Refusing To Blink

While the nation watches the Florida vote recount, awaiting a new president, the campaigns of George W. Bush and Al Gore cautiously "spin" the situation in a final campaign fight for public opinion.

In Austin, Texas, on Friday, Bush met with running mate Dick Cheney and advisers who are expected to have roles in a Bush administration.

"I'm in the process of planning … a new Administration," a weary-looking Bush told a gaggle of ravenous reporters. (He sported a large Band-Aid on his cheek — the result of an infection.)

Bush was also seriously considering seeking a court order to stop Gore's campaign from securing manual recounts of contested ballots in Florida, as both sides of an improbably deadlocked presidential election looked to the judicial branch for help in the make-or-break state.

Gore played touch football with his adult children at the vice president's residence in Washington, and indicated he would be making no public appearances through Sunday.

Gore may have received a significant boost in Oregon, as CBS News projected him as the winner there late Friday.

With 99 percent of the votes counted, Gore has 698,252 votes, compared with 692,279 for Bush. That's a difference of 5,973 votes. This is the closest presidential race in Oregon since 1976, when Gerald Ford carried Oregon by only 1,700 votes.

Gore now has 262 electoral votes, with 270 needed to win the White House. Bush has 246 votes, but Florida still hangs in the balance.

Bush leads Gore in Florida by 331 votes, according to an unofficial tally of the Florida recount by Voter News Service. With up to several thousand overseas absentee ballots expected, the winner is still uncertain.

While the candidates themselves maintain the appearance of business-as-usual, their surrogates are engaged in a PR war, trying to sell the voters one last message.

The officials said it was likely the injunction would be sought, but stressed that it was up to Baker to make the final decision. A source close to Baker said the former secretary had not decided. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

The decision, however tentative, underscores the Bush campaign's concern that a widespread manual recount could undermine his fragile lead over Gore. Baker had said earlier that he's prepared to "vigrously fight" the manual recount because they open the process to mistakes and fraud that are avoided by machine counts.

Meanwhile, the Democrats' message as delivered by Gore campaign chairman Bill Daley is: You wuz robbed. Thousands of Americans, he said, were effectively "disenfranchised" by faulty ballot forms and other irregularities, and they should have a remedy.

In an exclusive interview with CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman echoed the party line: "We believe sincerely in this extraordinarily close election that the right of some people in Florida to vote was frustrated, was blocked and that's the principle. The broader principle also is that when a president takes office on January 20 of 2001, that president should have emerged from an election process over which there were no clouds."

The Republicans' message as delivered by Bush campaign chief Don Evans and eminence gris Baker is: Gore won't leave the stage. He's digging his heels in, defying precedent, and damaging public faith in government.

When Bush's Election Night margin of victory in Florida shrank to less than half of one percentage point, triggering a recount required by statute, it seemed the die was cast, and the outcome of the election was out of the hands of the partisans.

But morning-after reports of ballot irregularities meant the fight could go on.

The Democrats struck first when Daley announced Gore's intent to request recounts in Palm Beach and three other Florida counties.

Daley said the Bush campaign was rushing to wrap things up before the truth comes out. "They put a demand for finality ahead of the pursuit of fairness," Daley charged.

The GOP's Evans responded, implying the Democrats are sore losers. "Our democratic process calls for a vote on Election Day, it does not call for us to continue voting until someone likes the outcome."

Two former secretaries of state were brought in, one from each party, to oversee the resolution. Democrat Warren Christopher and Republican Baker were supposed to lend an air of dignity and probity to the elective endgame.

But Baker joined the fray Friday, ratcheting up the rhetoric and playing the patriot card against Gore. Baker reminded the cameras that in close modern elections in 1960 and 1976, Republicans Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford "accepted the vote for the good of the country."

The message was clear. The Gore campaign will be responsible for any loss of public faith in government, and any loss of face abroad.

"For the good of the country and for the sake of our standing in the world," Baker said, "the campaigning should end and the business of an orderly transition should begin."

The tug-of-war is a high wire act for both camps, either of which could overplay its hand.

It would be ironic if Bush, who ran as a plainspoken, clean-living paragon of integrity, came to power with some of the public suspicious that he'd somehow stolen the election.

Bush admitted during the campaign that he fought against the misconception that he was running "on my daddy's name." It doesn't help a President-elect Bush's "legitimacy" if it looks like the family consigliere swooped into Florida and fixed things for him, with the cooperation of W's brother Jeb, the Florida governor (who has recused himself from the process to avoid just such appearances).

On the other side, if the Gore team persuades the public that the process is corrupt, and they win in the end, they will have shaken Americans' confidence in the system, thus delegitimizing their own guy.

But Gore has less to lose by pushing hard through his lieutenants, Daley and Christopher. He already has a trust problem, after all, with exit polls showing that the honesty issue worked against him nationally.

Given a choice of more than a half dozen personal qualities including "experience", "good judgment" and strong leadership, more voters ranked "honesty and truthfulness" first as the most important personal characteristic for a presidential candidate.

Among the 24 percent who ranked honesty first, Bush beat Gore 80 to 15 percent. Voters who feel the country is going in the wrong direction morally went for Bush about 2-to-1.

Rather than the "fresh start after a season of cynicism" that Bush promised, the new president may make a late start on his transition, arriving in Washington beneath a cloud of public suspicion and partisan hostility.

This week's election was one of the closest in history. Gore holds a slim lead over Bush in the national popular vote. But without Florida's 25 electral votes, neither candidate has the necessary 270-vote majority in the Electoral College to succeed Bill Clinton as president on January 20.