N THE MORNING after election, a streamer ran across a full page of The Washington Post: ''THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!'' No, this was not another preemptive headline by another editor jumping the gun. The second line read, in smaller type: ''Call us if you couldn't quite hear what they've said.'' It was, you see, an ad for hearing aids.
Imagine the calls to this company from bewildered, sleep-deprived folks seeking a postelection fortuneteller or an extra talking head. Everyone is trying to ''hear what was said'' in the postelection chaos that has sent civics teachers into paroxysms of delight - Yes, Virginia, there is an Electoral College! - and candidates into plain old paroxysms.
In the din we hear gleeful political junkies saved from postcampaign depression. Talk show historians fill us in on arcane mischief from elections past. And,of course, irate elders in Florida cry ''Unfair!''
What a week. We are facing the prospect of the first minority candidate in more than a century - and by minority, I do not mean race or ethnicity. This was a race so close, so evenly divided that we may split the difference with the popular and electoral votes: one for Al, one for George.
But the real reason we couldn't quite hear what the voters had said is that it's a Tower of Babel out there.
This was a campaign by two self-described moderates aiming to the center of the center of the undecided center of the country as if they were both trying to straddle a two-lane blacktop. This was a campaign in which Nader - get that man a Corvair! - convinced enough people that Al and George were both Republicrats to help the Republican. And at the same time, the campaign tied to a margin of error showed an electorate markedly splintered.
What did we learn from the much-maligned exit pollers and the map makers? That in this country there is a wide political division between rich and poor, married and single, rural and urban, male and female, black and white, straight and gay, secular and religious.
Try these figures. Families that earn less than $15,000 a year voted for Gore 57 to 37. Families that earn more than $100,000 voted for Bush 54 to 43.
Married? Nine points more for Bush. Single? Nineteen points for Gore. Black? 90 percent for Gore. White? 54 percent for Bush. Live in a big city? Three to one Gore. Live in a small town or rural area? Five to three Bush. Anybody call this the United States?
While we are on the subject, what about men, women, and marriage? We know that women would have elected Gore, men Bush. By now we come to accept the gender gap as some fact of biological astronomy, with men from a Republican Mars and women from a Democratic Venus. The real Venus is the land of divorced women. But even inside marriages, there's a 10 percent gap between husbands and wives.
That's several million couples who live together and vote differently. That's millions of Mary Matalins and James Carvilles, although politically reversed. Do they take politics lite? Are there couples fighting over the dinner table tonight like the one whose daughter wrote to Dr. Joyce Brothers for counseling? Or is this the secret of the secret ballot?
This was a shallow campaign. Divisions may not run as deep as they do wide. Marriages survive, and so do countries. But leaving the polling booth, about half the Bush voters said they would be concerned or ''scared'' by a Gore presidency. Half the Gore voters said the same thing about Bush. That unease has been raised in this postelection chaos. A man without a mandate or perhaps even a majority comes tarnished by doubts. Will he be called, ''His Fraudulency'' like Rutherford Hayes. Or President Gridlock?
On Jan. 20, Florida be damned, we will inaugurate a president. A man elected by about half of the half of the population that voted will face a divided Senate, a divided House. He'll head a government that depends on amazing levels of cooperation in an era when partisans find each other ''scary.''
The irony is that the one message that resonated is that Americans are sick of the pettiness and wrangling, the gridlock and partisanship in Washington. That's the pettiness and wrangling, the gridlock and partisanship that's just been guaranteed.
The People Have Spoken. Hearing aids, anyone?
Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.
