Op-Ed

AUSTIN, Texas -- Traditionally, when one bids adieu to the year just past, a tone of cynical good-riddance to 12 sorry months is da rigor, as they say in Lubbock.

Well, forget tradition. I say 2000 was a glorious political year from start to finish and can think of few years more packed with delight than the one we have just skinned through. Here's to Y2K, arguably the beginning of the new millennium and inarguably a mighty fine start on something, whatever it was.

Here's to the National Egg On Your Face, How Wrong Can You Be, How Many Times Can You Be That Wrong, Let's Go On Television and Make Fools of Ourselves Year-Long Pundit Pratfall!

From Who's-John-McCain to who won Florida, the most striking feature of the political year was the evitability of George W. Bush.

All the king's horses, all the king's men and all the Republican money in the country could barely drag the poor guy across the finish line. Special thanks to Jeff Greenfield of CNN for having the common sense to observe at several points, "None of us has any idea what's going to happen now."

AUSTIN, Texas -- Goodness, someone has left some nasty little lumps of coal in our stockings. Fortunately, someone else put in a few nice, shiny toys.

Look at this lousy lump. Just before it left town last week, Congress passed a little horror called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, brought to us courtesy of heavy lobbying by Wall Street banks and investment brokers.

Frank Portnoy, writing in The New York Times, describes the bill thusly: "First, it lifts a long-standing ban on futures trading in individual stocks, thus allowing investors to buy shares through brokers with very little money down. Second, it protects a lucrative business for bankers -- the private financial contracts known as swaps -- from being regulated. ... Investors are affected by swaps because they are ... used by many mutual funds and publicly traded companies."

As usual, the competition for P.U.-litzers has been fierce.

For the ninth year in a row, I have worked with Jeff Cohen of the media watch group FAIR to sift through the many entries for the annual award that pays tribute to this nation's stinkiest media performances.

And now, the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2000:

* SWALLOW THE MONEY PRIZE -- Barbara Walters and ABC

The panel on "The View" program broke into a chorus of the "M'm M'm good" jingle when Walters asked, "Didn't we grow up eating Campbell's soup?" It was all according to plan. In November, blurring the line between programming and advertising, parts of eight episodes of ABC's daytime chat show became paid infomercials for Campbell's. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Walters and her panel agreed to "try to weave a soup message into their regular on-air banter." An ABC News executive defended the hucksterism of Walters, a news personality, by saying that "The View" is an entertainment show and that "people wear many hats."

* COOL YOUR JETS AWARD -- New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post

AUSTIN, Texas -- Procrastinators of the world, unite! Be it resolved that we will be found from now until quite late on Christmas Eve solving all our Christmas shopping problems at the best one-stop shop in town, the bookstore -- preferably a local bookstore.

I firmly believe it is well worth going out of one's way to shop at an independent bookstore. The importance of independent bookstores to a healthy culture is not to be overestimated, but if an independent is not available, all the chains now have fancy coffee.

Then, of course, for the eternal procrastinator comes the problem of having bought a book for a loved one in Alaska two days before Christmas. You can always take them and dump them at one of those places that specializes in shipping things -- this costs only a small fortune -- but I believe the better part of valor is to carefully train your loved ones never to expect anything before Valentine's Day. This adds a piquant element of surprise to their dull February days.

AUSTIN -- All right, we've got W. off to Washington at long last, and here we are, stuck with Gov. Rick Perry.

I realize President-elect Bush is pushing the unlikely notion that what the nation needs is for Congress to become more like the Texas Legislature -- a thought so alarming I can only fall back gasping -- but in truth our very own dreaded Legislature is almost upon us. Jan. 9 and they'll all be here, leaving many a village without its idiot.

As a matter of politeness and patriotism, all Texans are obliged fall in line and wish our new governor the best of luck, which I cordially do, and besides, I have been pointing out for years that he has good hair. Really, really good hair.

But don't expect me to forget that he went to A&M to become a veterinarian and had to change his major when his grades weren't good enough. Besides, he's part of the Cheerleader Conspiracy running rampant in Republican circles. Otherwise, he's an amiable fellow.

But as we all know, who is governor is not a matter of great moment in our state -- the important question is who will be the next lieutenant governor. And we have a number of interesting candidates.

Is the next presidency going to be legitimate?

This question now hovers over George W. Bush. Made possible by a bare majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, his triumph is lawful -- but many Americans see it as illegitimate. Bush can look forward to wielding enormous legal power. But his moral authority is another matter.

While eagerly claiming the title of president-elect, Bush faces a huge "legitimacy gap." Its magnitude and duration remain to be seen. For much of America, his Inauguration Day seems likely to ring hollow.

Right now, this crisis of legitimacy is somewhat befuddling for large numbers of reporters and commentators. Some political journalists are indicating a sense of disorientation. And it's by no means certain how quickly or fully they'll revert to the usual media reverence for an incoming president.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. -- Memo To Democrats Only:

Nikolaevich Tolstoy once wrote a short story titled "God Sees the Truth, But Waits."

I suggest we nurse this grudge very carefully.

It is clear to me, as an admittedly partisan Democrat, that Al Gore carried the state of Florida on Election Day by somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 votes.

Understand that I am perfectly comfortable with the idea that the guy who actually gets the most votes does not necessarily win the election. Fine, dem's da rules. But in all honesty, I not only think the Republicans stole this, I think they know they stole it.

On the whole, I think it's better this way. For one thing, I think there are so many immature jerks in their party that they clearly had a hard time admitting it was just one helluva close election and the smart thing to do was count the votes carefully. Determined to be more self-righteous, more outraged than thou, no matter what.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Hard to know what to do about the Middle East, although indicting Ariel Sharon for treason might be useful. And listening to presidential debates just makes one want to sigh. Al Gore: There are 1.4 million children in Texas without health insurance. George W. Bush: "If he's trying to allege that I'm a hard-hearted person and I don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong."

Sigh.

So let's consider some interesting stuff about the stock market. Stock options in high-tech companies, you may have heard tell, have created tons of new millionaires and are a splendid means of motivating employees. They also have this nice side benefit: They can cut a company's federal income tax to zero.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that Cisco Systems, Siebel Systems Inc. and America Online paid no federal income taxes in their latest fiscal year, the entire tax bill having been wiped out by tax benefits from issuing options to employees. The pattern is consistent across the high-tech spectrum, with Microsoft Inc., among others, getting a huge tax reduction. Cisco wiped out what would have been a $1.68 billion federal tax bill.

One of the great paradoxes of modern journalism is that unusual and extraordinary events seem to be the most newsworthy -- but in the long run, key realities of our lives are shaped by what's usual and ordinary.

The news coverage filling our screens is routinely the product of haste, with little exploration beyond the surface. Generally, the sizzle of the moment prevails -- which is understandable, since novelties tend to be more captivating than chronic situations. But over time, barraged with accounts of the atypical, our society can easily lose sight of what matters most.

"When a dog bites a man, that's not news, because it happens so often," journalist John Bogart commented many decades ago. "But if a man bites a dog, that is news." This assumption is apt to sound like common sense. It's certainly common -- but is it really sensible? After all, we have much more reason to be concerned about dogs biting people than the other way around.

If something happens all the time, it's unlikely to be "news" -- but it ultimately may be far more significant than the latest sensation.

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.