HBO Revisits 2000 Election with “Recount”

On Sun­day night, HBO aired its new film “Recount,” which delved back into the con­tro­ver­sial Flori­da recount that deter­mined the out­come of Amer­i­ca’s 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Days before the film (watch the trail­er here) hit the air­waves, Char­lie Rose con­duct­ed an inter­view with Kevin Spacey (actor in the film), Jef­frey Toobin (Senior Legal Ana­lyst at CNN) and David Boies (who argued Bush v. Gore on behalf of Al Gore). In watch­ing the film and inter­view, my first reac­tion was to think: yes, it’s been eight long years, but it’s per­haps not been long enough. Per­haps anoth­er eight years is what it takes before polit­i­cal trau­ma can be trans­formed into pure enter­tain­ment. Or maybe it will nev­er quite get there. But that says noth­ing about the mer­its of the film or the inter­view below. If you missed “Recount,” it re-airs tonight on HBO.