IAMI - In an election where no finishing line seems firmly fixed, Governor George W. Bush nonetheless passed a significant psychological and political marker yesterday.
The certification of Bush as the winner of the contentious Florida election followed by his nationally televised victory claim put the Texas governor in a position of political if not moral strength, leaving Vice President Al Gore in the uncomfortable position of seeking to make the longest election since the 19th century even longer.
Now both candidates face enormous challenges, providing them with political tests that no presidential candidates in the modern era have faced. Indeed, nothing in the campaign that led to the ballotting on Nov. 7 - not their acceptance speeches, not their daily appeals, not their debate strategies - approaches the difficulties of the days ahead.
For Bush, the challenge is to consolidate the victory he claims in the struggle for leadership of a nation that is almost perfectly divided in its choice for president. That requires twin tasks - legal vigilance against the court maneuvers of the Democrats even as Bush begins to assemble a transition team and an administration. It requires tact, restraint, and the gentlest touch.
For Gore, the challenge is to rally and retain the support of Democrats, explaining his rationale for pressing on with his battle for victory in Florida and winning the patience of party leaders in the face of the long odds against prevailing in this battle. It requires a restraint of a different sort, one that allows the vice president to assert his self interest in a way that does not make him seem self-indulgent.
That is why Gore is expected to address the American people today. The stakes in such a speech have no equal; the only remotely comparable example comes from Senator Richard M. Nixon, who salvaged his position on the GOP ticket in 1952 with a speech defending himself against claims that he was the beneficiary of a slush fund. But Nixon's remarks, known to history as his ''Checkers'' speech, were delivered long before Election Day, not four weeks after the election, and they were made by a vice-presidential nominee, not a presidential candidate.
The stakes for the vice president involve not only Gore's chances of winning another week's indulgence from the public. They also involve his reputation in history. As a young House crusader, as a voice of Democratic moderation in the Senate, as perhaps the most involved vice president in American history, Gore has given more than a thousand speeches, none of them destined to be mentioned in the history books that his grandson will read a decade from now. This one, if he proceeds with it, will.
Gore's remarks will almost certainly have to sublimate his own interests (winning the election) to the broader public interest (assuring that the enduring principles of the American system - specifically the notion that every voter counts - are asserted in the new century). He must appeal to the nation's sense of fairness while not seeming to define fairness as what maximizes his chances of success. He must appeal for patience, but also set a limit on how long he will ask a weary public to wait.
Right now the vice president is facing what Graham Stewart, in a remarkable new book about British politics in the 1930s, describes as ''the sober chores of tailoring hope to reality.''
The sober chore for Gore is to recognize the reality, that even if the contest continues, the Bush team has many more escape routes - an appeal to the Florida Legislature or to the US House of Representatives, both of which are controlled by Republicans - than the Gore team possesses.
The vice president has the public support of Democratic leaders now, but he has been told that it will not last forever, or much past the decision of the Supreme Court, which hears oral arguments on Friday. That brief reprieve - and the word on how brief comes from a top Democratic player on Capitol Hill - was granted to Gore by the Bush forces, which appealed to the nation's highest court in the first place.
But because the intervention of the court was requested by the Bush team, it is considered exceedingly unlikely that a ruling from the justices would boost the vice president's prospects.
The other choice for Gore, of course, is to concede the election. In public, the Gore camp says that option is not being considered. But yesterday's certification of the election results makes such a choice less implausible than it was only a day earlier.
The advantage now clearly rests with Bush and the Republicans. But this presidential campaign is humbling not only to its principals but to all its observers. Indeed, the lesson of campaign 2000 is that every time it seems the end is near, it is not nearly the end.
