Burning the Village in Order to Save It. The real crisis for the American electoral process is not the closeness of the election, not the delay in ascertaining the legitimate winner, not the court wrangling over recount deadlines or methods, but the Republican poisoning of the well.

In the last few days the Bush partisans have resorted to an extreme tactic:
forcefully asserting that the Gore camp is trying to “steal” the election. The
charge was replayed all over the media this weekend, and especially on the
more sensational and hyperventalating cable news networks that must stoke
the fires continuously (if only because they burn twenty-four hours a day).
This amounts to the Bush camp jumping ahead of the process and sowing
land mines, and thus ensures that whatever the outcome, voters around the
nation will never be able to have confidence in the process that yielded the
final result.

No matter who prevails in the closest presidential election in American
history, this last tactic may be the one we all remember. It elicits a memory
from the Vietnam era: “We had to burn the village in order to save it.” Tompaine.com

Joe Conason echoes the sentiments: Poisonous Rhetoric Shows Bush is Dividing the Nation. The New York Observer