Because I'd like an answer to my question: Am I the only one who finds this entire Florida spectacle not just riveting but a glorious display of much that is right with our system, not just what's wrong? Yes, it's nasty. Yes, some rather peculiar electoral activities have come to light. Sure, it would have been better if this whole mess had not occurred, if presidential ballots were uniform throughout the country, if ... if ... if a lot of things.

But it did happen. And maybe I'm naive in the extreme, but I feel a peculiar thrill to be a witness to this extraordinary process -- even if both candidates (but especially Bush) are clearly limited.

The basic point is this: Despite the hostilities of the past few weeks, we're not talking Bosnia here. This is not the French Revolution. No one is storming the Bastille. If we were in Soviet-era Moscow -- or maybe even the Moscow of today -- the radio would be playing "Swan Lake" around the clock and we'd have engrossing five-hour documentaries about mushroom picking on TV while the Kremlin bulldogs huddled in secret to determine the country's fate.

But unless I've missed something -- and it's possible, because even a news junkie like me has to take a bathroom break occasionally -- I haven't seen the storm troopers marching into Tallahassee, Fla., or tanks rolling through the Everglades. Instead, we have a war of words and legal briefs; we have Larry King grilling Alan Dershowitz and Peggy Noonan. (And yes, they're highly irritating, but you can mute them if you want.) So this is not the end of democracy in our time.

Let me play Claude Rains for a second here and say that I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that political partisans are behaving, well, politically partisan. I'm shocked -- shocked! -- that they're angling for votes at every turn, calling in the lawyers to explore every possible legal advantage, appealing the decisions they don't like up the wazoo.

But as they say on MSNBC, this is hardball. All the characters in this theater of the incredible are playing their roles to perfection, even if they're not playing nice. Al Gore has every right to pursue any legal strategy available to him. George W. Bush has every right to fight it. Their surrogates have every right to defend them. And guess what? The Republicans are backing Bush and the Democrats -- mostly -- are backing Gore. Quelle surprise.

Look, I don't mean to downplay the stakes involved here. If fraud was committed, of course it should be investigated and punished. If this all leads to needed electoral reform, terrific. And I appreciate the potential dangers of a Bush presidency -- and of his Supreme Court appointments -- for women, minorities, poor people and many, many others.

But what is truly unhealthy and destructive here is not the legal process taking place, but the apocalyptic bleating and the high-decibel ranting and the rhetorical nonsense buzzing around like flies hovering over garbage. Gore reps have warned darkly that the Bushie-organized protests in southern Florida constituted mob rule, even fascism. But if the weenies posing as election officials in Miami-Dade County voted not to proceed with a manual recount because of a bit of screaming, then they're the losers to blame, not the alleged mob. And Gore has gone to court to reverse that rather odd decision -- as well he should.

The other side trumps the Demos: Gore, they yelp, is Slobodan Milosevic. We've got a stolen election here. A coup d'état. Noonan -- and how lovely she looks when she knows she's right -- says that the right's passive and flaccid response to Gore's maneuvers is like Britain's appeasement of Hitler. (Passive Republican response? Is she watching CNN in the same universe as the rest of us?) And yes, Peggy, I do think Gore would look cute with a little black mustache.

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