IGH-PROFILE LAWYERS continue to exhort Florida judges over key legal questions that will likely determine the next president.
At the same time, Vice President Al Gore and Governor George Bush are mounting equally intense public relations campaigns, each trying to convince the American people that his claim to the White House is valid.
This PR campaign is almost as important as the legal one. Whoever wins the presidency will be severely hobbled if his legitimacy is questioned. It happened to Rutherford B. Hayes, whose presidency was tainted by a shady bargain that brought him victory in the Electoral College.
If, on the other hand, the winner is seen as growing out of an honest effort to count the Florida votes as fairly as possible, he will enter the White House with the support and good will of a great majority of the public, excepting only the most rabid partisans.
So the job of public persuasion is crucial. But it is also subtle. The arguments must be credible; mere ''spinning'' is seen as crude self-promotion, and therefore counter-productive.
Gore seized the PR initiative Wednesday by offering to accept the results of a hand recount of the entire state. This is the best course for the nation, since it offers the best method now available of determining how Floridians actually voted on Nov. 7. It also seemed credible, because Gore does not know whether a full state recount would overcome Bush's 300-vote lead or augment it.
From a similar perspective, Gore's alternative offer - to recount only the few Democratic counties where he would be likely to gain - was self-interested and not credible.
Bush's resistance to a statewide recount is understandable. He is ahead now and has every incentive to try to hang on to his lead.
Still, Bush's tactics have not served him well. When he said Wednesday night that hand counting can open the door to error and mischief, he ignored the obvious problems that have been shown to exist with machine counting. Yes, human counters are more likely to attempt partisan fraud than machines, but the chances of this are minimal with every ballot being reviewed by representatives of both campaigns.
The Bush campaign has repeatedly assert ed that ''flying chads'' prove punch card ballots aren't meant to be handled by humans, but this treats the public as dunces, because it demonstrates just the opposite. If chads are falling off of ballots, they must have been punched by the voter. These votes will be tallied accurately in a hand count, but many may have been missed by the machine.
Likewise, Katherine Harris's abrupt effort to halt the recounts looked far more political than rational. It may have been Bush's best chance legally, but it hurt his relations with the public.
