First I would like to discuss the responsibility of the candidates. What exactly is responsibility? Does Vice President Al Gore or Governor Bush display this quality of leadership? According to the New Lexicon Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, responsibility is the state or quality of being in control or having to give satisfaction and through the eyes of Mr.

Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff under President Clinton (1994-1997), writes in his November 14th op-editorial that, ASo far both (Al Gore and George W. Bush) have allowed their campaign organizations to engage in continuing campaigns to convince the public of fairness of their positions. Deploying lawyers, spokesmen and campaign managers this way may satisfy the appetite to fight, but not the responsibility to reconcile a serious national dilemma.@ This statement alone displays that Panetta has a problem with the way the candidates and their campaigns were behaving. He goes on to say that having a national election of over 100 million votes boil down to a few hundred Acontroversial@ ballots in Florida is outrageous. He also feels that Aa scorched-earth litigation process to the bitter end@ makes sense to the lawyers and the campaign officials it really makes no sense for the nation. It was also apparent to Panetta that the US was divided over who should win, but he felt that a post-election battle would only make it difficult for the winner to govern the nation.

It seems that whoever wrote this editorial had a slight problem with Ms. Harris and how she reacted with the courts. For some strange reason it seemed as if she felt that she had supreme power and no matter what the courts said she would have her way. In this editorial there is no apparent change in the opinion of the writer, he/she had a strong conviction about the election, the courts, and Ms. Harris that did not sway in any way, shape, or form throughout this piece.

"To determine ahead of time that such returns will be ignores, however, unless caused by some Act of God, is not the exercise of discretion. It is the abdication of discretion." This was the opening line to an editorial in the Times on November 15, 2000. Originally given by Judge Terry Lewis, the statement was understood to mean that Katherine Harris was using her authority in so arbitrary a way as to permit the delay of final vote tallies only in the case of an act of God, such as a hurricane. But, Ms. Harris, who seems to be on a power trip, directed the counties to explain why the hand counts were necessary and need. This was an attempt to maneuver to rule that manual counting is unjustified and in doing so cut short the exercise before Vic

Some common words found in the essay are:
Ms Harris, George Bush, Iowa Mexico, Supreme Court, Leon Panetta, Gore Bush, Judge Lewis's, York Times, , Katherine Harris, ms harris, hand counts, presidential election, judge lewis's, york times, editorials op-editorials, responsibility candidates, historical 2000 presidential, gore bush, hand count, supreme court, experienced historical 2000, 2000 presidential election, past six half, opinion pieces questioned,
Approximate Word count = 1553
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)