Be It History or a Train Wreck, They Came to See

This was an American civics lesson up close, Margaret Moodie figured. Maybe too close.

The suburban Washington homemaker had just given her 8-year-old daughter, Fiona, a home-schooling lesson on the Supreme Court. So she decided to bring the girl to Friday’s raucous demonstration on the steps of the venerable old courthouse to see democracy in action--complete with dueling demonstrators, wild sign-waving, near fisticuffs over clashing politics and celebrity sightings.

Why was everyone yelling, asked Fiona, seemingly overwhelmed by the several thousand people demonstrating around her. “He’s a Democrat,” Moodie explained disapprovingly, pointing at a supporter of Vice President Al Gore with whom she had engaged in a heated political debate. “That’s illegal what they’re doing,” she said. “It’s intimidation.”

But a moment later, Moodie was back among the throng, trying to drown out the Democrats’ chants with her own rejoinders of “Bush! Bush! Bush!”

So it went, on what will likely go down as one of the most memorable days in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Inside the staid judicial chamber, listening attentively to the legal intricacies of the case, were such political celebrities as Gore’s children, Caroline Kennedy, members of Congress and probably the world’s most famous chad-checker, Palm Beach County Judge Charles Burton.

Politics apparently played no part in the seating assignments, with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a liberal icon, jammed next to conservative author Barbara Olson, the wife of Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s appellate lawyer Theodore B. Olson.

Outside the courthouse, in the shadow of an inscription on the Supreme Court building, “Equal justice under law,” hundreds of people waited hours in line in hopes of getting one of the 84 seats reserved for the public. Courthouse security shuffled new groups in and out every few minutes.

“I’m so close I can taste it!” announced 22-year-old Austin Barger, hobbling on a crutch near the front of the line. Barger and his friends had been guzzling coffee and scarfing down pizza since 11 p.m. Thursday, as temperatures dipped so low that opportunistic street vendors peddled gloves.

For Anissa Roberts and Liz Kotchian, 18-year-old freshmen at George Washington University here, getting inside was worth their 17-hour wait. “Just sitting there inside the courtroom and realizing that you’re going to be hearing about all this on TV and we were there--it’s unbelievable,” Roberts said.

Around the corner, demonstrators tried to out-chant their opponents and out-jockey them for position in front of omnipresent TV cameras.

There were Bush-backing women in faux furs and college students draped in Penn State blankets. One man was adorned in a giant cardboard ballot box while another was dressed as Darth Vader, warning of the “evil empire” of President Clinton’s administration.

There were anti-abortion activists backing Bush and pro-Gore civil rights leaders led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Southern California Rabbi Steven Jacobs and National Organization for Women leader Patricia Ireland.

Bush supporters Dwayne Sattler and his wife, Hope, packed their 14-month-old twins in a stroller and got out their videocamera.

“We want them to be able to watch this years from now. This is history, and we want them to be a part of it,” said Sattler, a business consultant.

Bush backer Andy Brown, 60, a veteran who joined a busload of protesters from Atlantic City. N.J., tried to teach his 4-year-old grandson the value of positive politics, but the lesson didn’t appear to be taking hold.

Seated on his grandfather’s shoulders, Stephen--mimicking one of the Republicans’ chants--shouted out: “No more Gore!”

“No! Hooray for Bush! Keep it positive!” his grandfather corrected, glancing up at the boy in the cowboy hat. “No more Gore!” Stephen repeated.

Many saw the morning as an invigorating exercise in democracy. Among them was Bush attorney Olson, one of the many lawyers who paraded before the television cameras to proclaim how well the arguments had gone.

“This is all very gratifying,” Olson said as he surveyed the demonstrations. “People really care about this election, and that’s good. That’s healthy.”

Others were not so sure.

“The Bush people just want to stop the votes from being counted. . . . It’s very discouraging,” said Abigail Bingham Endicott, a voice coach and Democratic volunteer in suburban Washington.

Endicott began a civil debate with a Bush supporter, but it turned nasty when her opponent began comparing Gore’s tactics to those of Adolf Hitler and demanded to know whether she was a Christian.

Similar exchanges broke out over everything from racial politics to Texas’ education policy and Katherine Harris, the controversial Florida secretary of state. Although no one was arrested, Supreme Court police reported several minor scuffles and stepped in to enforce a dividing line between Bush and Gore supporters.

“My heart’s just broken looking at all this,” said former Long Beach resident Edward Robinson, who recently moved to a home a few blocks from the Supreme Court building. “I don’t see anything positive coming of all this. I don’t see any winners.”