ASHINGTON - Now, the morning after, comes a moment of relief and reflection - and of recrimination.
With Vice President Al Gore apparently running out of legal options and political support, the long campaign of 2000 may have come to an abrupt end on a cold December evening.
In political crises like this election - and, in truth, there are very few episodes in our history that even remotely compare to this 35-day deadlock - commentators often remark that the denouement proves the suppleness and robustness of the American system. Hardly anyone is making that argument this morning.
Instead, the apparent victor must show no joy, the vanquished must show courage, the public must feel humbled - and chastened.
In both camps, in the two parties, and in the legislative and judicial halls that struggled with choosing the leader of the federal executive branch, there is an overriding sense that this drama could have been performed better, with more selflessness, with more vision, with more grace. The campaign that led to the virtual tie could have been conducted with more depth, the coverage of the election could have been conducted with more precision, the party leaders and the government institutions could have responded to the challenge with more creativity.
And so last night's Supreme Court decision was one of the final acts of this drama, and the high court's action raised questions about the independence of one of the few national institutions that retains the public's respect.
The past five weeks have been an extraordinary exercise in political struggle, not only between Gore and Governor George W. Bush of Texas, but also among the established branches of the government and the various levels of government. Legislators have battled the judiciary, local officials have battled state officials - and state judges have been upbraided, as the Florida Supreme Court was last night, by federal judges.
But all these struggles left little resolved.
The last great national election crisis was Watergate, which involved criminal questions of which the 2000 election impasse was free. But when it ended, there was a sense that everything turned out right. In its edition on Friday morning, Aug. 9, 1974, the day President Richard M. Nixon resigned, The Globe ran a copy of the Constitution at the top of page one. This week, all three newsmagazines ran replicas of the Constitution on their covers, but the abiding message wasn't triumph, it was survival.
That is because almost every person and institution that touched or was touched by this controversy was tarnished.
With the high court helping to choose the next president despite efforts to seem not to do so, ordinarily sober voices in the American conversation are complaining that the Supreme Court has taken a fateful, partisan step.
In truth, the court has never been a politically sterile redoubt. But its role in upholding Bush's opposition to the hand recounts ordered by the Florida Supreme Court has thrust it to the center not only of the nation's politics but also of the public's most intimate act of political participation.
''Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision,'' Justice John Paul Stevens wrote. ''One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.''
Political influence is like human sensuality, with most of its power resting in a mystique of mystery. The last five weeks have done much to the nation. They have, for example, awakened it to the imprecision of vote counts, alerted it to the fragility of the franchise, shined an unforgiving light into the hidden corners of election law and practice. But mostly they have stripped both the art form of the presidential election and the institution of the high court of their sense of mystery. The election may be over, but its implications are not.
