NEW YORK -- There's plenty of room for reasonable disagreement in this post-election netherworld. The Bushies are right that we need a president-elect and we needed one weeks ago; despite lackadaisical opinion polls and surprising public apathy, the legal maneuvering over recounts can't go on forever. Yet Gore's peeps are right too. As everybody now knows, our votes don't all count, and while it doesn't matter in most elections, there's no better time to remedy that situation than a contest with a 500-something vote spread. The tension between the need for speed and the desire for accuracy has people of all political stripes spewing contradictions, lies and faulty syllogisms. But it's not because they're ill-intentioned; they're just angry that their guy came so damned close.

Then, far beyond the ideological confines where most of us dwell, is Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Democrats talk darkly about confusing ballots and cops patting down blacks en route to the polls. Republicans call the flurry of litigation clogging Florida courts -- that they started, but never mind that -- nothing short of an attempted judicial coup d'etat. But no member of either party has sunk as low as Jeb Bush, who actually says that he'll sign a law to make his brother president.