The U.S. Supreme Court divided 5-4 Saturday, deciding for Bush. The incoming U.S. Senate is divided 50-50, and the GOP margin in the new House amounts to just a handful of seats. We've never faced this degree of deep and almost completely equal division of opinion. Parliamentary systems allow coalition governments to be formed when no party commands a clear majority, but the distinctly American presidency and the Electoral College that selects the officeholder are supposed to result in decisive verdicts. At several points, the outcome has seemed to be on the verge of being settled, only to have some new court decision keep the dispute alive and send the participants scrambling to survive the wave that has come crashing.
Nautical metaphors abound.
Both of these, it seems to me, puts us into areas where we've never gone before. The tie-breaking vote in the Senate could be cast by the Democratic presidential candidate. And the cast of characters seems as outsized as those in any novel, from Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the citrus heiress who with a flourish of her blue enamel pen certified one slate of electors for Bush, to the curmudgeonly Leon County Judge N. Sanders Sauls, full of folksy asides. He had been rebuked by the state Supreme Court over complaints of autocratic behavior, it turned out, well before the court overturned his key decision that initially denied Gore a recount. The scenarios of what happens next range from a quick finish today to an extended battle in Congress lasting into January.