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