What we've lost

Outside the Beltway has a great round-up post on the pre-election maneuvering to declare any Bush victory illegitimate:

Both parties have a right--maybe even a duty--to take steps necessary to ensure that the votes of their supporters who are entitled to vote count. Monitoring ballots to ensure that they aren't confusing, printing voter guides to inform their supporters, stationing poll watchers to ensure fairness, and similar measures are healthy for our Republic and quite welcome. The scorched earth tactics adopted by Democrats in the aftermath of the 2000 race, however, threaten to undermine our system.

Post-Florida 2000, we have forgotten how we used to handle close elections. Here is Theodore White describing election night 1960 inThe Making of the President

There is nothing that can be done in these hours, for no one can any longer direct the great strike for America's power; the polls have closed. Good or bad, whatever the decision, America will accept the decision and cut down any man who goes against it, even though for millions the decision runs contrary to their own votes. The general vote is an expression of national will, the only substitute for violence and blood. Its verdict is to be defended as one defends civilization itself.

Good or bad, whatever the decision, America will accept the decision and cut down any man who goes against it.

Forty-four years ago that was probably true. But today we see that Gore is actually going to Florida to try to pull Kerry across the finish line.

Our memories are too short and we citizens have a naive confidence about the preservation of a healthy body politic. White covered China before Pearl Harbor and World War Two all over the globe. He traveled in Europe both before the war and during the reconstruction. He was not naive like us, nor did he share our cheap cynicism:

There is nothing like this American expression of will in England or France, India or Russia or China. Only one other major nation in modern history has ever tried to elect its leader directly by mass, free, popular vote. This was the Weimar Republic of Germany, which modeled its unitary vote for national leader on American practice. Out of its experiment with the system it got Hitler. Americans have had Lincoln, Wilson, two Roosevelts. Nothing can be done when the voting returns are flooding in; the White House and its power will move to one or another of the two candidates, and all will know about it in the morning. But for these hours history stops.