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By Root 2032 0

was concerned about the potential negative impact on our administration of a shortened transition period. Whatever else happened, the forty-third president of the United States was going to be inaugurated at noon on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, January 20, 2001. So in the hotel room on the afternoon of November 9, I reached for the nearest piece of paper—which happened to be a Bush-Cheney press release on the situation in Palm Beach County—and flipped it over and began listing what needed to be done in the seventy-one days between now and then. In that time we had to name a cabinet of the highest-caliber individuals we could find. We needed a secretary of state to advise on foreign affairs, a secretary of the Treasury who could oversee the nation’s economy, and a secretary of defense who could be entrusted with the nation’s security. Along with the attorney general, these are the most prominent cabinet positions, but we also had literally thousands of other jobs to fill, many requiring FBI background checks, financial disclosure, and Senate confirmation. I had personally participated in five previous transitions, and I knew how tough it could be even in the best of circumstances to get everything done in such a short amount of time. We had won the vote in Florida and had therefore won the Electoral College. Although Gore might be trying to overturn the outcome at the ballot box through a series of court challenges, we needed to get moving with preparing to govern.

On November 17 it became clear that the recount was going to drag on much longer than anyone had anticipated. That day the Florida Supreme Court ordered Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris not to certify the election results until it heard arguments about whether the results of the Gore-requested hand recounts must be included in the final certification. There was nothing more we could do in Texas, so, after ten days in Austin, Lynne and I left for Washington.

On Sunday, November 19, Joe Lieberman appeared on Meet the Press and I was reminded why I had such respect for him. Despite the fact that the Gore campaign was working hard to disqualify many of the absentee ballots cast by members of the U.S. military stationed overseas, he said he felt that was wrong. He said each campaign should do everything possible to ensure that ballots cast by members of America’s armed forces were counted.

A few days later the Florida Supreme Court essentially changed the rules of the election after the election was over by extending the deadline for the completion of the hand recount to November 26. Several hours after we got news of the decision, I awoke in the middle of the night with an uncomfortable sensation in my chest. It wasn’t really pain, but I knew it wasn’t right. I woke Lynne up and told her we needed to go to the hospital to get it checked out. The trip from our home in McLean to George Washington University Hospital, seven blocks from the White House, took less than fifteen minutes in a speeding black limo driven by the Secret Service down the deserted George Washington Parkway.

At the hospital doctors ran a series of blood tests to determine if my cardiac enzymes were elevated, which is a standard way of checking for a heart attack. The first tests showed no increase in the enzyme level; in other words, no indication that I’d had a heart attack. We passed this information along to campaign headquarters in Austin sometime before I went in for a cardiac catheterization, a procedure that was recommended based on my history and the fact that I had experienced chest discomfort. Dr. Jonathan Reiner inserted a stent made of stainless steel mesh in an artery that was 90 to 95 percent blocked.

When I came back from the procedure about noon, I learned that a second set of blood tests showed an increase in enzyme levels. It was minimal, such a small elevation that it wouldn’t have been detected a few years previously when tests were less sensitive. Nevertheless, the release of enzymes meant I had suffered some heart damage. I’d had a small heart attack,