Now what?

Noam Chomsky is a professor at MIT.

To be frank, I find it hard to understand the attention given to this topic. The election was a statistical tie. Whatever the numbers are (if that's even a meaningful question), the difference is surely overwhelmed by the inherent noise in the system. Since someone has to be picked, the sensible way would have been to flip a coin. There are interesting questions: e.g., why was the election a tie? There are also some plausible models that would yield that conclusion, and are probably close to accurate. But that's another topic.

Robert George is a New York Post editorial page writer.

I have to admit, I was very impressed with Al Gore's speech. I think he hit every graceful note that even some of his hardest critics on the conservative side were demanding or insisting on.

I thought it was particularly appropriate that he was the first American to call George W. Bush "president-elect," which was a good, appropriate gesture. He used the word "concession." There was a lot of talk about whether he would actually use that word, and he did.

One of the most interesting things is he was probably more relaxed and, I guess, human than in almost any speech that I'd ever seen before. It's ironic that Al Gore, who at the Democratic Convention said he was his own man, didn't become his own man until after the elction. The past 36 days is when he emerged from President Clinton's shadow and finally, when he's bowing out, he arguably gives the warmest speech of his career. It was self-deprecating in places but also statesmanlike as well.

I think we'll see him in four years, but I don't know if he'll actually get the nomination in four years. There has not been a Democrat who has come back to get the party's nomination after losing the presidency since Adlai Stevenson. Hubert Humphrey ran again in '72 but he lost [the nomination] to George McGovern.

I thought Bush's speech was good. I think rhetorically Gore's speech was actually better, but Bush said what he had to say. The nicest thing about Bush's speech was the setting. Having the Texas Democratic speaker of the House introduce him -- I thought that was a good, atmospheric gesture. It was good for him to list the consensus agenda that was battled over in the campaign: drugs and education and defense and so forth.

I think there's a lot of bipartisan stuff Bush can tackle that there's already support for, whether it's the marriage penalty or the death tax. There's an agenda out there for him to pick up and run with that can go a long way to assuage some of the raw feelings that came out during this campaign. But I don't think pardoning Clinton right off the bat would sit well with his base at all.

I think Bush can pick and choose who his friends are going to be in Congress. We saw during the campaign that he wasn't too hesitant to stiff-arm the House Republicans when it served his purpose. I think, for one thing, Dennis Hastert is going to be more of his best friend than, say, Tom DeLay is going to be. I think just in terms of temperament, Hastert is more simpatico with Bush than DeLay is. In terms of Trent Lott, that's kind of hard to say. In a certain way, you've almost got three majority leaders in the Senate. You've got Lott, you've got Tom Daschle and you've got Dick Cheney.

The Democrats are going to work with Bush until it's no longer in their interest. That was the mistake that George Bush Sr. made.

Ward Connerly is the author of "Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences" and the founder and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute. A member of the University of California Board of Regents, he headed the anti-affirmative action California Civil Rights Initiative, which campaigned for the passage of the state's Proposition 209.

America is a deeply divided nation, with events of the past five weeks exposing and accentuating some of those divisions. Tonight's speeches to the nation by Vice President Al Gore and President-elect George W. Bush must be viewed in the context of the divided nature of the American people and the national imperative for unity. By that standard, both Gore and Bush rose to the occasion.

Each speech was gracious and fit the role that was expected. Gore conceded unequivocally and offered the hand of cooperation to the victor, while Bush glided into the role of president-elect without appearing to gloat. America demonstrated its strength tonight, thanks to Gore and Bush.

Imagine! Five weeks of counting and recounting ballots with less than a few hundred votes out of 6 million separating the two contestants. And, at the end of the day no blood was shed and the two contestants appealed to their supporters to put the interests of the nation ahead of their self-interests. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a Gore supporter. But tonight was his finest hour.

One should not become intoxicated, however, by one night of appeals to national unity. The real question is: Will you respect me in the morning? In this vein, will Jesse Jackson and other black "leaders," for example, follow the leadership of Gore and accept this outcome without further inflammatory rhetoric? Will further attempts be made to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Bush presidency by Democratic partisans before Bush has any chance for a honeymoon? Will Republican ideologues demand that President Bush govern more as a prototypical Republican or will they give him sufficient wiggle room to govern from a centrist perspective?

Let us pray that tonight marked a new beginning to unite our nation.

Andrew Sullivan writes the TRB column for the New Republic, essays for the New York Times Magazine and daily commentary for www.andrewsullivan.com.

Was it just me or did Al Gore look liberated tonight? Part of me thinks he never wanted to be president -- he just always thought he ought to want to be president. When he put his mind to it, he tried, but it was all perspiration and very little inspiration. I so desperately wanted him to give a good speech that maybe I'm biased, but I thought it was almost perfect. Crisp, eloquent, even moving. He's a man, I think, who is always liberated by being told what to do. That's why he was a good vice president, that's why he gave a good concession speech -- he had no credible alternative. But give him a multiplicity of choices and he freezes, loses confidence, turns to the slickest advisors out there and comes off as completely fake.

The speech tonight helped me come to terms with my mixed feelings about him. Finally St. Albans Al doing his duty, instead of that phony, grating populist claptrap we had to endure for months. He's a nastily effective fighter, but he is never better than when losing. I am so relieved that he has finally given up that I'm almost prepared to forgive him the five weeks of insanity he put us through -- for no good reason. In a race where the margin of error was always greater than the margin of victory, it was a horrible piece of narcissistic ambition, which has done nothing but tarnish our democratic institutions and the rule of law. Maybe that was why he kept going on about law and God in his speech. Maybe he was making amends to himself and the country. But, whatever the motivation, I am grateful that this lost and clueless soul will never be president of the United States.

As for Bush, someone needs to tell the guy how to use a teleprompter. He was effective nonetheless. The word that comes to mind is "mild." He's a mild and human man, almost kind, and the way he wrinkles his brow when he's trying to say something important is almost affecting. It's kind of a tic, like the way small children stick their tongues out when they're writing. For the first time, he looked like a president. His priorities were those of a New Democrat (remember them?), which makes him almost designed for this moment, unless the Republican nutballs and Democratic whiners chew him apart. I have a feeling we may continue to underestimate him. Gore sure did. Gore's supporters are still going around in their smug, self-serving way, talking about how dumb W. is. If he's so dumb, how come he's on the verge of becoming the most powerful man in the world, after Alan Greenspan? Oh, never mind.

As to what he needs to do, it's pretty obvious: Stroke John McCain, kick Tom DeLay in the balls and appoint Condi Rice (National Security Council), Colin Powell (State), Frank Keating (Justice), Christie Whitman (Health and Human Services), Ward Connerly (Education) and Jim Kolbe (trade representative) to his Cabinet. He should make education reform his first priority, and get a whole bunch of easy bipartisan legislation passed soon -- a ban on partial-birth abortion, the end of the marriage penalty, a reduction in the estate tax. The he needs to go after school vouchers and Social Security reform. Got that? Well, we can always dream.

Deirdre English is former editor of Mother Jones.

In retrospect, it's clearer than ever that Clinton should have resigned back at the beginning of the Lewinsky scandal, that dog. He would have spared the nation that media nightmare, and the whole impeachment mess. Gore would have been made president, untainted by Billy's moral turpitude, as it was gradually revealed, and would have had an unbeatable advantage (all other things being equal) in the current contest.

If Clinton had really sought to promote Democratic Party fortunes, rather than his own ego, that's what he would have done. But no, he was willing to put a future Gore presidency at risk. People should think about that when they criticize Gore for not having unleashed Clinton in the campaign. Gore knows Clinton all too well.

Patricia Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University and columnist for the Nation.

I find the decision stunning. I hope it will come to be known as a departure in Supreme Court jurisprudence rather than a signal of things to come. Even Scalia's history as a rather activist conservative did not prepare me for this bulldozing intervention. The morning after the decision, I was standing in the kitchen listening to the news on NPR, and my son came in and said, "Mummy, you look flabber-gassed." That does just about sum it up.

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