normalcy, and as his team huddled inside it soon became clear that not everyone was in a take-no-prisoners mood. somebody came over to me and said senator, you re a young man with a great future, and so is al gore, and i just urge you to look at decisions that we have to make in that light. don t be a sore loser. yeah, and i was shocked, i must say, by that reaction. image was key during the recount, and each man stayed true to form. bush differed from gore significantly pause what bush did was to pass the responsibility and authority to me. they were going through the charade of having the transiion and cheney was out there meeting with people and probably picking the cabinet. gore, meanwhile, maced every detail of the fight.
not continue. it was over and bush had won. news that would soon reach republican headquarters in tallahassee. we got a heads up call about ten minutes beforehand that said the opinion is coming. watch your fax machine. fax machine? fax machine. i got a call from austin from governor bush. and i answered the call and said congratulations, mr. president elect. we gathered everybody together. to the next president of the united states. everybody fought really hard. they had done an incredible job with an incredible setting. and precisely the outcome we had hoped for. you re still emotional. i m still emotional, sure. it was just moments of pure of pure joy. or devastation if you worked for al gore. i got on the phone with vice president gore and started to
it s after 3:00 in the morning on november 8th, 2000. the war memorial in nashville, tennessee. vice president al gore is inside getting ready to publicly concede the presidential election to george w. bush. it was total chaos as we were trying to get into the war memorial pouring rain and the vice president and leishman s family and that whole group had gone in and the secret service and police, everyone was on it. and i got on the phone with bill daly, and he said what s up, mike? i said billy, we haven t lost this. thing is going to be an automatic recampus. this is too close to call. saw my life flashing in front of me and kind of break out in a sweat saying oh, my god, what do we do here in. that s when he contacted david morehouse. everything was ringing at once and vibrating. told him grab the vice president, get him in a holding room with joe leishman. don t let everybody go out. everybody freeze. michael feldman was trying to
in accordance with the laws of the state of florida, i hereby declare governor george w. bush the winner of florida s 25 electoral votes for the president of the united states. good evening. the margin, 537 votes. secretary cheney and i are honored and humbled to have won the state of florida which gives us the needed electoral votes to win the election. and lieberman fired back. this evening the secretary of state of florida has decided to certify what by any reasonable standard is an incomplete and inaccurate count of the votes cast in the state of florida. part of why i went out clearly was to say to the public, this ain t over yet, you know. it ain t over till it s over. gore got more. and it wasn t over, just halftime.
the democrats went to the friendly state supreme court and won big. the circuit court shall order a manual recount of all undervotes. not only did the court deny bush s victory in florida, but it also ordered a new statewide recount of disputed ballots. good morning. advantage, gore. did you believe at that point at all that you might win? yes. yes. yes. why? because we had more votes. we just needed to get them counted. vice president s residence on friday night was a party. everybody was thrilled about the victory in the florida supreme court because we felt that it was the preface to a victory overall because it would give us the recount we wanted. but there was no joy in bushville. excruciating, just excruciating. i just remember thinking it just