he script is pure Hollywood, but the cast is pure politics.
Who but a bold screenwriter would have set a contested presidential election in a state whose governor is brother to the Republican candidate and whose attorney general is local campaign chief for the Democratic contender?
Who but a fevered scriptwriter would have penciled in a White House dinner for former presidents, including the Republican who was ousted by the Democratic incumbent and whose son is this year's GOP revenge-nominee, smack in the middle of the tensest vote recount in American history?
The campaign between Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore looks more like ''Titans'' meets ''The West Wing'' every day.
If there was any doubt that fact is stranger than fiction, it vanished the moment that William M. Daley, Gore campaign chairman and son of legendary Democratic kingmaker Richard J. Daley, took the microphone in Tallahassee to denounce Republican efforts ''to presumptively crown themselves the victors'' in the race for the White House.
Daley's late father was, of course, the Chicago mayor reputed to have delivered Cook County to John F. Kennedy in 1960 by methods that might not withstand legal scrutiny 40 years later. His brother is the current mayor of Chicago where, Republicans were quick to point out, ballots similar to those in dispute in West Palm Beach are still in use.
It takes almost as long to count the political connections among the players in this melodrama as it does to recount the Florida ballots. But a presidential election is no parlor game. The political intrigue that was gripping entertainment at the end of last week looks more ominous at the start of this one.
The nation is weary. It has had enough of the bitter partisanship that has characterized so much of the last eight years. We survived a debasing sex scandal, generated by a Democratic president with the appetites of a boy. We endured a farcical impeachment trial, engineered by a Republican Congress with an insatiable taste for revenge.
Former secretary of state James Baker is wrong to suggest that ''closure'' is what the country most needs now. It needs confidence in its election process even more. But Baker, a Bush partisan, is right that this election must end with the certification of the Florida recount on Friday. If either party belabors the outcome there, it will be inviting the other to contest results anywhere the margin of victory was razor-thin.
No matter how many ballots in how many states are recounted how many times, this is going to end up the closest presidential election in history. There are no extra innings in American politics. Someone wins. Someone loses.
It is too much to expect magnanimity from either of the candidates under the circumstances. They have not spent 18 months running this hard because they lack passion or ego or ambition. It is enough to expect pragmatism. If Gore loses the Florida recount, he will live to run another day. Richard Nixon did. But, don't believe the spin; Nixon did not step selflessly out of character in 1960 to concede that race. His decision not to challenge the results of the closest presidential election until this one was an act of enlightened self-interest. If he had challenged those Cook County ballots, Kennedy could have contested suspicious GOP votes from southern Illinois.
Neither party has a lock on virtue. The reason this country has not adopted a nationwide uniform voting system is that the machinery of elections is one of the last vestiges of power for the two political parties.
This election has exposed a deep rift in our political life. We are a country divided. More than ever, more than anything, we need these two men to do what they have been promising to do for months: bring us together.
Eileen McNamara's e-mail address ismcnamara@globe.com
