Pundits Hunger for Happy Ending

Oh holy night! How brightly would stars be shining?

In other words, How benevolently would President-elect George W. Bush receive victory after such harrowing and divisive civil warfare? Would he allow the losers to keep their weapons as they returned to their farms and families? And how graciously would Vice President Al Gore surrender what he almost had, perhaps what he thought he had?

The nation’s self-appointed highest court--its burgeoning culture of quipping, hot-gassing, overstating, chin-stroking, hip-shooting media pundits--would decide if these men were the healing peacemakers they were advised and expected to be.

Yes, said TV pundits almost in unison across the board following Bush’s and Gore’s separate speeches to the nation Wednesday night. Especially noteworthy was their belated gusher of affection for Gore that made him sound almost beloved. This guy was humorous after all, they were saying. A real fuzzy puppy, and caring and compassionate too. Why, even Bush was loving Gore in his victory speech from Austin, Texas, which came about 45 minutes after Gore’s benign words of concession.

Was Gore really as saintly as he was being described after urging the nation to close ranks around the Texas governor he had spent so long savaging? Just as everyone on TV was closing ranks around him? What a difference losing makes.

History will make its own evaluations of these two and their big evening on TV.

On another level, though, how memorable as theater was this double feature compared to other speeches delivered before television cameras at moments of uncertainty, tension or national division?

Not very.

The words and pictures were there Wednesday night, but not the magic or indelible brand one would expect from a defining moment. This wasn’t cosmic orator Martin Luther King Jr., at the 1963 march on Washington, informing a throng of 250,000 of his “dream deeply rooted in the American meaning of its creed, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . . .’ ”

It wasn’t John F. Kennedy opening his brief reign nearly four decades ago by telling his fellow Americans: “Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.” Or the swelling hysteria that followed Kennedy proclaiming at the Berlin Wall, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

It wasn’t cameras capturing the great furrowed face of a Lyndon B. Johnson--politically maimed by dissent about the Vietnam War--talking of unity when he stunned the nation in 1968 by not seeking another term as president.

It wasn’t scandal-challenged Richard Nixon saving his vice presidential neck in 1952 with a maudlin Checkers speech starring his cocker spaniel and wife Pat’s “respectable Republican cloth coat.”

Or the same man after his California gubernatorial loss in 1962, throwing this bitter kiss to reporters: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. . . .”

Or Nixon a dozen years later giving up the presidency on TV without contrition. And what followed the next day: His rambling, emotional farewell to his Cabinet and staff, many weeping, in a dark, tortured, soul-bearing display he ended by striding across the White House lawn with a teary Pat, turning at the door of the helicopter and, arms spread wide, giving the V for Victory sign with both hands.

Wednesday night’s speeches aside, Bush vs. Gore was unforgettable as campaign theater. So much of this surreal odyssey was staged in front of cameras, it’s tempting to frame it as an extension of television, even of prime time.

Consider: Almost like a Rod Serling-written episode of “The Twilight Zone,” a presidential candidate about to make a concession speech is yanked back at the last minute when learning he may not have lost the election after all. Then gripped by timeless infinity--”the longest election night on record,” CNN’s Bill Snyder called it--he must make that speech five weeks later, as if he were always meant to make it and his reprieve had resulted from something as mystical as a tear in the lining of the universe.

Run credits.

As Serling, impresario of “The Twilight Zone,” would tell his viewers: “This is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man.”

Campaign 2000’s fifth dimension now fading, Wednesday’s only lump in the throat came as cameras followed Gore and his family leaving the capital’s Old Executive Office Building to cheers after his televised address, engulfed like the winners they weren’t while working their way through a wintry thicket of supporters.

“It’s time for me to go,” the loser earlier had told America. And what of the media? Not going anywhere. On Wednesday night, though, they didn’t have Bush and Gore to kick around anymore.