Moore [narrating]: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes –

Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.

Moore [narrating]: — it won’t matter just as long as all your daddy’s friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way.

What Moore doesn’t show is that a six-month study in 2001 by a consortium of six major news organizations — the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Tribune Co. (parent of the L.A. Times), Associated Press and CNN; plus two Florida papers, the Palm Beach Post and St. Petersburg Times — found just the opposite.

Even if the Supreme Court had not stopped a statewide recount, or if a more limited recount of four heavily Democratic counties had taken place,

Even if the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had not been stopped by the Federal Supreme Court, the consortium of news sources found that Bush still would have won Florida and the election under two different scenarios: counting only “undervotes,” or taking into account the reported intentions of some county electoral officials to include “overvotes” as well.

During the CNN appearance from which Moore draws the clip, reporter Candy Crowley explained that Toobin’s analysis assumed the statewide consideration of “overvotes,” which was not a sure thing, though there are indications that Leon County Circuit Court judge Terry Lewis, who was supervising the recount, might have directed counties to consider them.

George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows. The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 “undervote” ballots that were at the center of Florida’s disputed presidential election.
USA TODAY: Newspapers’ recount shows Bush prevailed

“George Bush spent the rest of August at the ranch where life was less complicated.”

False. The President was in Texas from August 7-13 and 21-25. The rest of the month was spent traveling to New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin, Missouri and then back to Washington at the end of the month.

The criticism of Bush’s August “vacation” is not only factually inaccurate, but is also wrong in spirit, as the Presidency travels with the President and Bush’s time in Texas within August 2001 did not see a “vacation” style lull in presidential duty.

Bush continued receiving daily security briefings (except Sunday) and had his staff with him, along with a number of reporters. Bush accomplished various work most days, and traveled away from the ranch during this time, contrary to Moore’s claim.

From the Official White House Press Briefing for August travel arrangements;

While in Texas, he will have a working vacation there. I was going to do this at the end of the briefing. Let me give you some information now. But the President will travel for approximately two days a week each week during his visit to Texas. The upcoming week, he will travel one day to build a house in nearby Waco, Texas, to participate in a Habitat for Humanity event.

The following week, the President will travel to Colorado and New Mexico. The week following that, the President will travel roughly three days to Wisconsin and other locations TBD. He’ll also travel to Pennsylvania that week.

The following week, the President will have an event in nearby San Antonio, and you can also anticipate travel over Labor Day weekend to some unnamed cities as of this point.

A review of the White House news archive for August 2001 shows this month to be anything but a —vacation“.

White House, —News releases for August 2001
White House Press Briefing, August 1, 2001
White House Press Briefing, August 3, 2001
White House Press Briefing, August 9, 2001
White House Press Briefing, August 22, 2001
White House Press Briefing, August 31, 2001

It is naïve to think that the President spent an entire month doing nothing, as Michael Moore implies.

“No President had ever witnessed such a thing on his inauguration day. And for the next eight months it didn’t get any better for George W. Bush.”

He proceeds to make the following charges:

“He couldn’t get his judges appointed;”

False.  When Jim Jeffords left the Republican party, switching control of the senate, the Democrat controlled Senate stalled the confirmation (not “appointment”) of some of the judges whom Bush had nominated for the federal courts.

Despite the obstruction of some of Bush’s judicial nominees, Bush did indeed get a number of judges appointed and confirmed by Congress. This DOJ page shows the judicial confirmations that took place during the 107th Congress.  Every one of these was a Bush appointee.

“He had trouble getting his legislation passed;”

Partially True. Under this narration, Moore shows a clip of an unfurling Greenpeace banner protesting drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve.  However, what Moore fails to mention is that during this time period Bush got a massive tax cut passed, the Economic Growth and Tax Reform Reconciliation Act of 2001.  Even if this was the only thing Bush accomplished during this time period (it wasn’t) it would show Moore’s assertion to be patently untrue.

“And he lost Republican control of the Senate;”

True, though misleading. The footage shows Senator Jim Jeffords, who defected from the GOP to become an independent who agreed to caucus with the Democrats.

Yes, Bush lost control of the senate, but Moore’s larger argument of alleged Bush failure is invalid here, considering that in the first election cycle after the defection, American voters returned control of the Senate to Republican hands, and saw Jim Jeffords making overtures to his former party to keep his committee chairmanship.

“His approval ratings in the polls began to sink;”

Misleading. Moore shows a screen displaying Bush with 53% job approval on May 3, and 45% on September 5. The screen shot includes no source for this alleged poll.

University of Minnesota History Professor Steven Ruggles has compiled a chart showing Bush’s approval ratings in 13 major polls throughout his Presidency. According the chart, never during 2001 did Bush’s approval rating fall as low as 45% in any of the polls.

As David Koppel notes: Nor did Bush’s approval ratings really “sink” after inauguration day. Bush’s popularity ratings rose significantly in April (when his tax cut was the main issue in Congress), and then returned to more normal levels in June. From Bush’s inaugural until September 10, almost all of his approval ratings were in the 50-60% range, with only a few results from an occasional poll either higher or lower.

The film shows CBS and CNN calling Florida for Al Gore when Moore intones “Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy….All of a sudden the other networks said, ‘Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.’”

“All of us networks made a mistake and projected Florida in the Al Gore column. It was our mistake” says NBC anchor Tom Brokaw in a portrayal that makes it seem as though the NBC retraction was caused by Fox.

Dave Kopel reports the events of the evening in detail that starkly contrasts Moore’s presentation:

In fact, the networks which called Florida for Gore did so early in the evening—before polls had even closed in the Florida panhandle, which is part of the Central Time Zone. NBC called Florida for Gore at 7:49:40 p.m., Eastern Time. This was 10 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Thirty seconds later, CBS called Florida for Gore. And at 7:52 p.m., Fox called Florida for Gore. Moore never lets the audience know that Fox was among the networks which made the error of calling Florida for Gore prematurely. Then at 8:02 p.m., ABC called Florida for Gore. Only ABC had waited until the Florida polls were closed.

The premature calls probably cost Bush thousands of votes from the conservative panhandle, as discouraged last-minute voters heard that their state had already been decided, and many voters who were waiting in line left the polling place. In Florida, as elsewhere, voters who have arrived at the polling place before closing time often end up voting after closing time, because of long lines. The conventional wisdom of politics is that supporters of the losing candidate are most likely to give up on voting when they hear that their side has already lost. (Thus, on election night 1980, when incumbent President Jimmy Carter gave a concession speech while polls were still open on the West coast, the early concession was widely blamed for costing the Democrats several Congressional seats in the West. The fact that all the networks had declared Reagan a landslide winner while West coast voting was still in progress was also blamed for Democratic losses in the West.) Even if the premature television calls affected all potential voters equally, the effect was to reduce Republican votes significantly, because the Florida panhandle is a Republican stronghold; depress overall turnout in the panhandle, and you will necessarily depress more Republican than Democratic votes.

At 10:00 p.m., which network took the lead in retracting the premature Florida result? The first retracting network was CBS, not Fox.

Over four hours later, at 2:16 a.m., Fox projected Bush as the Florida winner, as did all the other networks by 2:20 a.m.

CBS had taken the lead in making the erroneous call for Gore, and had taken the lead in retracting that call. At 3:59 a.m., CBS also took the lead in retracting the Florida call for Bush. All the other networks, including Fox, followed the CBS lead within eight minutes. That the networks arrived at similar conclusions within a short period of time is not surprising, since they were all using the same data from the Voter News Service. (Linda Mason, Kathleen Francovic & Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “CBS News Coverage of Election Night 2000: Investigation, Analysis, Recommendations” (CBS News, Jan. 2001), pp. 12-25.)

Moore’s editing technique of the election night segment is typical of his style: all the video clips are real clips, and nothing he says is, formally speaking, false. But notice how he says, “Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy…” The impression created is that the Fox call of Florida for Bush came soon after the CBS/CNN calls of Florida for Gore, and that Fox caused the other networks to change (“All of a sudden the other networks said, ‘Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.’”)

This is the essence of the Moore technique: cleverly blending half-truths to deceive the viewer.