hey should be on the Lido deck guffawing at the Hairy Chest contestants right now.
Eleven grunts from Vice President Al Gore's campaign had been planning the trip for weeks. Cozumel. Grand Cayman. Ocho Rios. Sing-alongs in the Irish Sea Bar. Rug-cutting at Club Arctic. Blackjack at the South China Sea Club, ''the largest casino at sea.''
It was going to be heaven afloat.
But then the election wouldn't end. Last Sunday, the Carnival Victory sailed out of Miami, and nine of the original Gore posse weren't on it.
Think you're hankering for closure on this whole president thing? Spare a thought for the campaign workers whose only consolation during those final weeks of 20-hour days was the fact that the finish line was in sight. Some of them thought they'd be sitting on beaches sipping margaritas today, salving their wounds, or basking in victory. Others had lower expectations: clean underwear, sleeping in the same bed two nights in a row, a couch and college football on a Saturday.
All of these hopes have been dashed, of course, at least for now.
''I feel like I just ran a marathon, collapsed at the finish line, and someone told me to run another one,'' said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, who should be preparing for a trip to a resort in the Turks and Caicos Islands with his fiancee right now.
''No,'' said Michael Feldman, Gore's traveling chief of staff, who accused Lehane of lifting that imagery from him, and inaccurately. ''It's more like you just ran a marathon, and they ask you to get up and run, but they won't tell you how far.''
Feldman should be at his parents' house on the Jersey Shore this week. Nobody else for miles around. ''Complete decompression,'' he said, wistfully.
In a normal election year, a campaign shuts shop as Thanksgiving nears. The money is all but gone. Candidates and their advisers turn to transition or alternative career plans. Volunteers are let go with thanks. Consultants' contracts and leases on war rooms expire. Even the pundits take a rest.
Not this year. Each camp has raised million of dollars since the election to fund the recount effort. Those hotel rooms, flights to Wisconsin, and dozens of lawyers must be paid for, after all. Both candidates have spent much energy trying to look presidential and nonchalant, but neither can really focus on the White House, or on coming to terms with his loss.
Leases must be extended, or offices moved (the vice president's Nashville operation has moved to Florida, and into cramped Democratic National Committee digs in Washington). Young campaign workers have postponed forays into the job market, even while paying rent on big-city apartments they're nowhere near.
The 24-hour election news coverage has barely abated. And even the public seems unwilling, so far, to disengage from the spectacle.
''My honeymoon is still alive,'' said Kiki McLean, press secretary for Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, yesterday.
McLean was married in May but put her Maui honeymoon off until Dec. 9, a date when she thought she would be well clear of the election.
''I'm going to Maui!'' she said, over and over, as if trying to make it happen. ''We'll be back on the 16th, and the electors don't meet until the 18th. I'm telling you, I'm going to Maui! You guys always managed to find me no matter where I was, anyway.''
Reporters have been especially good at finding Lehane, Gore's press secretary, too. He ventured into Florida yesterday morning and was immediately ''surrounded by a media horde,'' he said.
He lit out for Washington within 24 hours, but has been fielding calls from at least 50 reporters every time something changes in the Sunshine State, which is often.
''On the other hand,'' he said, ''this is one of the great stories of our time, and I feel like I'm in the vortex of history.''
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan hadn't been entertaining thoughts of exotic climes and palm trees when he first got the news he'd be staying out on the road after four months as one of the governor's traveling press secretaries.
No, his needs were far simpler than that.
''I didn't plan to go away,'' he said. ''My original plans were to catch up on sleep and exercise and to not travel. I wanted to catch up on college football on the weekends. I wanted to catch up on sleep and exercise.''
Instead, he has visited six Florida counties in the last week, and has fallen prey to laundry anxiety, a common campaign-trail ailment in which the victim has no idea where his next clean shirt is coming from.
Of course, campaign workers aren't the only ones running a far longer race than they had ever imagined. The anchors and reporters and pollsters also expected to be all but done now. As did Florida's elections officials, who now find themselves at the center of the maelstrom, the eyes of the world upon them.
And the ripples spread farther than that. In Tallahassee, now swarming with reporters and lawyers, the impasse has run into a huge football weekend, creating a hotel crunch the likes of which the city hasn't seen since the hurricane hit three years ago. Hundreds of political reporters have been asked to vacate hotels to make way for the sports reporters and fans who will arrive for the Florida vs. Florida State game.
Some are moving into hotels in southern Georgia. Others are staying with local residents. Many are not thrilled.
Meanwhile, the Carnival Victory glides on in the Caribbean.
The disappointed Gore cruisers, all of whom lost their 100 percent deposits, know exactly where that ship is every day because they all studied the itinerary. They also know the floor plan of the ship by heart, including the location of their empty cabins.
They bought a dozen walkie-talkies for hijinks on board. The first communication on those was after 2 a.m. on election night. The motorcade was turning around. There would be no concession. Everything was on hold.
''Those walkie-talkies have become badges of disappointment,'' said Philippe Reines, a researcher with the Gore campaign.
But Reines has to keep it all in perspective. ''It sucks,'' he said. ''But it sucks a lot less than it did ... when Tom Brokaw said the next president of the United States is George W. Bush.''
