A good show, anyhow

Aside from the rights and wrongs of it, the long struggle over the vote for president has been by far he best of quite a string of media spectaculars.

Each of them – the Gulf War, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Monica Lewinsky and impeachment saga, the Elian Gonzales dispute, and now the stalled-election battle – had most of glued to the television and radio to watch a live drama and catch the latest twist. Then it had us grabbing the newspapers to find out what had happened overnight, confirm what we had heard from broadcasts, and try to make sense of it all.

But each of the earlier media spectaculars lacked one element or another.

The Gulf War had no real conclusion. The villain of the piece, Saddam Hussein, remained in power. Worse yet, a lot of the story turned out to be false. Those pinpointed bombs didn’t all go down the chimneys after all; we saw only the successes, not the many that missed their targets. And most of those Patriot missiles missed the incoming Scuds that they were supposed to hit on the nose.

The O.J. case was basically a rather dull court room action that followed the hyped-up tracking of that white van. The only suspense was whether he would be convicted or acquitted.

Monica provided plenty of twists and turns, to say nothing about plenty of sex. Yet it was a tawdry tale blown up into a needless constitutional crisis. Many in the audience were ashamed at their own fascination with the lurid details. The impeachment drive ultimately was a flop.

Elian was a good continued story with a fine climax when the SWAT team rushed in to grab the boy. That story, however, lacked any grand sweep of national significance.

But the Bush-Gore election struggle had it all. Talk about twists and turns – a new one came almost daily, sometimes several times a day. It kept up day-to-day suspense right to the end.

None of that how-can-we-explain-this-to-the-children hypocrisy marred this superb media spectacular. Children, their parents and grandparents, teachers and college professors, and it seemed like every cab driver in America all found themselves in the midst of a live civics lesson involving an election standoff not see in more than 150 years for the leadership of the United States.

It has been a chance to watch candidates and lawyers and judges and all three branches of government fight their way through an uncharted jungle of constitutional law, statutory history and court precedent.

Sure, some damage has been done. The courts may have harmed their reputation for impartiality. Some of the lawyers have looked slippery as they switched their tunes when the beat changed. Both candidates sometimes had a hard time hiding their desire to win behind a public mask of seeking no more than fair play and respect for the rule of law. And many of the pundits fell on their faces as they tried to speak instant wisdom and predict the future in a time of total confusion. Some Americans found it humiliating to see foreigners laugh at Uncle Sam.

But for better or worse, the American system of checks and balances held up, even it it was scarred in the process. There was no blood in the streets, no thought of a coup. The organization of the Bush administration now will go forward. And everyone knows that there will be congressional elections in 2002 and another presidential election in 2004.

Let’s hope there will be no more tie votes for a while.