This isn't just kid stuff. Forgive this digression, but it goes to motive. The thrill of the hunt, and the rush to elusive victory, quickly trump the aspirational ideals of statesmanship. Dick Lockhart offers another way of looking at politics from the biblical perspective of temptation in the Garden of Eden. Let the chads fall where they may, but whoever bites into the apple this time will know that half of the nation's voters were betting against him.
Leadership is a tenuous fancy.
Labels make cynics of the best of voters who opted for the losing candidate. We always hope for the perfect archetype, but are loath to suffer the stereotype that many candidates become. We waste as much energy railing against improprieties in politics as we expend condemning the procedures by which the system proliferates. Other international heads of state likely don't care as much as we do whether ours is a Republican or a Democrat, or which legal team is more clever, or if any recount arbiter is politically tainted. The four-year tenure is not a life sentence.