the polls
(10:12):
because they heard that Gore won. It's hard to say.
I think people, I mean, this whole season was you know,
a study and motivated reasoning. I think you just see
the partisans on both sides make more of the facts
that are advantageous to them than than than facts that
are not. But certainly, as someone you know, I remember
(10:34):
Catherine Harris, the Secretary of State who was overseeing the recount,
a Bush supporter who had campaigned for him, a Republican,
she was so certain that that all that all those
people who might have voted for Bush but turned around
because of the Gore call, you know, would have determined
(10:55):
the outcome. And by the same token, people are certain
that if the Palm Beach County ballot had been designed
differently and people hadn't accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan when
they meant to vote for or Al Gore, then there
would have been no recount at all, because Gore would
have been up by thousands of votes that seemed.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
To go it was like a three thousand or something
that he over performs by.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Which which is like such a small number. But actually
I remember I think realizing like three thousand sounds like
so many when you're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
These times the margin right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, and as you're hearing about the you know, the
day's long manual recounts that happen over the course of
those thirty six days, and okay, like they found twelve
Gore votes here, they found eight Bush votes here, and
it's like, wow, three thousand, yea, and this thing would
have been over before it started. So yeah, I think
your question was about the early calls you asked also
(11:55):
about new reporting. I will just take the opportunity to
shout out Slow Burn season ten, if you can believe
that there have been ten seasons now of the show
that we that we were lucky enough to start steady
It's right, hosted by Josh Levigne, who was our editor
on those first two seasons. He talked a lot of
the same folks that we did about the about Election
(12:15):
Night two thousand, including Murray Adelman, who was at Voter
News Service that you mentioned. Murray Aielman incredible character, such
like probably one of my favorite people we've ever interviewed,
because you know, especially in a story that's so full
of motivated reasoning. You could really trust him, and he
(12:35):
was so honest about the fact that his numbers had
been off in ways that he was heartbroken by.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah, he really lived with those consequences. You could tell
he was still feeling it.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, totally. And Voter News Service, for those who don't know, like,
it's a little bit hard to explain, and that's true
of a lot of aspects of this story. I remember
we were at some point We're like, damn, why did
we do this? This was so complicated. Ultimately, it was
a satisfying challenge to try to like wrestle down these
like hyper bureaucratic storylines that you know, many of which
(13:09):
take place in courtrooms or even you know, in judicial chambers,
to try to kind of like smooth them out into
a straight line and tell it like a story people
actually want to listen to. Was was definitely a challenge
in certain moments. But Voter News Service kind of hard
to explain what it is, but basically it's a service
(13:29):
that networks subscribe to and pay for. They own it,
They co own it. All these network all these news networks,
they co owned Voter News Service, and they relied on
their early polling results their analysis rather to decide whether
a state was ready to be called, and it was
Voter News Services numbers, you know that initially indicated a
(13:52):
core victory. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
You said that Murray Adelman from Voter News Service was
one of your favorite interviews, and indeed one of the
reasons that he sounds so trustworthy is because you can
tell that he feels the gravity of his contributing to
the early call. There is another interview in this series
with Catherine Harris, the then Secretary of State in Florida,
who ultimately certifies election results for Bush in the state
(14:39):
and is sort of a figure about whom there is
much debate. She seems in your interview with her, not
to feel so heavily the consequences of her own actions
in this and it seemed like in a series in
which you have kind of empathetic interviews with many different
(15:02):
people who are involved in the two thousand election, she
seems to be one of the few in which there
is actual misrepresentation, where there's actual conflict in your in
your in your interview with her, I was wondering if
you could talk a bit about the experience of interviewing
Catherine Harris and what you think the factor is in
her erroneously claiming that she had petitioned the Supreme Court
(15:24):
of Florida to do a manual recount in Florida, misremembering
other key details of what happened. What the factors in
that are.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, so she was a good representative view that we
heard a lot from people on both sides, which is
that we were just trying to follow the law, Like
this is nothing. This was not about winning or losing.
This was not about trying to, you know, get one
over on anyone. This was about following the law. The
law is dispassionate, the law is black on white, and
(15:55):
all all we were there to do was was make
sure that the law was followed, which I think is
a disingenuous argument. And I think and I get how
people arrive there because you know, for example, the Florida
Supreme Court, right like this is supposed to be in
a political institution, just like the US Supreme Court is
supposed to be an a political institution. But confronted with
the most partisan question that one can imagine, which is
(16:20):
did these people or these people win the election? It
gets really hard to maintain that facade, and I think,
you know, people's biases, people's desires for certain outcomes inevitably
can be felt in their decision making and even in
how they understand what's going on. I think with Catherine Harris,
(16:41):
what was interesting in that interview, you know, and I
should say, like, this interview took place almost twenty years
after the fact, right, so I don't hold it against
her that she didn't remember some details at all. We
assume people will not always remember every twist and turn.
But you know, the thing that really I remember kind
(17:02):
of caused me to kind of go into a little
bit more of an adversarial mode with her than I
usually ever take with interview subjects was that there was
a county, Palm Beach County, where they were doing a
manual recount. They had a certain amount of time. They
could have had more time if the Secretary of State's
office decided to be open and the Secretary of State's office
(17:27):
made the decision that gave them less time. Basically, they
the secretary of State's office, had a choice like we could
give them. We could interpret this ruling from the Florida
Supreme Court as saying we can give them x amount
of time, or we can interpret this ruling to mean
that we if we stay open, we can give them
a little more time. And they decided not to give
them a little more time. And what was stunning to
(17:50):
me was that Catherine Harris remembered as them having extent
having granted them more time, when in fact, like they
had made a very affirmative decision not to. And so
that just struck me as like either her trying to
spin facts in a dishonest way, or more likely like
(18:11):
she has a version of this in her head that
over twenty years has like warped her memory of her
decision making in such a way that makes her the
good guy, and that kind of erases a decision that
I think, to my eyes, was like very obviously counter
to the spirit of counting every vote you can, Like
(18:32):
she had an opportunity to give Palm Beach a little
more time when all they needed was a little more
time to complete their recount, she decided not to. And
so it was kind of amazing to hear her say no, no, no, no,
we actually gave them more time, Like we gave them
more time, and so I yeah, I think at that moment,
I pushed back, and then she pushed back on me,
and you know, you sort of hear her get defensive
(18:55):
as I try to kind of like tell her what
I know to be the facts and the reason we
included it was not to like gotcha her or to
like make her sound like she didn't know what she
was talking about, because I do think motivated reasoning and
motivated memory is just like this whole story here and
so many different arenas, you had people who were supposed
to be a political and neutral and without a dog
(19:19):
in the race, so combing to their own biases in
a totally natural way, but in a way that I
think is real and and and powers a lot of history.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, well you also have there's this intentiveness across the
season to how the media narrative that was emerging around
the election is actually shaping these kind of a political
non part or supposedly non partisan actors choices. And I
think one place where you do see that where there
is a lot of empathy and justifiably so for Catherine Harris,
is you hear how wounded she is still by the
(19:58):
very sexist and sort of cruel jokes that are made
at her expense when she is elevated to fame through
the election and then becomes a laughing stock at least
in like the late night media s good and and
it's it seems plausibly like part of what would lead
to embattled or at least motivated decision making in that process.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Totally. Yeah, she knew who was who was making fun
of her. She knew that people were dismissing her both
as like an intellectual lightweight but also as a as
a partisan hack. And you know that gets that that
we'll get anyone's back up, right.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, I was. I was curious to sort of along
similar lines in terms of how like a median narrative
can shape what happened in the election. To what extent
do you think al Gore's relative passivity or more He's
very much an institutionalist, Like he he certifies his own defeat,
(20:57):
He instructs his campaign not to criticize the Supreme Court
in the United States after the ruling that that winds
up giving the election to Bush, and he he calls
off Jesse Jack And when he's campaigning very aggressively for him,
there's this whole there's this sense that al Gore really
wishes to appear presidential, and I was curious to what
(21:18):
extent that version of Al Gore took the wheel because
of the sense that he had been part of for
eight years an administration that had been accused of of
being unpresidential or disgracing the office of the presidency in
some way, How do you account for his decision making
and what role do you think that plays in it?
If any so.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I remember ron Klain got really angry at me after
he heard the show, or at least some of the show.
I don't know if he listened to the whole thing.
Ron Klain was was was Al Gore's top aid or
I don't know if that's literally his title, but he was.
He was one of the top advisors to Gore during
this period. And his anger, as I recall, was was
(22:02):
based on the on his sense that I had kind
of swallowed uncritically the snare of Gore as a wishy,
washy and kind of naively institutionalist actor who didn't really
want to win enough, who wasn't willing to do what
(22:23):
it took to win. And I wish that we have
been able to talk about exactly what he thinks really
happened and what he thinks the consequences were of Gore's
I think undeniably restrained behavior during those thirty six days.
I mean, you can argue about whether they fought hard enough,
(22:46):
but I think no one would dispute, including I assume
ron Klain, that Gore was not trying to stir emotion
in his supporters. He was not trying to influenced news
coverage in an aggressive kind of like mercenary way to
try to shift the reality on the ground. You know,
(23:09):
the thing that happened at the very end of the
story where the Supreme Court halts the recount, you know,
and Gore says to his team, like, just don't want
anyone to trash the Supreme Court over this. I think
it speaks volumes. I think both in a good way
and that it's like, here was a guy who really
took seriously the idea that the Supreme Court had a
(23:31):
reputation that was important to the country as an a
political institution, and that we shouldn't just because we think
they've acted in a way that was you know, biased
or even dishonest, Like we shouldn't say that because it
would be bad for the country. I think that's like
(23:51):
putting a positive spin on his on what you could
also describe as a kind of unwillingness to fight like
your life depended on it. People I think criticize the
Democrats and have always criticized the Democrats for not wanting
it enough or not being aggressive enough. And I think
(24:14):
we have a line in the show maybe this was
what ron Klain was mad about, that Gore was worried
about not looking like a hypocrite, whereas the Bush folks
were worried about winning. I think it mattered to Gore
that the positions they took during those thirty six days
were internally consistent, and so I think throughout the Gore campaign,
(24:36):
I don't think it was limited to Gore. There was
just like a perception that they were more invested in
being good than being victorious.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I mean, it strikes me that this election obviously listening
to this season now after the twenty twenty election in
you know, with one month less than a month ago
before what is certain to be a very tight election,
another tight US election presidential election, it's interesting to on
(25:10):
two thousand as a moment where the machinery, the electoral
machinery of this country was really and extremely granularly on
display this question of postmarks on absentee ballots hanging Chad.
I think one of my favorite details of the entire
show is that the plural of Chad is Chad, which
is really absurd. It's like, you, there is no other
(25:33):
way you could add like an additional layer of absurdity
to what is our very absurd situation. But I'm curious
what the effect of all of this was in your
view that I think now of twenty twenty as having
elevated all of these small state level offices that people
didn't think about, and the secretaries of state. How many
people really would have known what a secretary of state
(25:54):
did before twenty twenty in this country, And yet here
in two thousand we have a national figure made out
of Catherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State. And I'm
just curious to know, in your view, if it changed
anything about either our faith in the electoral machinery or
in how elections actually were run. Was it or was
(26:15):
it all like the Supreme Court decision non presidential.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So so yeah, so So The short answer is, I
don't know. Slightly longer answers, I think that it really
changed how people saw the Supreme Court. I think like
the prevailing conventional wisdom, or at least in certain certain
circles now, is that the Supreme Court is a political institution,
and it clearly is a body of political actors who
(26:41):
are pursuing ideological ends in their reasoning. I think that
starts with Bush v. Gore. I think the sort of
disillusionment with the Court, I think it hasn't didn't reach
a fever pitch to the extent that it has until
you know, the past few years, I would say, but
(27:03):
especially looking back, it's like this was this was the
thing that shattered. I think a lot of people's illusions
about the Court as far as like uh revealing the
disproportionately consequential roles played by these tiny bureaucracies that that
that that are different from state to state, that or
even county to county, where you have individuals like Teresa
(27:28):
Lapoor who uh was responsible.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
For the butterfly ballot, right for.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
The butterfly ballot, Yeah, thank you. The fact that these
people can have such a can make such a huge difference,
I think was probably pretty shocking, and I think it
was shocking to them to be turned into national figures.
One of my favorite lines that I heard on my
as I was re listening recently was it wasn't, unfortunately
(27:53):
a line that anyone said to me. It was Teresa Laport,
who declined to be interviewed for our podcast, said to
I believe it was the Saint Petersburg Times. She said,
you know they were. They were writing about her role
in the butterfly ballot fiasco intended and she said something like,
you want my blood here, take it to me her.
(28:14):
He heard her anguish in that moment is at least
partly informed by like this should not be my fault,
like this, this is this. We should not have a
system where this this can be my fault.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
When she was trying to accommodate a change in the
law to how many third party candidates.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
It's exactly yes. Uh so, I think did people on
you know who work for political campaigns learn lessons from
two thousand about the power of these local offices and
the power of these elected positions that can be held
by Republicans or Democrats. I'm sure yes. But the reason
(28:53):
I said, the short answer to your question is I
don't know, is we just didn't do a ton of
reporting on how people like applied to the lessons of
this uh of this fiasco in coming elections. I do think,
you know, when we made the show, originally there was
one part of it that seemed like total science fiction,
(29:14):
but now looking back on twenty twenty, I see as
anything but which had to do with the slates of
electors that states send to officially throw a state's support
behind one candidate or the other. So the Republicans in
the Florida State Legislature on the stated basis that it
(29:38):
seemed possible that with all this recounting going on, they
would actually run out of time and the states electors
wouldn't even get to cast their votes, that none of
Florida's electoral votes would be counted in the final tally.
They kind of came up with a backup plan the
Florida State Legislature. The Republicans in the Florida State Legislature
(30:00):
came up with this backup plan where they would change
the law such that they had the unilateral power to
decide who those electors would be, so they would be
able to send Bush electors to the Electoral College to
basically give Bush the state independent of what the vote
count was, you know, seems obvious of course, like the
(30:23):
state's electors have to you send the electors that represent
the will of the people in the state. The Republicans
and the Florida State Legislature were like, what if we
decided which electors to send? And the Gore team saw
this as like a potential end run around the will
of the Florida voters, and they were worried that if
(30:45):
you know, the recounts went their way and it turned
out that Gore was ahead and the election could be
certified for Gore, that these Republicans in the Florida State
Legislature would be like, well, we don't care. We're like,
we can just send the electors. We can just send
Bush electors anyway, That's what they were worried about. The
(31:05):
Republicans said, no, no, no, that's not why we're doing this, Like,
we're just trying to prevent a situation where, uh, the
recount doesn't end in time so that we can uh
send electors and and and have Florida count I don't know,
I don't know who was telling the truth. But the
crazy thing was the Gore side came up with their
(31:27):
own sort of Plan B where they would it.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Called plan It was called Plan X, thank you. It
was not planned BAT plan was their plan which X
yes exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Uh. Plan X involved sending a slate of Gore electors
to the state House in Florida. Uh. And the funny
part was that they basically realized that there were two
state houses in Florida that they could send electors to.
There was the new one and then there's the old
one and which.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Is now like a museum or like like a library.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
And so their their hope was like, okay, like, if
they're going to do this end run where they send
Bush electors to the Electoral College regardless of the vote
totals among you know, among the people who actually voted
in the election in Florida, well we're going to send
our own Gore electors and then there will be two
slates of electors. Anyway, none of this ever came to pass, obviously,
(32:25):
and we included this storyline almost as like a g whiz,
look at how crazy it got, or look how crazy
it could have gotten. I guess was sort of the
spirit in which we included these these what ifs. Then,
of course, in twenty twenty, you know this question of
which electors to send becomes very real, and suddenly you
(32:46):
realize that all these all these assumptions we have about
like how an individual person's vote will turn into consequences,
is all quite flimsy, and the rules can just be changed.
And if if someone like but Donald Trump can convince
(33:08):
the parties and elected officials in the state to send
electors to the Electoral College who don't represent the winner
of that state's election, then you know he can do that,
you know. And that didn't happen either, obviously, But I
don't know. Did the people who were involved in that scheme,
(33:29):
like take their cues from two thousand? I don't know,
But I think it's certainly true that among people who
paid attention, and certainly people who work in politics, like
the two thousand election I can safely say at least
should have been a wake up call regarding the power
of entities and individuals who you wouldn't think had that
(33:49):
much of it.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, there is the sense that on some level a
kind of blind faith in elections does depend on blindness
that the closer you look, the more you know about
the intricacies of the system, the harder it is to
have absolute confidence in the system, but totally there is
a moment I'm going to get this wrong, but you
(34:14):
I think Florida has sixty something counties and you're talking
about I think that's right, and you're talking about a
select few of them, and you sort of caveat it
by saying, this is our journalistic bias towards I think
the dramatic and the dysfunctional. So I suppose is a
kind of wrap up question. I'm curious about having spent
(34:38):
the last however long Slowburn's been abound eight years Slowburn Fiasco.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Not quite eight, I think six. We started in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Okay, but so you've you've spent the better part of
a decade, over over half a decade, looking very closely
and intricately at crises in our democracy. And yet there
is a kind of genuine warmth and empathy I think
in the series, even as it takes the consequences and
issues very seriously, you're you have of this. It feels
(35:12):
as if there is an underlying faith in the project,
or at least a hope in the potential for improving
this democracy. And I'm wondering, first if that's true, and
second if it is true what you think it is
that sustains that in your own tone, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
That it's true. I have to say, I think I'll
never forget. Like when we made season one of Slowburn
about the Nixon administration, we thought it was obvious that,
like the way we described, you know, the sort of
(35:52):
final beats of that story, we thought it was obvious
that it could have gone the other way and that
Nixon could have gotten away with it. And then I
think we were surprised, my colleagues and I that at
least some subset of our listeners were like, the system works.
Like Trump was, you know, in Mueller's cross hairs at
(36:14):
the time, and there was a real burning desire to
believe that he would be stopped one way or another.
And I think people took from the story of Nixon's
downfall that like, look, you know, the end of the day,
we have these systems and they work, Whereas my takeaway
from the Nixon story was like, could have easily not worked,
(36:36):
and the only reason it did was because of individuals who,
like really at great personal expense in many cases, like
stuck their necks out and insisted on doing things they
thought were right. So maybe if there if if there
(36:56):
is an underlying optimism in our in our work, maybe
that's where it comes from, is that there are there
is no shortage of people who do want to do
the right thing. I think we try to approach everyone
we interview and and and talk about in our history
shows with the presumption of good faith. We we we
(37:17):
we often say like we're interested in how people made decisions,
how they made mistakes, like how they processed the situations
they found themselves in when they did not have the
luxury of hindsight, when they only had incomplete information to
work off of. I think maybe that presupposes that if
(37:38):
everyone did have perfect information, they would all make perfect choices.
But really, I don't know. I think I think that
I think this season, in particular of Fiasco, as I
said before, really does I think put on display the
power of conscious or unconscious bias, like you just want
(37:58):
your guy to win, and that just warps how you
understand what's going on. And I do think like Catherine
Harris was being honest with me when she told me
that she just wanted to follow law and that she
did everything she could to count as many votes as
as as humanly possible. I believe that she believes that,
(38:21):
and I think we kind of take it as part
of our project to like document the ways in which
sometimes people make decisions based on delusions, right, people make
decisions based on not only in perfect information, but also
emotion and circumstance and errors in judgment. And I think,
(38:47):
I think the other thing that I've concluded, I suppose
over the course of these six years, is that you know,
the expression of the bunch of guys in a room
theory of history, where like you want to believe that
there's some logic and somecity know there's a plan or
at least a structure, a basic logic to like how
(39:13):
history unfolds, and that at least maybe things aren't inevitable,
but the things that happen had good reasons to happen.
And I think, and I think what I've learned over
the course of making all these shows is that oftentimes
things happen because individuals made them happen, and people make
things happen for all kinds of reasons, not all of
(39:35):
them honorable or based in reality.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, what is your sense of why people speak to
you for this season in particular, or for for the
shows well, and there's a few moments where people are
sort of like, you know, I was hesitating, and then
what is it that people are like, Wait, the show
is called Fiasco? What what do you think the FSCA
Catherine Harris. I think, specifically, if I'm remembering correctly, objects
to the title of the show.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, well, I'll never forget that. We you know, when
we were brainstorming what we should call our new show,
we had a bunch of ideas and Madeline Kaplan, who
had been an intern on Slowburn and came with us
to start what turned into Fiasca, came up with the
name Fiasco, and we were like immediately as soon as
she said it, we were like, that's it perfect, Like
so flexible, so catchy. And then we sat down to
(40:19):
write the first email to someone asking them for an
interview about the two thousand election, we were like, oh shit,
we're gonna have to every season we make, we're gonna
have to account for what it is we think the
Fiasco was exactly that's right, that's right. No, I think, Look,
I think people, why why people talk to us? Do
(40:41):
you think we're fair? I think, you know, even when
it's not like we we have like a you know,
capital O objective lens where we just say what happened,
and we don't editorialize, like we have a point of view.
We have analysis that that that people can agree or
disagree with. But I think in the end of the day,
(41:01):
like we do, we we do go into all of
our interviews trying to figure out like what the person
was thinking, like how they made their choices. And I
think even if some people that we've featured in fiasco,
you know, will there's a season on the Iran Contra
scandal where there's a bunch of people who made choices
people are will readily disagree with, I think you can
(41:24):
still feel that we did our best to try to
capture their motivations, and so, you know, I suppose some
of the people we approach for interviews do their homework
and listen to to to to a season or an
episode or two, and they maybe can hear that that's
what I'd like to think. I suppose the less flattering
(41:44):
to us explanation for why people talk is that people
like to talk, period, and they like to be asked
their opinion, and they like to be they like to
be involved. If someone's telling their story, and it's hard
to say no when someone's giving you the opportunity to
have some influence over how the story is told.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, thank you for sabbi my
to talk about this. Thank you for your great work.
It was really a pleasure to listen to. Thank you
so much. I'm very grateful for your questions. This episode
of the Last Archive was produced by Lucy Sullivan and
(42:25):
Amy Gaines McQuaid, mastering by Sarah Briguaire. You can listen
to the full Bush Vigor season of Fiasco over on
the Fiasco Feed. I'm Ben Outa Haaffrey. Thanks for listening.
Pushkin a last archive listeners. In the year two thousand,
Al Gore and George W. Bush faced off in a
presidential election that was too close to call. Eventually it
became a Supreme Court case which granted a victory to Bush. Today,
(00:37):
I'm talking to Leon Nafok, co, creator of the hit
podcasts Fiasco and Slowburn, about a series he did on
the dramatic month long battle that ensued after Election Day
two thousand. He made it a few years ago, but
Pushkin is now re releasing that series. In it, you'll
hear fly on the Wall, minute by minute accounts of
one of the most gripping and consequential legal battles in
(01:00):
American history, and on the eve of another US presidential
election that is likely to be tight, it all feels
eerily pression. You can listen to your ASCO's a whole
series on Bush Vigor over on the Fiasco Feed. Here's
our conversation. We're here to talk about your season on
the two thousand election Bush Gore, and I'm curious to
(01:23):
know how did the idea to do a season on
that election come about?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
So the honest answer is, we had produced these two
shows at Slate one on Watergate and one on the
Clinton impeachment, and so we sort of saw ourselves as
in this lane that we thought of as being about
political scandal. And so the two thousand elections struck us
(01:50):
as a story that sort of has all the drama
and all of the heightened emotions and twists and turns
of a great scandal, but it's something else. It was
this this this, this train barreling down a track that
(02:12):
no one was really in control of. I suppose that
is true about Watergate to some extent too, But I
think the two thousand elections, especially as we dove into it,
we started to see as a bunch of bureaucratic machines
kind of rolling on their own power and rolling into
(02:32):
each other and trying trying to run over each other.
And it was almost like disembodied in that way. Obviously
there were the two candidates UH facing off, and obviously
there were all of their lawyers and all of their aids,
but it really did seem like a system's story. And
I think that's what attracted to us in the in
the in the wake of Clinton.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I guess because in Watergate, someone still holds all the cards,
like there is somebody who knows the truth of what
happened in Watergate from the very beginning of that scandal,
whereas in this case, sort of even in the final analysis,
nobody really knows what happened in two thousand, Like who
the true winner is there? You run through different studies
at the end that suggests in a few cases gore one.
(03:15):
But it's this It is so perfect for a system
story because of that fundamental ambiguity that you tease out.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, and I think also like the one, I think
one of the pleasures of those first two seasons of
slowburn was kind of just forensically taking apart cause and
effect and trying to retrace like how things ended up
going the way they did. And with the two thousand election,
what we found pretty quickly is that the margin was
(03:44):
so narrow that any number of you know, sliding doors
could have gone the other way. To mix metaphors, I
think sliding doors really only go two ways. But but
you know, like there were just so many contingencies and
so many decisions that could have been made differently, so
many mistakes that could have been avoided, or so many
(04:10):
you know, potential arguments that could have been made that weren't.
In the first episode, we talk about the election itself
and like the campaign itself and everything that led up
to the recount, and even there you just see how
easily it could have gone differently. I think that was
attractive to us as students have cause and effect.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Well, so could you could you walk me through the
process of reporting this. You mentioned in one of your
bonus episodes that there's a kind of ten day long
reporting sprint in Florida, and I do love how sort
of you know, it's this It has these national and
global repercussions, but it is quite a provincial story and
really set in Florida. Could you just tell me about
(04:50):
those ten days and how you went about piecing this
story together.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, So we got so much done in those ten
days I sometimes dream of. I mean, it was really
it was really grueling and hard because we were trying
to do like two to three interviews a day. But
you know, we usually take between you know, a months
to a year to make these podcasts. But having like
a two week period or a ten day period whatever
(05:16):
it was where we just like crammed it all in.
It was really amazing. Once it was done. You know,
we planned it by just reaching out to everyone we
could who we knew was in Miami or Palm Beach
or Sarasota. And so there's a lot of driving, a
lot of staying in pretty gnarly hotels, and a lot
(05:40):
of cramming in the car. Like you know, we had
preps for all our interviews, but there was a lot
of like thinking on the fly because they were just
coming too fast and furious for us to really to
really plan everything meticulously as we like to do well.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
And it's a huge cast of characters, which is I
think that's one of the things I love, not just
about the season, but about all the seasons of the show.
You wrangle's there's such a strong spine to the story,
but then you have all of these people filling in
different pieces of it, And I'm wondering how you choose
your characters. If you interview I think you said sixty people,
there aren't six. There aren't sixty people in the show,
(06:18):
So I'm curious what your selection criteria is. And also
if going into your interviews you kind of know I'm
going to want this person. I know what structure our
episode on the courts or the media is going to
have I want this person to speak to this moment
or is that something that evolves after the fact.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
So obviously it depends a little bit. But the way
we like to do it in an ideal world where
we have a story that we have decided to take on,
where there you know, we've almost never done a podcast
about something that about which there's there is not already
like a shelf or ten of books and documentaries that
we can watch, and so a lot of our first
(06:56):
steps are absorbing everything that's been produced already, and you know,
taking leads from people that have been interviewed before, often
looking at contemporaneous coverage, you know, individuals who happened to
be quoted in a newspaper story who seem like they
might be interesting to follow up with. And we try
(07:18):
to outline episodes ahead of time, like before we've even
done much reporting, because you know, that's the luxury of
doing history right. You already know what happened, and you're
trying to find witnesses for every corner of it that
you're interested in. But I think you know, based on
who says yes, your emphasis ends up shifting. But it
(07:41):
definitely helps to know what we're interested in ahead of time,
but also obviously be for us to feel open to
pursuing avenues that we couldn't account for because we didn't
know who was going to agree to talk to us,
and we didn't know what they were going to say.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And your your second episode was one of my favorites
of the series. It's your media episode functionally about about
the early Call on Election Night two thousand, which is
this is a subject that is very near and dear
to the last archives heart, because we have ale episode
about the UNIVAC computer predicting the nineteen fifty two election,
and I'm curious, I had not really heard the story
(08:19):
of Voter News Service. I'm curious if you've seen much
reporting subsequently on how impactful the early call was in
shaping the outcome of the election. There's sort of there's
reference to voters in the Florida Panhandle possibly being discouraged
from voting. I've seen there's kind of conflicting evidence around
whether or not that actually made a difference. It seems
(08:41):
on principle, it's clear that we shouldn't be calling things
before we know an actual outcome. But I'm curious how
you think about the impact of that early call.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah. So I think in terms of setting the basic
dynamic of those thirty six days during which the recount unfolded,
the early call, well, I guess there's two early calls,
right that both turned not to have to be wrong.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
They get it wrong twice on an election.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, first Al is the winner in Florida, and then
it's Bush and then it's nobody. I think the fact
that it was Bush before it was nobody kind of
positioned him. And the fact that he had more votes
in so far as there was a vote count on
election night or the day after, he had more and
(09:29):
I think that just inherently created a dynamic where he
was protecting his victory and Gore was trying to challenge
it even though technically no one had won, and it
should have been you know, in some abstract way it
should have been even but I think, you know, narrative
is important and the overwhelming feeling, you know, I think
(09:51):
people probably remember, if they were around Sore, Luserman was
the joke. And I think that just directly stems from
the fact that Gore was in this unenviable position of
having to try to overturn a non result. In terms
of what you know, those folks that you mentioned who
might have turned around on their way to the polls
(10:12):
because they heard that Gore won. It's hard to say.
I think people, I mean, this whole season was you know,
a study and motivated reasoning. I think you just see
the partisans on both sides make more of the facts
that are advantageous to them than than than facts that
are not. But certainly, as someone you know, I remember
(10:34):
Catherine Harris, the Secretary of State who was overseeing the recount,
a Bush supporter who had campaigned for him, a Republican,
she was so certain that that all that all those
people who might have voted for Bush but turned around
because of the Gore call, you know, would have determined
(10:55):
the outcome. And by the same token, people are certain
that if the Palm Beach County ballot had been designed
differently and people hadn't accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan when
they meant to vote for or Al Gore, then there
would have been no recount at all, because Gore would
have been up by thousands of votes that seemed.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
To go it was like a three thousand or something
that he over performs by.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Which which is like such a small number. But actually
I remember I think realizing like three thousand sounds like
so many when you're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
These times the margin right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, and as you're hearing about the you know, the
day's long manual recounts that happen over the course of
those thirty six days, and okay, like they found twelve
Gore votes here, they found eight Bush votes here, and
it's like, wow, three thousand, yea, and this thing would
have been over before it started. So yeah, I think
your question was about the early calls you asked also
(11:55):
about new reporting. I will just take the opportunity to
shout out Slow Burn season ten, if you can believe
that there have been ten seasons now of the show
that we that we were lucky enough to start steady
It's right, hosted by Josh Levigne, who was our editor
on those first two seasons. He talked a lot of
the same folks that we did about the about Election
(12:15):
Night two thousand, including Murray Adelman, who was at Voter
News Service that you mentioned. Murray Aielman incredible character, such
like probably one of my favorite people we've ever interviewed,
because you know, especially in a story that's so full
of motivated reasoning. You could really trust him, and he
(12:35):
was so honest about the fact that his numbers had
been off in ways that he was heartbroken by.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah, he really lived with those consequences. You could tell
he was still feeling it.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, totally. And Voter News Service, for those who don't know, like,
it's a little bit hard to explain, and that's true
of a lot of aspects of this story. I remember
we were at some point We're like, damn, why did
we do this? This was so complicated. Ultimately, it was
a satisfying challenge to try to like wrestle down these
like hyper bureaucratic storylines that you know, many of which
(13:09):
take place in courtrooms or even you know, in judicial chambers,
to try to kind of like smooth them out into
a straight line and tell it like a story people
actually want to listen to. Was was definitely a challenge
in certain moments. But Voter News Service kind of hard
to explain what it is, but basically it's a service
(13:29):
that networks subscribe to and pay for. They own it,
They co own it. All these network all these news networks,
they co owned Voter News Service, and they relied on
their early polling results their analysis rather to decide whether
a state was ready to be called, and it was
Voter News Services numbers, you know that initially indicated a
(13:52):
core victory. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
You said that Murray Adelman from Voter News Service was
one of your favorite interviews, and indeed one of the
reasons that he sounds so trustworthy is because you can
tell that he feels the gravity of his contributing to
the early call. There is another interview in this series
with Catherine Harris, the then Secretary of State in Florida,
who ultimately certifies election results for Bush in the state
(14:39):
and is sort of a figure about whom there is
much debate. She seems in your interview with her, not
to feel so heavily the consequences of her own actions
in this and it seemed like in a series in
which you have kind of empathetic interviews with many different
(15:02):
people who are involved in the two thousand election, she
seems to be one of the few in which there
is actual misrepresentation, where there's actual conflict in your in
your in your interview with her, I was wondering if
you could talk a bit about the experience of interviewing
Catherine Harris and what you think the factor is in
her erroneously claiming that she had petitioned the Supreme Court
(15:24):
of Florida to do a manual recount in Florida, misremembering
other key details of what happened. What the factors in
that are.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, so she was a good representative view that we
heard a lot from people on both sides, which is
that we were just trying to follow the law, Like
this is nothing. This was not about winning or losing.
This was not about trying to, you know, get one
over on anyone. This was about following the law. The
law is dispassionate, the law is black on white, and
(15:55):
all all we were there to do was was make
sure that the law was followed, which I think is
a disingenuous argument. And I think and I get how
people arrive there because you know, for example, the Florida
Supreme Court, right like this is supposed to be in
a political institution, just like the US Supreme Court is
supposed to be an a political institution. But confronted with
the most partisan question that one can imagine, which is
(16:20):
did these people or these people win the election? It
gets really hard to maintain that facade, and I think,
you know, people's biases, people's desires for certain outcomes inevitably
can be felt in their decision making and even in
how they understand what's going on. I think with Catherine Harris,
(16:41):
what was interesting in that interview, you know, and I
should say, like, this interview took place almost twenty years
after the fact, right, so I don't hold it against
her that she didn't remember some details at all. We
assume people will not always remember every twist and turn.
But you know, the thing that really I remember kind
(17:02):
of caused me to kind of go into a little
bit more of an adversarial mode with her than I
usually ever take with interview subjects was that there was
a county, Palm Beach County, where they were doing a
manual recount. They had a certain amount of time. They
could have had more time if the Secretary of State's
office decided to be open and the Secretary of State's office
(17:27):
made the decision that gave them less time. Basically, they
the secretary of State's office, had a choice like we could
give them. We could interpret this ruling from the Florida
Supreme Court as saying we can give them x amount
of time, or we can interpret this ruling to mean
that we if we stay open, we can give them
a little more time. And they decided not to give
them a little more time. And what was stunning to
(17:50):
me was that Catherine Harris remembered as them having extent
having granted them more time, when in fact, like they
had made a very affirmative decision not to. And so
that just struck me as like either her trying to
spin facts in a dishonest way, or more likely like
(18:11):
she has a version of this in her head that
over twenty years has like warped her memory of her
decision making in such a way that makes her the
good guy, and that kind of erases a decision that
I think, to my eyes, was like very obviously counter
to the spirit of counting every vote you can, Like
(18:32):
she had an opportunity to give Palm Beach a little
more time when all they needed was a little more
time to complete their recount, she decided not to. And
so it was kind of amazing to hear her say no, no, no, no,
we actually gave them more time, Like we gave them
more time, and so I yeah, I think at that moment,
I pushed back, and then she pushed back on me,
and you know, you sort of hear her get defensive
(18:55):
as I try to kind of like tell her what
I know to be the facts and the reason we
included it was not to like gotcha her or to
like make her sound like she didn't know what she
was talking about, because I do think motivated reasoning and
motivated memory is just like this whole story here and
so many different arenas, you had people who were supposed
to be a political and neutral and without a dog
(19:19):
in the race, so combing to their own biases in
a totally natural way, but in a way that I
think is real and and and powers a lot of history.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, well you also have there's this intentiveness across the
season to how the media narrative that was emerging around
the election is actually shaping these kind of a political
non part or supposedly non partisan actors choices. And I
think one place where you do see that where there
is a lot of empathy and justifiably so for Catherine Harris,
is you hear how wounded she is still by the
(19:58):
very sexist and sort of cruel jokes that are made
at her expense when she is elevated to fame through
the election and then becomes a laughing stock at least
in like the late night media s good and and
it's it seems plausibly like part of what would lead
to embattled or at least motivated decision making in that process.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Totally. Yeah, she knew who was who was making fun
of her. She knew that people were dismissing her both
as like an intellectual lightweight but also as a as
a partisan hack. And you know that gets that that
we'll get anyone's back up, right.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, I was. I was curious to sort of along
similar lines in terms of how like a median narrative
can shape what happened in the election. To what extent
do you think al Gore's relative passivity or more He's
very much an institutionalist, Like he he certifies his own defeat,
(20:57):
He instructs his campaign not to criticize the Supreme Court
in the United States after the ruling that that winds
up giving the election to Bush, and he he calls
off Jesse Jack And when he's campaigning very aggressively for him,
there's this whole there's this sense that al Gore really
wishes to appear presidential, and I was curious to what
(21:18):
extent that version of Al Gore took the wheel because
of the sense that he had been part of for
eight years an administration that had been accused of of
being unpresidential or disgracing the office of the presidency in
some way, How do you account for his decision making
and what role do you think that plays in it?
If any so.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I remember ron Klain got really angry at me after
he heard the show, or at least some of the show.
I don't know if he listened to the whole thing.
Ron Klain was was was Al Gore's top aid or
I don't know if that's literally his title, but he was.
He was one of the top advisors to Gore during
this period. And his anger, as I recall, was was
(22:02):
based on the on his sense that I had kind
of swallowed uncritically the snare of Gore as a wishy,
washy and kind of naively institutionalist actor who didn't really
want to win enough, who wasn't willing to do what
(22:23):
it took to win. And I wish that we have
been able to talk about exactly what he thinks really
happened and what he thinks the consequences were of Gore's
I think undeniably restrained behavior during those thirty six days.
I mean, you can argue about whether they fought hard enough,
(22:46):
but I think no one would dispute, including I assume
ron Klain, that Gore was not trying to stir emotion
in his supporters. He was not trying to influenced news
coverage in an aggressive kind of like mercenary way to
try to shift the reality on the ground. You know,
(23:09):
the thing that happened at the very end of the
story where the Supreme Court halts the recount, you know,
and Gore says to his team, like, just don't want
anyone to trash the Supreme Court over this. I think
it speaks volumes. I think both in a good way
and that it's like, here was a guy who really
took seriously the idea that the Supreme Court had a
(23:31):
reputation that was important to the country as an a
political institution, and that we shouldn't just because we think
they've acted in a way that was you know, biased
or even dishonest, Like we shouldn't say that because it
would be bad for the country. I think that's like
(23:51):
putting a positive spin on his on what you could
also describe as a kind of unwillingness to fight like
your life depended on it. People I think criticize the
Democrats and have always criticized the Democrats for not wanting
it enough or not being aggressive enough. And I think
(24:14):
we have a line in the show maybe this was
what ron Klain was mad about, that Gore was worried
about not looking like a hypocrite, whereas the Bush folks
were worried about winning. I think it mattered to Gore
that the positions they took during those thirty six days
were internally consistent, and so I think throughout the Gore campaign,
(24:36):
I don't think it was limited to Gore. There was
just like a perception that they were more invested in
being good than being victorious.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I mean, it strikes me that this election obviously listening
to this season now after the twenty twenty election in
you know, with one month less than a month ago
before what is certain to be a very tight election,
another tight US election presidential election, it's interesting to on
(25:10):
two thousand as a moment where the machinery, the electoral
machinery of this country was really and extremely granularly on
display this question of postmarks on absentee ballots hanging Chad.
I think one of my favorite details of the entire
show is that the plural of Chad is Chad, which
is really absurd. It's like, you, there is no other
(25:33):
way you could add like an additional layer of absurdity
to what is our very absurd situation. But I'm curious
what the effect of all of this was in your
view that I think now of twenty twenty as having
elevated all of these small state level offices that people
didn't think about, and the secretaries of state. How many
people really would have known what a secretary of state
(25:54):
did before twenty twenty in this country, And yet here
in two thousand we have a national figure made out
of Catherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State. And I'm
just curious to know, in your view, if it changed
anything about either our faith in the electoral machinery or
in how elections actually were run. Was it or was
(26:15):
it all like the Supreme Court decision non presidential.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So so yeah, so So The short answer is, I
don't know. Slightly longer answers, I think that it really
changed how people saw the Supreme Court. I think like
the prevailing conventional wisdom, or at least in certain certain
circles now, is that the Supreme Court is a political institution,
and it clearly is a body of political actors who
(26:41):
are pursuing ideological ends in their reasoning. I think that
starts with Bush v. Gore. I think the sort of
disillusionment with the Court, I think it hasn't didn't reach
a fever pitch to the extent that it has until
you know, the past few years, I would say, but
(27:03):
especially looking back, it's like this was this was the
thing that shattered. I think a lot of people's illusions
about the Court as far as like uh revealing the
disproportionately consequential roles played by these tiny bureaucracies that that
that that are different from state to state, that or
even county to county, where you have individuals like Teresa
(27:28):
Lapoor who uh was responsible.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
For the butterfly ballot, right for.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
The butterfly ballot, Yeah, thank you. The fact that these
people can have such a can make such a huge difference,
I think was probably pretty shocking, and I think it
was shocking to them to be turned into national figures.
One of my favorite lines that I heard on my
as I was re listening recently was it wasn't, unfortunately
(27:53):
a line that anyone said to me. It was Teresa Laport,
who declined to be interviewed for our podcast, said to
I believe it was the Saint Petersburg Times. She said,
you know they were. They were writing about her role
in the butterfly ballot fiasco intended and she said something like,
you want my blood here, take it to me her.
(28:14):
He heard her anguish in that moment is at least
partly informed by like this should not be my fault,
like this, this is this. We should not have a
system where this this can be my fault.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
When she was trying to accommodate a change in the
law to how many third party candidates.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
It's exactly yes. Uh so, I think did people on
you know who work for political campaigns learn lessons from
two thousand about the power of these local offices and
the power of these elected positions that can be held
by Republicans or Democrats. I'm sure yes. But the reason
(28:53):
I said, the short answer to your question is I
don't know, is we just didn't do a ton of
reporting on how people like applied to the lessons of
this uh of this fiasco in coming elections. I do think,
you know, when we made the show, originally there was
one part of it that seemed like total science fiction,
(29:14):
but now looking back on twenty twenty, I see as
anything but which had to do with the slates of
electors that states send to officially throw a state's support
behind one candidate or the other. So the Republicans in
the Florida State Legislature on the stated basis that it
(29:38):
seemed possible that with all this recounting going on, they
would actually run out of time and the states electors
wouldn't even get to cast their votes, that none of
Florida's electoral votes would be counted in the final tally.
They kind of came up with a backup plan the
Florida State Legislature. The Republicans in the Florida State Legislature
(30:00):
came up with this backup plan where they would change
the law such that they had the unilateral power to
decide who those electors would be, so they would be
able to send Bush electors to the Electoral College to
basically give Bush the state independent of what the vote
count was, you know, seems obvious of course, like the
(30:23):
state's electors have to you send the electors that represent
the will of the people in the state. The Republicans
and the Florida State Legislature were like, what if we
decided which electors to send? And the Gore team saw
this as like a potential end run around the will
of the Florida voters, and they were worried that if
(30:45):
you know, the recounts went their way and it turned
out that Gore was ahead and the election could be
certified for Gore, that these Republicans in the Florida State
Legislature would be like, well, we don't care. We're like,
we can just send the electors. We can just send
Bush electors anyway, That's what they were worried about. The
(31:05):
Republicans said, no, no, no, that's not why we're doing this, Like,
we're just trying to prevent a situation where, uh, the
recount doesn't end in time so that we can uh
send electors and and and have Florida count I don't know,
I don't know who was telling the truth. But the
crazy thing was the Gore side came up with their
(31:27):
own sort of Plan B where they would it.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Called plan It was called Plan X, thank you. It
was not planned BAT plan was their plan which X
yes exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Uh. Plan X involved sending a slate of Gore electors
to the state House in Florida. Uh. And the funny
part was that they basically realized that there were two
state houses in Florida that they could send electors to.
There was the new one and then there's the old
one and which.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Is now like a museum or like like a library.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
And so their their hope was like, okay, like, if
they're going to do this end run where they send
Bush electors to the Electoral College regardless of the vote
totals among you know, among the people who actually voted
in the election in Florida, well we're going to send
our own Gore electors and then there will be two
slates of electors. Anyway, none of this ever came to pass, obviously,
(32:25):
and we included this storyline almost as like a g whiz,
look at how crazy it got, or look how crazy
it could have gotten. I guess was sort of the
spirit in which we included these these what ifs. Then,
of course, in twenty twenty, you know this question of
which electors to send becomes very real, and suddenly you
(32:46):
realize that all these all these assumptions we have about
like how an individual person's vote will turn into consequences,
is all quite flimsy, and the rules can just be changed.
And if if someone like but Donald Trump can convince
(33:08):
the parties and elected officials in the state to send
electors to the Electoral College who don't represent the winner
of that state's election, then you know he can do that,
you know. And that didn't happen either, obviously, But I
don't know. Did the people who were involved in that scheme,
(33:29):
like take their cues from two thousand? I don't know,
But I think it's certainly true that among people who
paid attention, and certainly people who work in politics, like
the two thousand election I can safely say at least
should have been a wake up call regarding the power
of entities and individuals who you wouldn't think had that
(33:49):
much of it.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, there is the sense that on some level a
kind of blind faith in elections does depend on blindness
that the closer you look, the more you know about
the intricacies of the system, the harder it is to
have absolute confidence in the system, but totally there is
a moment I'm going to get this wrong, but you
(34:14):
I think Florida has sixty something counties and you're talking
about I think that's right, and you're talking about a
select few of them, and you sort of caveat it
by saying, this is our journalistic bias towards I think
the dramatic and the dysfunctional. So I suppose is a
kind of wrap up question. I'm curious about having spent
(34:38):
the last however long Slowburn's been abound eight years Slowburn Fiasco.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Not quite eight, I think six. We started in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Okay, but so you've you've spent the better part of
a decade, over over half a decade, looking very closely
and intricately at crises in our democracy. And yet there
is a kind of genuine warmth and empathy I think
in the series, even as it takes the consequences and
issues very seriously, you're you have of this. It feels
(35:12):
as if there is an underlying faith in the project,
or at least a hope in the potential for improving
this democracy. And I'm wondering, first if that's true, and
second if it is true what you think it is
that sustains that in your own tone, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
That it's true. I have to say, I think I'll
never forget. Like when we made season one of Slowburn
about the Nixon administration, we thought it was obvious that,
like the way we described, you know, the sort of
(35:52):
final beats of that story, we thought it was obvious
that it could have gone the other way and that
Nixon could have gotten away with it. And then I
think we were surprised, my colleagues and I that at
least some subset of our listeners were like, the system works.
Like Trump was, you know, in Mueller's cross hairs at
(36:14):
the time, and there was a real burning desire to
believe that he would be stopped one way or another.
And I think people took from the story of Nixon's
downfall that like, look, you know, the end of the day,
we have these systems and they work, Whereas my takeaway
from the Nixon story was like, could have easily not worked,
(36:36):
and the only reason it did was because of individuals who,
like really at great personal expense in many cases, like
stuck their necks out and insisted on doing things they
thought were right. So maybe if there if if there
(36:56):
is an underlying optimism in our in our work, maybe
that's where it comes from, is that there are there
is no shortage of people who do want to do
the right thing. I think we try to approach everyone
we interview and and and talk about in our history
shows with the presumption of good faith. We we we
(37:17):
we often say like we're interested in how people made decisions,
how they made mistakes, like how they processed the situations
they found themselves in when they did not have the
luxury of hindsight, when they only had incomplete information to
work off of. I think maybe that presupposes that if
(37:38):
everyone did have perfect information, they would all make perfect choices.
But really, I don't know. I think I think that
I think this season, in particular of Fiasco, as I
said before, really does I think put on display the
power of conscious or unconscious bias, like you just want
(37:58):
your guy to win, and that just warps how you
understand what's going on. And I do think like Catherine
Harris was being honest with me when she told me
that she just wanted to follow law and that she
did everything she could to count as many votes as
as as humanly possible. I believe that she believes that,
(38:21):
and I think we kind of take it as part
of our project to like document the ways in which
sometimes people make decisions based on delusions, right, people make
decisions based on not only in perfect information, but also
emotion and circumstance and errors in judgment. And I think,
(38:47):
I think the other thing that I've concluded, I suppose
over the course of these six years, is that you know,
the expression of the bunch of guys in a room
theory of history, where like you want to believe that
there's some logic and somecity know there's a plan or
at least a structure, a basic logic to like how
(39:13):
history unfolds, and that at least maybe things aren't inevitable,
but the things that happen had good reasons to happen.
And I think, and I think what I've learned over
the course of making all these shows is that oftentimes
things happen because individuals made them happen, and people make
things happen for all kinds of reasons, not all of
(39:35):
them honorable or based in reality.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, what is your sense of why people speak to
you for this season in particular, or for for the
shows well, and there's a few moments where people are
sort of like, you know, I was hesitating, and then
what is it that people are like, Wait, the show
is called Fiasco? What what do you think the FSCA
Catherine Harris. I think, specifically, if I'm remembering correctly, objects
to the title of the show.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, well, I'll never forget that. We you know, when
we were brainstorming what we should call our new show,
we had a bunch of ideas and Madeline Kaplan, who
had been an intern on Slowburn and came with us
to start what turned into Fiasca, came up with the
name Fiasco, and we were like immediately as soon as
she said it, we were like, that's it perfect, Like
so flexible, so catchy. And then we sat down to
(40:19):
write the first email to someone asking them for an
interview about the two thousand election, we were like, oh shit,
we're gonna have to every season we make, we're gonna
have to account for what it is we think the
Fiasco was exactly that's right, that's right. No, I think, Look,
I think people, why why people talk to us? Do
(40:41):
you think we're fair? I think, you know, even when
it's not like we we have like a you know,
capital O objective lens where we just say what happened,
and we don't editorialize, like we have a point of view.
We have analysis that that that people can agree or
disagree with. But I think in the end of the day,
(41:01):
like we do, we we do go into all of
our interviews trying to figure out like what the person
was thinking, like how they made their choices. And I
think even if some people that we've featured in fiasco,
you know, will there's a season on the Iran Contra
scandal where there's a bunch of people who made choices
people are will readily disagree with, I think you can
(41:24):
still feel that we did our best to try to
capture their motivations, and so, you know, I suppose some
of the people we approach for interviews do their homework
and listen to to to to a season or an
episode or two, and they maybe can hear that that's
what I'd like to think. I suppose the less flattering
(41:44):
to us explanation for why people talk is that people
like to talk, period, and they like to be asked
their opinion, and they like to be they like to
be involved. If someone's telling their story, and it's hard
to say no when someone's giving you the opportunity to
have some influence over how the story is told.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, thank you for sabbi my
to talk about this. Thank you for your great work.
It was really a pleasure to listen to. Thank you
so much. I'm very grateful for your questions. This episode
of the Last Archive was produced by Lucy Sullivan and
(42:25):
Amy Gaines McQuaid, mastering by Sarah Briguaire. You can listen
to the full Bush Vigor season of Fiasco over on
the Fiasco Feed. I'm Ben Outa Haaffrey. Thanks for listening.
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