The scale of what's at stake also impresses the American people. There is little apparent resentment at what is going on. The emblematic image of election 2000 will always be that of three exhausted ordinary citizens in Palm Beach county, peering at a voting card back and front, up and down, as if reading the runes in search of a message they know no other way to divine. Such is the American respect for process that the prospect of this being done 6m times, a hand count of the complete Florida vote, is not appalling. Normal life carries on.
Stable countries survive chronic political uncertainty, their economies booming, for a long time.
Look at Italy. On the other hand, this can't go on for ever. Short of the supreme court justices counting those 6m votes themselves, there will always be complaints of bias, negligence or fraud. Any outcome will be imperfect. But there has to be finality somewhere, a point that puts Al Gore to the hardest question.