Essay; The Coming Together — Nothing concedes like concession.
In his pre-comeback valedictory address, Al Gore (unlike another defeated candidate in 1962) did not bitterly lash out at his opponents.
On the contrary, Gore rose to the historic occasion like the patriot most of us expected him to be. ''I accept the finality of this outcome. . . . I offer my concession,'' he said gently, not flinching from the painful word. ''This belatedly broken impasse can point us all to a new common ground.''
Vice President Gore will, with equally good grace on Jan. 6, 2001, discharge his responsibility as president of the Senate to chair a joint session of the House and Senate to announce the official result of the vote of the Electoral College -- and thereby to proclaim the election of the man who defeated him.
That's what Vice President Richard Nixon good-naturedly did for John F. Kennedy in 1961 (R.N.: ''I detect a trend here'') and what Vice President Hubert Humphrey just could not abide doing for Nixon in 1969. Tradition calls for the electoral result to be announced state by state, and the cameras will zoom in to a close-up of Gore's face when it comes to Florida; a medium sigh followed by discreet eye-rolling would be well received.
That, following a cordial meeting of the former political combatants, should help along the process of public acceptance of George W. Bush, the non-loser who is president-elect.
For the next few days, until the naming of the cabinet dominates the news, we can expect much learned hand-wringing about the ''wound'' the Supreme Court inflicted on itself by daring to hear, and to rule on, the hottest political case imaginable -- and under record time pressure. Now the justices know what it's like to write against a deadline.
The whole court did itself proud. The close majority opinion that denied an unconstitutional recount; the 7-to-2 agreement that the Florida Supreme Court, in failing to provide statewide standards for recounts, had denied ''equal protection'' to all voters; the vigorous dissents of the liberal quartet that partly concurred with one another -- all these were the products of fine legal minds thinking fast, unafraid of complexity, unsullied by rancor. (Justice John Paul Stevens was a tad intemperate, but we geezers are permitted some passion.)
The central complaint of the losing side is that the nation's highest court stopped the counting and then said time had run out. But it was the Florida Supreme Court that shortened the contest period from four weeks to two, and reaffirmed, in its slow-walking response to the U.S. Supreme Court's urgent questioning, the state election law's inexorable Dec. 12 deadline.
Though the Rehnquist court can expect much law-school derision for its activism in enforcing judicial restraint, it can lick its ''wound'' by considering how much tension it saved the Republic.
Were it not for the court's willingness to take the case and the heat, internecine mud-wrestling would have gone on for at least another month. If Gore had edged ahead in the counting of ''undervotes,'' Bush would have contested unexamined ''overvotes.'' If the Florida Supremes had named a Gore slate of electors, the Florida Legislature would have named its own; some electors in other states may then have been seduced into faithlessness; ultimately, the ever-more-angry dispute would have wound up in Congress.
At the end, with the G.O.P. in control of the clear majority of states, we would have ended up exactly where we are today: with President-elect Bush. Along the way, many now-reasonable opponents would have become implacable enemies, and the electorate would have been not just evenly divided but angrily polarized. The Supreme Court, at some cost to its own serenity but not to its historic reputation, saved us from that.
After the court acted, Gore did the right thing within 24 hours. Only then did the man Gore called ''president-elect'' play his part in the necessary coming-together:
''I hope the long wait of the last five weeks,'' Bush said, ''will heighten a desire to move beyond the bitterness and partisanship of the recent past.'' He reiterated Gore's theme of a ''common ground,'' and drove it home with: ''I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation.''
WILLIAM SAFIRE
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