ASHINGTON - For drama and decisiveness, the moment had few equals.
Late at night, with Thanksgiving nearing and with the political impasse moving into its third week, the Florida Supreme Court stepped into the election struggle, throwing the battle for the presidency into upheaval with the simple revolutionary thought that created the country two centuries ago and could eventually bring the 2000 campaign to an end:
The merest individual voice matters.
Huge political armies continue to clash in the capital and in Florida, but the decision of the state's highest court seeks to assure that the relatively few anonymous voters whose views were missed by machine count - but whose intent may be discerned by the human eye - will be considered in the final count. In the hands of those anonymous few rest the destinies of Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore.
The great principles are often clear; the effect of them on the principals are not always as clear. And so it was with last night's landmark decision. On the surface, it was a victory for Gore, whose hopes for the presidency rest on his advisers' calculation that additional counts in Democratic counties will result in additional votes for the Democratic candidate.
But nothing about this campaign or post-election deadlock has conformed to expectations, and so now one mystery - what the seven jurists of Florida's highest court would do about the recounts - is being replaced with another mystery - what those recounts will show. And looming in the background is a third - whether, as former secretary of State James A. Baker 3d suggested last night, Bush might take his case to the Republican-dominated Florida legislature.
The vice president has to make up 931 votes. His operatives had believed that would be a snap, but the going has been slow and the Gore pickups modest. And the legal struggles and political maneuvering are far from over; the sides still are engaged in disputes about whether, and how, to count contested ballots and about whether to admit some absentee ballots.
Last night's court ruling had the effect of legitimizing the demands the Gore camp has made for the recounts; until the decision was handed down, the Republicans were making headway in the court of public opinion with the notion that the vice president's insistence on recounting the ballots was merely an effort to win in overtime what he could not gain in regulation time.
Now the court has sanctioned the overtime, but it has not determined which side prevails.
The Gore camp's reaction was mostly relief, though the vice president himself quickly took the offensive, appearing literally at the evening's 11th hour. Calling for calm and unity, he repeated his invitation to meet with his rival and, in a clear effort to signal to his supporters that their faith is not misplaced, suggested that he would begin preparations for a transition to power.
Even so, the elation in the Gore camp might well prove to be premature. The Democrats have won a victory, even perhaps a substantial one, but the war could still be won by the Bush forces.
If the recounts do not place the vice president in the lead, Gore would be hard-pressed to carry on his struggle, even in the courts. Indeed, his supporters have suggested that if he fails to prevail in the recounts, his campaign should come to a close. Last night he disavowed any effort to find and to pressure so-called ''faithless electors,'' saying that he would not accept the support of any member of the Electoral College selected in a state that the Texas governor had won.
The theory behind the court's action was clear, and was anything but the sterile product of an isolated court. Ruling in the most fevered political atmosphere of the age, with control of the White House in the balance, the court gave every indication of having followed this dispute and all of its curious, even maddening, turns.
In that context, it said that a political campaign so close that the margins were microscopic must ultimately be decided the way even the most lopsided elections are decided, by the voters. And, the court ruled, if that means counting every last ballot card, that is both the burden and the glory of democratic rule.
The court established that, as great as the institutions of government are, the individual is greater still, and his or her voice must be heard - and counted.
And so the counting will go on, through the holiday weekend. No presidential election in modern times has lasted so long, or prompted so many legal battles, or rewarded and then punished the participants with such swiftness. But, then again, no election has so unambiguously affirmed the founding principles of the nation, especially the primacy, the prerogatives and, ultimately, the power of the individual.
