Entry 7:

(THE CURTAIN OPENS on the home-office of a disheveled and sleep-deprived columnist. Pipe tobacco is scattered over a desk that also holds a paperback edition of Richard Nixon's Six Crises and a library-bound copy of Allan Nevins' biography of Grover Cleveland. The columnist is typing at his computer, and we can hear the dull hum of CNN from a TV set offstage).

Breakfast came a little late today, Paul. I envy your long night in Austin, for it sure beat my lonely-guy evening in front of the TV set with my computer on my lap. What is fascinating is how little more we know right now than when I finally stumbled off to bed around 5:00 a.m.

You may wonder about my eclectic reading list. Nixon, who might serve as an unlikely role model for Al Gore, provides what appears to be an honest account of his rationale for not contesting the outcome of the 1960 election. His reasons include: "The bitterness that would have been engendered by such a maneuver on my part would, in my opinion, have done incalculable and lasting damage throughout the country." (Somehow Nixon forgot this high-minded notion during Watergate). As for the long-neglected Grover Cleveland, he was in 1888 the last candidate who won the popular vote but lost the presidency. Nowhere in Nevins or his collected letters is there any complaint that his vote total should matter more than the Electoral College tally.

I'm grateful for several things on this the day after. No one, as far as I can tell, has brayed about the need for "closure" after such a tight election. The Democratic pickup of four Senate seats means that a President Bush would never dare to appoint Antonin Scalia as chief justice if William Rehnquist, as expected, retires. And who would have ever dreamed that Missouri would have elected a dead man to the Senate over troglodyte incumbent John Ashcroft? Especially since the story got lost in the chaos of an election night that shall live for all eternity around the campfires where political junkies congregate.

As someone who believes that Gore should bow to the inevitable if he loses the Florida recount, I still will admit that I found one aspect of the statewide returns to be extremely curious. No, I'm not talking about the more than 2,000 votes that Pitchfork Pat Buchanan received in Palm Beach, where some Gore partisans claim that they punched his name by mistake. (The Buchanan vote total there is not totally outlandish given the size of the county.) Rather what leave me scratching my balding head is the tally from Volusia County, which includes De Land and Daytona Beach. According to the USA Today Web site there were an outlandish 16,149 votes cast there for "other" fringe candidates besides Ralph Nader and Buchanan. Did John Hagelin work every precinct? Is this a famous Libertarian stronghold?

The only thing that gives me comfort during this perplexing period were both candidates' comically predictable choices for their Florida election-law czars: Gore went with well-traveled Warren Christopher and Bush (surprise!) opted for Jim Baker. You can be certain that the runner-ups were Howard Baker (Bush) and George Mitchell (Gore). </?xml:namespace>