Global

They'd rather die than admit it, but environmental organizations thrive on disaster. They remember well enough what happened when Ronald Reagan installed James Watt as Secretary of the Interior. Hardly had Watt hung his elk head on his office wall before the big green outfits were churning out mailers painting doomsday scenarios of national parks handed over to the oil companies, the Rocky Mountains stripped for oil shale, the national forests clear-cut from end to end.

By the time the incompetent Watt had been forced to resign, the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wilderness Society and the National Wildlife Federation had raised tens of millions of dollars and recruited hundreds of thousands of new members. All this money transformed the environmental movement from a largely grass-roots network into an inside-the-beltway operation powered by political operators in Washington D.C.

AUSTIN, Texas -- For those in favor of having this argument like grown-ups, some history may be helpful.

The punch-card voting system has been a consistent election problem for the last 30 years. About 37 percent of Americans still vote on the rickety little plastic tables, punching holes in cards. (Those present at the dawn of the computer era will recall the old "Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate" cards, but you'll have to explain them to your children.)

The cards are then run through machines that are notoriously error-prone -- and, as writer Ronnie Dugger has been pointing out for years, also highly susceptible to manipulation.

None of this is new information, nor has it appeared only after this close election. Dugger wrote a long article for the Nov. 7, 1988, issue of The New Yorker about the potential for fraud and the many proofs of error by this early, proto-computer voting system. The 1988 article contained, among other information, a detailed description of how to rig a Votomatic counting machine.

Many pundits are worried about the delay in finding out who will become the next occupant of the Oval Office. "That's probably the most crippling blow I've ever seen to a new president," David Gergen lamented on national television. Whoever the next chief executive turns out to be, he has "been denied or robbed of the romance that we have that we associate with the selection of a new president, the crowning of a new president."

For decades, Gergen has spun through the revolving door between government and media elites, working as an image-crafter for presidents and as a commentator for major news organizations. He understands vital dynamics of propaganda. So, it's no surprise that Gergen sounded distraught the other night when he declared: "There's always been an anointment process as we lift that figure up and put him up on a pedestal. There's no pedestal with this election."

Exactly this time a year ago, a truly prescient person monitoring bus, car and plane traffic into the city of Seattle could have predicted that Al Gore's presidential bid faced serious trouble on its left. The mostly young people pouring up Interstate 5 from Oregon and California and other states were the green street warriors who had managed by Nov. 30 to paralyze downtown Seattle and shut down the opening ceremonies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference. And these same young people made up the core organizers of Ralph Nader's Green Party candidacy, which denied Al Gore the crucial margin in Florida and New Hampshire.

As the WTO delegates abandoned Seattle in defeat at the end of that tumultuous week last December, many on the left hailed the coming of age of a new coalition. Among its supposed components: the militant greens in the form of Earth First!, Rainforest Action and Direct Action Network; more mainstream green groups such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth; Ralph Nader's citizen's trade campaign; labor's legions mustered in Seattle under the banners of the AFL-CIO.

AUSTIN, Texas -- In our continuing study of PBBUPs (People Behaving Badly Under Pressure), we are witnessing some outstanding performances -- and names are being written down. Many prominent citizens are about to lose their certification as adults. Psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists are all taking notes madly as the Bad Behavior Fiesta Bowl continues.

Here's an interesting example of how a D came to lose it completely because an R had only a loose grip. The Republican in question was Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, normally a placid fellow, who was on a Sunday chat show defending his team. They had arrived at the sore subject of the Republican riot at the Dade County Courthouse. (Let it be noted that this has not been certified as a riot -- so far, all we have is the appearance of a riot by some seriously hyperventilating Republicans.)

Keating suddenly blurted out that everything was fine until "the 27-inch-neck crowd" from Chicago showed up and convinced the commissioners to recount.

Five fine specimens of Meleagris gallopavo (wild turkey to you) wandered onto my property here in Humboldt county, northern California, a few days ago. I assume they forgot to check the California Fish and Game calendar which permits a two week window for wild turkey hunters before Thanksgiving. Out came my 12-gauge, and I loosed off a shot, which at some 100 feet did no discernible damage, and after a brief bout of what-the-hell-was-that, the turkeys continued to forage. A fusillade of two more shots finally brought down a 14-pounder. I hung him for four days, plucked him, and by Thanksgiving's end, he'll be history. This was all easier than sporting manuals suggest, where hunters take enormous trouble to decoy the turkeys with fake gobbles.

Wild turkeys haven't been seen in California since the Cenozoic era, but in recent years, two ranchers in my valley imported a few, and now they've begun to appear in our neighborhood in substantial numbers. I've heard reports of flocks of up to a 100 wild turkeys 15 miles up the Mattole river around Honeydew, an impressive quantity, though still far short of the 1,000 birds counted in one day by two hunters in New England in 1630.

After a decade filled with round-the-clock media sensations, we finally ended up with one that's truly portentous. The post-election battle for the White House has stood in sharp contrast to countless ersatz stories that gained enormous coverage during the 1990s. The warfare between Al Gore and George W. Bush is certainly historic -- but this partisan version of a demolition derby may not be as profound as we think.

The sizzling media fixations of yesteryear now seem notably trivial. In retrospect, how would you rank the conflict between skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan? All the obsessive and protracted O.J.-mania? The cable-TV-driven frenzy over little Elian?

After such breathless stories, the network anchors have been proud to report on the truly weighty spectacle of Gore and Bush operatives going all-out. But ironically, the "better" this story got -- the more that Democrats and Republicans clashed, litigated and spun at a frenetic pace -- the farther it moved from the essence of political leverage in America.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I'd say Jebbie Bush has a problem. Not that he didn't have one before, but now he is in a dill pickle.

The R's best strategy at this point is to make the hand recount process into the zoo that they have been claiming it is for two weeks. Chaos! Unleash the dogs of war! Contest every ballot! Foul it up past the deadline! Protest every dimpled, preggers, hanging, swinging, light-shining-through chad in the entire bunch!

Scream, yell and threaten myocardial infarction over any chad that lands on the floor, on the grounds that it clearly constitutes electoral fraud -- and besides, someone might eat it!

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's problem with this strategy is that it would rather clearly indicate that his state is so loopy that it can't conduct a simple hand recount. This whole thing is a public relations disaster for Florida, which has now eclipsed, temporarily, both Texas and California as the most bonkers place in the nation.

Over the past eight years, Environmental Protection Agency director Carol Browner has visited Chicago more than a dozen times. Each time she comes to the Windy City, Browner has requested that Ronald Harris, an EPA staffer at the Region 5 headquarters, serve as her driver and gofer. At first, Harris felt honored. But then he began to wonder if he wasn't being singled out for malign reasons. Harris is black.

When confronted by these problems, Carol Browner shrugged as if to say 'What's the big deal?' "I look forward to going to Chicago so that Mr. Harris can drive me," Browner testified at an Oct. 4 hearing before the House Committee on Science, which was investigating charges of whistle-blower abuse inside the federal government. The big deal is that racism appears to be running rampant throughout Browner's agency, and she has done nothing to stem it.

AUSTIN, Texas -- OK, everybody, you know the law. If you don't vote, you can't complain. So get out and do it.

Voting whitens your teeth and sweetens your breath, and people who vote have better sex lives. This has been extensively studied, and all the researchers agree. However, there are also new studies strongly suggesting a causal link between voting and weight loss. Yes, going to the polls is more effective than dieting.

Besides, this thing is tighter than a tick -- I mean, your vote COULD make the difference. Honest to Pete, this is historic.

You may wonder why I am trying to inveigle you into participating in what we laughingly refer to as the democratic process. I know all the arguments against it. Don't vote -- it only encourages them. If the gods had meant for people to vote, they would have given us candidates. What is this geekfest? They're all lying. If I actually vote for one of them, won't I be responsible for what happens?

In regard to that last question, the answer is "no" -- you can only be held legally responsible for the government of the United States if you DON'T vote.