And the winner was?

Moreover, there were a handful of high-profile Republicans who had broken from the GOP mantra that the election had already ended on Nov. 7, and were counting for a statewide hand recount. Gore could have stood with Bush-backers like Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., or Weekly Standard editor and publisher William Kristol, both of whom acknowledged that the only way to get out of this mess with true closure was to count all 175,000. Gore staffers could have sought out Hagel and Kristol. Gore could have tried to build a bipartisan agreement. He didn't. Because he didn't want that.

By the end of the Florida fracas, those arguing loudest for a statewide peek at the 175,000 questionable ballots were Bush representatives. At the end of the contest trial, Bush attorney George Terwilliger told the judge that if he were going to count undervotes and overvotes, it had to be on a statewide basis. And Secretary of State Harris' attorney, Joe Klock, was making that same case throughout the trial.

But not only was the Gore strategy morally bereft (not to mention a dishonor to all those truly associated with the cause of enfranchisement), it was dumb.

A December Orlando Sun-Sentinel review of 3,114 overvotes in Bush-backing Lake County showed that had Young been permitted to make his pitch to that canvassing board, and had they listened, Gore could have picked up a net of 131 votes.

Yes, Gore did, in those early days, twice lamely mention that he would agree to a statewide recount. But it was always as an aside, something he'd be willing to do if it was what Bush wanted. He never wanted it, and he never truly tried to get it done -- actually legally pursuing the completely opposite approach. In two separate courtrooms, Gore attorney David Boies argued against a statewide recount. Just count these selected votes from these selected counties, he argued.

After all, that's what the law allows.

In neither courtroom was he heeded. Judge N. Sanders Sauls ruled against him and the entire Gore team in their official contest. Then, during their successful appeal, the Florida Supreme Court ruled for a statewide recount of all the undervotes, which is what the Miami Herald analysis attempted to play out.

But the Florida Supreme Court's proposal for solving the mystery of who won Florida, halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, actually made little sense. Inspecting just the 60,000 or so statewide undervotes, as the Florida court mandated, left out the 115,000 or so overvotes. Those were just as relevant as the undervotes if one is concerned by enfranchisement and "intent of the voter," they had already been counted in at least one recount, Volusia's, and they ultimately -- not that it should have mattered to the court -- would have been more valuable to Gore.

President Bush has nothing to be proud of either, doing everything he could to block the recounting and let the troubled, tangled final tallies be the final word. But in the coming weeks, you're likely to hear a lot of talk about the recounts coming from McAuliffe and other unhappy Democrats. They will have a hard time persuading a public who sat through the recount arguments the first time.

Besides, if the majority of Americans who voted were denied the opportunity to have their candidate serve as president precisely because Gore himself never really stood behind his own rhetoric, how can anyone feel cheated?

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