On January 20, 2001, John Lewis did not attend George W. Bush’s inauguration. He didn’t make a big deal about it, but Bush losing the popular vote coupled with the contentious Florida recount left Lewis feeling less than magnanimous. According to contemporaneous press accounts, the Georgia congressman and civil rights icon spent Inauguration Day in his Atlanta district.
Lewis was hardly the only prominent Democrat who had trouble accepting the new president after the 2000 election was finally decided. Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Jesse Jackson trashed the U.S. Supreme Court and questioned Bush’s “legitimacy.” Recognizing the starkness of such hyper-partisanship, moderator Tim Russert asked Dick Gephardt if he considered George W. Bush “a legitimate president.” Gephardt, a longtime Democratic congressional leader, refused to grant Bush that status — though Russert tried three times.
Meanwhile, a Democratic Senate leader was being similarly coy on ABC. Asked by Sam Donaldson if he thought news organizations should undertake their own vote recounts in Florida even if it might “delegitimize” Bush’s presidency, Tom Daschle implied that the latter was already the case. “We already know that Al Gore got more votes in the popular election,” he said.
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