Agreat deal more than the name of the new president was at stake in Bush v. Gore. As columnist Tony Blankley wrote in The Washington Times on November 11,

[W]hat is sticking in the craw this time is the brazen, slick, daylight heisting of the votes. Gore has learned from Mr. Clinton that when he violates the nation’s values in front of the public—staring us down, daring us to do something about it—our failure to defend ourselves morally weakens us for the next time. And there will always be a next time.

In that sense, the Supreme Court, at considerable cost to itself, saved us, at least momentarily, from a further precipitous decline in our public morality.

Few events illustrate so starkly the debased state of America’s political and legal culture as did Vice President Gore’s frenzied attempts to overturn Governor Bush’s narro ...